Lot 12
  • 12

William Blake London 1757 - 1827

bidding is closed

Description

  • William Blake
  • 'The Gambols of Ghosts According with their Affections Previous to the Final Judgement'
  • traces of a pencil inscription on the mount below, largely erased, the last two words may read variously  D..l...  or virtuously D..l...  and inscribed on the verso of the mount upper left Not

  • pen and black and gray inks and watercolor over traces of pencil

Literature

Bentley 2001, pp. 482-83, note 58;
Butlin 2002, p. 71 and reproduced p. 69.

1Essick and Paley, p. 49.  They did not know of the existence of this watercolor when they made up their pairings.


 

Catalogue Note

The Gambols of Ghosts is one of the watercolors that Flaxman singled out in his letter of October 18, 1805, but it was not included in Cromek’s edition of The Grave. The design appears to illustrate an early passage of the poem in which Blair evokes images of the graveyard.

Well do I know thee by thy trusty yew,
Cheerless, unsocial plant! That loves to dwell
‘Midst sculls and coffins, epitaphs and worms;
Where light-heel’d ghosts and visionary shades,
Beneath the wan cold moon (as fame reports)
Embodied thick, perform their mystic rounds.
(p. 2)

A preparatory drawing for the design in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (Butlin 636, pl. 863) has all the major elements of the composition and, before the discovery of this watercolor, was sometimes associated with Flaxman's letter.  A less finished drawing in the National Gallery of Art, Washington (fig. 16) is also related to The Gambols of Ghosts and may shed some light on Blake's imagery.  It is described as A Resurrection Scene but the dominanat compositional element of the arc of figures rising into the sky has much the same feeling as the watercolor for The Grave.  Specific motifs are repeated as well, like the church, the moon and the ghosts emerging from the ground.  The Gambols of Ghosts is itself a kind of resurrection but without a judging Christ and therefore without any of the associated hierarchical elements. 

Using Essick and Paley's scheme of  opposite pairs,1 one could match The Gambols of Ghosts with The Final Judgement (lot 9). The title itself remains something of a mystery.  Flaxman’s description appears no where in Blair's poem and the few traces of the penciled inscription on the mount do not seem to corrrespond either.

The composition is suitably frenetic and complicated to embody the movements of  'light-heel’d ghosts' and goes far beyond Blair’s brief description. Blake creates two moving circles of figures perpendicular to each other -- one, which goes around the tree, is made up of dancing or running ghosts,  the other, which starts at the ground and circles up and over the tree, begins with ghosts emerging from the ground and ends with one flying through the church door.  Cutting through the second circle is a procession of saved souls slowly entering the church. The effect is of constant movement and turmoil that makes it difficult to distinguish the saved and the damned at first glance.

Blake’s palette adds to the eeriness of the scene.  The overall color scheme is gray and blue with only a few touches of red, as on the angry figure of the male ghost emerging from the ground at the left.  Even 'the wan cold moon' is gray with only the slightest touch of yellow, and the highlights on the figures are truly ghostly.