- 17
William Blake London 1757 - 1827
Description
- William Blake
- 'Our Time Is Fix'd, and All Our Days Are Number'd'
traces of a pencil inscription on the mount below, largely erased and illegible and inscribed in pencil on the verso of the mount upper right: Not
- pen and black and gray inks and watercolor over traces of pencil
Literature
Bentley 2001, pp. 482-83, note 58;
Butlin 2002, p. 71and reproduced p. 72;
Gourlay, passim.
Catalogue Note
This watercolor of the fates carrying the thread of life was never engraved by Schiavonetti and was completely unknown until its discovery in 2001. Butlin has related the subject to a line on page 18 of The Grave, "Our Time Is Fix'd, and All Our Days Are Number'd," but the rest of the passage deals with suicide and the prohibitions against it. Although Blake was quite free in his interpretation of Blair's poem, plucking that one line out of context goes rather far, even for him. However, even if the exact line does not fit, the theme of the unexpectedness of death is clear.
Blake's use of such undiluted classical imagery is unusual in the context of the other designs. He does depict the fates cutting the thread of life in a few illustrations for Night Thoughts but the compositions are quite different. The extraordinary ring of figures circling the moon in Our Time Is Fix'd seems to have little precedent. There is some kinship with the ghosts circling the moon in The Gambols of Ghosts, but in its absence of setting Our Time Is Fix'd is unique among Blake's illustrations to The Grave.