William Blake

Probably Catherine Blake, the artist's wife;
probably Frederick Tatham;
probably Joseph Hogarth;
his sale, Southgate’s, 18 June 1854, lot 4624 (part of the lot), bt. Cowieson;
Barron Grahame of Morphie;
his sale, London, Sotheby’s, 15 March 1878, lot 22 or 23, bt. Chalmers;
Robert Carfrae;
by descent to his son Robert Carfrae, Junior;
Donald Davidson;
with Steigal Fine Art, Edinburgh, by 1978;
A. Stein;
sale, London, Sotheby’s, 8 July 1982, lot 102

Edinburgh, The National Gallery of Scotland, William Blake and his Early Nineteenth Century Scottish followers, David Scott,1974, unnumbered;
Hamburg and Frankfurt, Kunsthalle, William Blake, 1975, no. 2;
London, Tate Gallery, William Blake, 1978, no. 21

M.D. Paley and M. Phillip, William Blake, Oxford 1973, p. 46;
M. Butlin, Blake Newsletter, vol. VII, New York 1973, pp. 5 & 8, pl. 1;
D. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, Oxford 1977, p. 32 & 85;
R. Essick and D. Pearce, Blake in his Time, Bloomington, Indiana and London 1978, p. 92;
M. Butlin, William Blake, London 1978, p. 37, no. 21;
M. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Yale 1981, p. 70, no. 184;
R. Essick, The Works of William Blake in the Huntington Collections, San Marino 1985, p. 117

The medium in the watercolour has been well preserved. Many of the watercolour pigments retain their original tones, and the pen and ink is easily readable. At the extreme edges of the sheet there are some minor areas of pigment loss and a tiny part of the top right hand corner is missing.
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This work dates to circa 1779 and is associated with a small group of watercolours, of a similar style and dimensions, which illustrate scenes from English History. Here, Blake seems to have taken the 1665 great plague of London as his theme. He depicts a haunting scene where, set within an urban landscape, anguished figures cradle the dead and dying, a man prepares a horse-drawn hearse and people flee in terror. In the middle distance, a black clad figure rings a bell, presumably calling for the dead to be brought out of the nearby house.

Blake remained interested in the theme of war, famine and plague until 1805 and the present work is the first in a series of seven drawings which expanded on this particular composition. Others from this powerful series are in the British Library, the City Art Gallery, Bristol, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Huntington Art Gallery, California.¹

 1. R. Essick, op. cit., p. 117