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Drawings

A Title Page for "The Grave"

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Type
Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date
1806
Accession number
000.30
Maker
William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions
9 3/8 x 7 7/8 in. (23.8 x 20 cm.) sheet: 9 3/8 x 7 7/8 in. (23.8 x 20 cm.) mount: 13 11/16 x 10 13/16 in. (34.8 x 27.5 cm.)
Medium
pen and blue watercolor on paper
Description
In September 1805, the engraver and publisher Robert H. Cromek commissioned Blake to design and engrave a series of designs to illustrate Robert Blair's popular "Graveyard" poem, The Grave, first published in 1743. [1] Blake appears to have begun work with vigor and high spirits, but by November 1805 Cromek had decided to employ the fashionable engraver Louis Schiavonetti to engrave twelve of Blake's designs, thereby removing from Blake's hands the most lucrative part of the project. The Schiavonetti plates appear in the volume first published in 1808. The role of the unpublished Huntington title page, with its 1806 date, in this endeavor is difficult to ascertain. Blake may have dated the design in anticipation of publication in 1806 at a time when he believed the book would feature his designs more than Blair's text. [2] Yet the title makes no reference to designs more than Blair's text. [3] Yet the title makes no reference to designs engraved by Blake, a fact that Butlin 1981, 458, explains by proposing that the drawing was inscribed after Blake learned that Schiavonetti would be executing the plates. Baker 1946, 112, was the first to suggest that the title page was prepared for "an album that should contain a set of prints engraved by Blake" rather than an edition of the poem. Essick and Paley 1982, 72, reiterate this thesis and suggest alternatively that such an album may have been planned as late as 1806 as a means for Blake to sell his own drawings (hence, "Invented & Drawn") which had not been acquired by Cromek for publication. But the recent discovery that the Huntington drawing was originally owned by the Cromek family strongly suggests that it was not for any independent project of Blake's but part of Cromek's own publications schemees. We know that Cromek exhibitied Blake's "original Drawings," including a group of the beautiful designs" shown in Birmingham in July 1806. [4] The Huntington drawing would have made a suitable title page for a portfolio containing Blake's drawings which Cromek could use to advertise his forthcoming book. Another drawing, also dated 1806, may be related to the same series of designs. This highly finished work, now in the British Museum (Butlin 1981, No. 613), shows the resurrection of the dead around an empty panel, apparently prepared in anticipation of a (title-page?) text of some sort. The Huntington design does not illustrate any specific passage in Blair's poem but, like Blake's other designs for The Grave, stresses the theme of resurrection. The inscription is placed as though chiseled in the side of a large tomb, scalloped and decorated around its top with tendril and lily motifs. On either side of the base sit female figures like funerary statues. The veiled woman on the left holds a scroll. Her sinister qualities are underscored by the bat-like wings, very similar to those given to Death in the unpublished Grave design of "Death Pursuing the Soul through the Avenues of Life" (Robert Essick collection; Butlin 1981, No. 635) and to Satan in one of Blake's Job watercolors of ca. 1805-1806 (Pierpoint Morgan Library; Butlin 1981, No. 550.3). Her companion on the right seems equally saddened, but her veil does not cover her face or hair. Her butterfly wings are of the type traditionally associated with Psyche. The two figures together suggest contrary destinies: the death of the body and the immortality of the soul. Above the tomb, a praying woman-or female personification of the soul-leaves her shrouds behind as she rises heavenward between clouds and through rays of light. Notes 1. The relevant documents, on which the brief summary of this complex history given here is based, are cited or reprinted in Bentley 1969 and Essick and Paley 1982. 2. A precendent for a title page of this type was established by the 1753 illustrated edition of Thomas Gray's poems, entitled Designs by Mr. R. Bentley for Six Poems by Mr. T. Gray. 3. Cromek's prospectus of November 1805 and the Birmingham Gazette and Birmingham Commercial Herald of 28 July 1806 (see Essick and Paley 1982, 196-97).
Credit
The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department
European Art
Find out more
View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)
Blake probably made this design as a title page fot a portfolio ofhis watercolors illustrating Robert Blair's "The Grave" rather than for the published volume, a copy of which is displayed in the center case in this room. A personified soul rises heavenward from a tomb flanked by winged figures representing the death of the body (left) and the immortality of the spirit (right).

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