NEWSLETTER
TATE BLAKE EXHIBITION
The Blake exhibition at the Tate Gallery, London, is scheduled to open 9
March 1978 and to close 21 May. There will be a large fully illustrated
catalogue comprising the (approximately) 340 works on exhibit, among them
the following: examples of Blake’s work for Basire; all five
versions of “Pestilence” (c. 1779-1805), together with
“Pestilence—the death of the first born” from
Boston; three versions of “The Ancient of Days” to show
variations in coloring; three of the touched proofs of the title-page of
Europe, including the newly discovered example from the
Pierpont Morgan Library; an unpublished watercolor of a serpent; several
rare
engravings, including both states of the large, early Job
engraving, the little known first state of the Laocoön engraving
(see Bindman,
Blake 39), the unique engraving of
“Death’s Door,” the monochrome engraving of
“Lucifer and the Pope in Hell,” and both states of
“Mirth”; examples of all twelve compositions from the
series of large color prints of 1795 together with the preliminary drawings
and small print of “Pity” and all the known
versions of “God judging Adam”; illustrations from
Young’s
Night Thoughts and Gray’s
Poems; examples of the Biblical illustrations for
Butts, both in tempera and watercolor, including all four of the related
watercolors showing the Beasts of the Apocalypse; examples from the Butts
and Linnell series of Job illustrations; four of the tempera paintings from
Blake’s exhibition of 1809 and an unpublished hand-colored copy
of the
Canterbury Pilgrims engraving; a good selection of
Blake’s illustrations to Milton, including all but one of the
large 1808
Paradise Lost series, the three late versions
(1822) of the same series, the later
Comus series and the
complete
L’Allegro and Il Penseroso;
“Churchyard Spectres frightening a Schoolboy” (sic);
examples of the Visionary Heads; the Virgil woodcuts together with two
drawings; a selection of late tempera paintings, including the Arlington
Court picture; and nineteen of the Dante watercolors, including eleven from
the National Gallery of Victoria. Blake’s illuminated books are
represented by a selection of individual pages from the books themselves and
by examples of the separately issued color prints from the Small and Large
Books of Designs.
