Pity | |
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Artist | William Blake |
Year | 1795 |
Type | Colour print, finished in ink and watercolour, on paper [1] |
Dimensions | 42.5 cm× 53.9 cm(16.7 in× 21.2 in) |
Location | Tate Gallery, London |
Pity (c. 1795) is a colour print on paper, finished in ink and watercolour, by the English artist and poet William Blake, one of the group known as the "Large Colour Prints". Along with his other works of this period, it was influenced by the Bible, Milton, and Shakespeare. [2] The work is unusual, as it is a literal illustration of a double simile from Macbeth , found in the lines:
Like other members of the group, it is a monotype produced by printing from a matrix consisting of paint on gessoed millboard, with each impression then finished by hand. Blake could obtain up to three impressions from a single painting by this unusual means. Three such impressions survive of Pity. A fourth, in the British Museum, was an early trial of the design from a different matrix, as it is smaller than the others. [4]
Martin Butlin wrote that this colour print is one of the most inspired of all 'literal' illustrations of a text in the history of art. [5] In fact, "pity and air", two words of Shakespeare's verses, are also two motifs used by Blake in this picture: a female cherub leans down to snatch the baby from its mother. According to Blake's biographer Alexander Gilchrist, the print "is on a tolerably large scale, a woman bending down to succour a man stretched out at length as if given over to death." [6]
Pity is seen as in opposition to Blake's print The Night of Enitharmon's Joy (c. 1795) — which shows a Hecate surrounded by fantastic creatures and macabre elements of a nightmare — because it provides a "possibility of salvation" in the fallen world through pity. [7] Both prints refer to Macbeth. As Nicholas Rawlinson has noted, the play was undergoing a major revival in popularity at the time, being performed nine times in 1795. [8]
It is a personification [9] of a Christian element [10] that some critics argue was a negative virtue for Blake, since pity is associated with "the failure of inspiration and a further dividing" [11] and also "linked by alliteration and capitalization". [12] It is also a part of Blake's mythology, in which a sexually frustrated Tharmas becomes "a terror to all living things", although the emotion inherent in him is a pity. [13] Other Blake characters have this feeling, and his mythology is developed between the confrontation of a feminine "Pity" and a masculine fiery, as happens in the brutal suppression of desire in Urizen. [14]
Some critics see a connection between Pity and the "hypnotic and helpless state" of William Butler Yeats' The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). [15]
The print exists in four versions from two different matrices. The most elaborate and best-known version of the print is in the Tate Gallery, London, sometimes described as the only finished one. It was presented by W. Graham Robertson to the gallery in 1939 and is catalogued as "Butlin 310". [16]
A unique "proof print" is in the British Museum (Butlin 313). It is "significantly smaller than the final version of the design" and depicts the supine figure "partially covered in vegetation" in the form of sweeping fronds of long grass. [17]
Another version of the image is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is not as elaborately worked as the Tate print. It was donated by Mrs. Robert W. Goelet in 1958. [18]
A lightly retouched version at the Yale Center for British Art also exists, somewhat yellowed by varnish. According to The William Blake Archive, "The characteristics of the colour printing indicate that this impression is the first one printed from the larger matrix in 1795. The second impression in this printing is Pity in the Tate Collection (Butlin 310); the third impression is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Butlin 311)." [19]
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "human existence itself".
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to acrylic glass. The image is then transferred onto a paper by pressing the two together, using a printing-press, brayer, baren or by techniques such as rubbing with the back of a wooden spoon or the fingers which allow pressure to be controlled selectively. Monotypes can also be created by inking an entire surface and then, using brushes or rags, removing ink to create a subtractive image, e.g. creating lights from a field of opaque colour. The inks used may be oil or water-based. With oil-based inks, the paper may be dry, in which case the image has more contrast, or the paper may be damp, in which case the image has a 10 percent greater range of tones.
"The Chimney Sweeper" is the title of a poem by William Blake, published in two parts in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794. The poem "The Chimney Sweeper" is set against the dark background of child labour that was prominent in England in the late 18th and 19th centuries. At the age of four and five, boys were sold to clean chimneys, due to their small size. These children were oppressed and had a diminutive existence that was socially accepted at the time. Children in this field of work were often unfed and poorly clothed. In most cases, these children died from either falling through the chimneys or from lung damage and other horrible diseases from breathing in the soot. In the earlier poem, a young chimney sweeper recounts a dream by one of his fellows, in which an angel rescues the boys from coffins and takes them to a sunny meadow; in the later poem, an apparently adult speaker encounters a child chimney sweeper abandoned in the snow while his parents are at church or possibly even suffered death where church is referring to being with God.
Intaglio is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.
The Ancient of Days is a design by William Blake, originally published as the frontispiece to the 1794 work Europe a Prophecy. It draws its name from one of God's titles in the Book of Daniel and shows Urizen crouching in a circular design with a cloud-like background. His outstretched hand holds a compass over the darker void below. Related imagery appears in Blake's Newton, completed the next year. As noted in Alexander Gilchrist's 1863 book, Life of William Blake, the design of The Ancient of Days was "a singular favourite with Blake and as one it was always a happiness to him to copy". As such there are many versions of the work extant, including one completed for Frederick Tatham only weeks before Blake's death.
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in England, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It houses a substantial collection of the art of the United Kingdom since Tudor times, and in particular has large holdings of the works of J. M. W. Turner, who bequeathed all his own collection to the nation. It is one of the largest museums in the country. The museum had 525,144 visitors in 2021, an increase of 34 percent from 2020 but still well below pre- COVID-19 pandemic levels. In 2021 it ranked 50th on the list of most-visited art museums in the world.
William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job primarily refers to a series of twenty-two engraved prints by Blake illustrating the biblical Book of Job. It also refers to two earlier sets of watercolours by Blake on the same subject. The engraved Illustrations are considered to be Blake's greatest masterpieces in the medium of engraving, and were also a rare commercial and critical success for Blake.
The Song of Los is one of William Blake's epic poems, known as prophetic books. The poem consists of two sections, "Africa" and "Asia". In the first section Blake catalogues the decline of morality in Europe, which he blames on both the African slave trade and enlightenment philosophers. The book provides a historical context for The Book of Urizen, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los, and also ties those more obscure works to The Continental Prophecies, "Europe" and "America". The second section consists of Los urging revolution.
Nebuchadnezzar is a colour monotype print with additions in ink and watercolour portraying the Old Testament Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II by the English poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake. Taken from the Book of Daniel, the legend of Nebuchadnezzar tells of a ruler who through hubris lost his mind and was reduced to animalistic madness and eating "grass as oxen".
The Ghost of a Flea is a miniature painting by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake, held in the Tate Gallery, London. Measuring only 8.42 by 6.3 inches, it is executed in a tempera mixture with gold, on a mahogany-type tropical hardwood panel. It was completed between 1819 and 1820, as part of a series depicting "Visionary Heads" commissioned by the watercolourist and astrologist John Varley (1778–1842). Fantastic, spiritual art was popular in Britain from around 1770 to 1830, and during this time Blake often worked on unearthly, supernatural panels to amuse and amaze his friends.
Catherine Blake was the wife of the poet, painter, and engraver William Blake, and a vital presence and assistant throughout his life.
Newton is a monotype by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake first completed in 1795, but reworked and reprinted in 1805. It is one of the 12 "Large Colour Prints" or "Large Colour Printed Drawings" created between 1795 and 1805, which also include his series of images on the biblical ruler Nebuchadnezzar.
William Marlow was an English landscape and marine painter and etcher.
All Religions are One is a series of philosophical aphorisms by William Blake, written in 1788. Following on from his initial experiments with relief etching in the non-textual The Approach of Doom (1787), All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion represent Blake's first successful attempt to combine image and text via relief etching, and are thus the earliest of his illuminated manuscripts. As such, they serve as a significant milestone in Blake's career; as Peter Ackroyd points out, "his newly invented form now changed the nature of his expression. It had enlarged his range; with relief etching, the words inscribed like those of God upon the tables of law, Blake could acquire a new role."
There is No Natural Religion is a series of philosophical aphorisms by William Blake, written in 1788. Following on from his initial experiments with relief etching in the non-textual The Approach of Doom (1787), All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion represent Blake's first successful attempt to combine image and text via relief etching, and are thus the earliest of his illuminated manuscripts. As such, they serve as a significant milestone in Blake's career; as Peter Ackroyd points out, "his newly invented form now changed the nature of his expression. It had enlarged his range; with relief etching, the words inscribed like those of God upon the tables of law, Blake could acquire a new role."
The Night of Enitharmon's Joy, often referred as The Triple Hecate or simply Hecate, is a 1795 work of art by the English artist and poet William Blake which depicts Enitharmon, a female character in his mythology, or Hecate, a chthonic Greco-Roman goddess of magic and the underworld. The work presents a nightmarish scene with fantastic creatures.
The Visionary Heads is a series of black chalk and pencil drawings produced by William Blake after 1818 by request of John Varley, the watercolour artist and astrologer. The subjects of the sketches, many of whom are famous historical and mythical characters, appeared to Blake in visions during late night meetings with Varley, as if sitting for portraits. The drawings are contained in three sketchbooks and there are a number of loose leaves indicating the existence of a fourth sketchbook. Like most of Blake's other works, they have been subject to academic scrutiny and study.
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"The Little Boy Lost" is a simple lyric poem written by William Blake. This poem is part of a larger work titled Songs of Innocence which was published in the year 1789. "The Little Boy Lost" is a prelude to "The Little Boy Found".
Martin Richard Fletcher Butlin, CBE, FBA is a British art historian. His main field of study is British art history and his published works reflect, in particular, a study of art of the 18th and 19th centuries. He is an authority on J.M.W. Turner (1775–1851) and William Blake (1757–1827).