Drawings

Illustrated manuscript of Genesis : The expulsion from Eden(?)

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Type: Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date: ca. 1826-1827
Accession number: 000.40
Maker: William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions: image including text: 15 x 10 7/8 in. (38.1 x 27.6 cm.) tailpiece: 3 5/8 x 6 11/16 in. (9.2 x 17 cm.) sheet: 14 15/16 x 10 15/16 in. (37.9 x 27.8 cm.)
Medium: pencil on wove paper
Description: Text of Genesis 3:15-24. The tailpiece is little more than a few undefined shapes (lower left), large curving lines (upper center and right), and more tightly-curled lines (top right). Yet these first thoughts in pencil are enough to suggest an expulsion scene illustrating verse 24, written just above it. On the title page for Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794), Blake pictured the expulsion (see RB54039). The basic format of this relief etching would seem to be repeated here on leaf 9, with Adam and Eve cowering on the left and the flames of divine wrath on the right. Alternatively, the swirling lines might indicate a whirlwind, like the one in which God appears in the thirteenth plate of Blake's Job engravings, ca. 1823-26. See also 000.13.
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)

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