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3 BLAKE WATERCOLORS NOW IN PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
According to Martin Butlin of the Tate Gallery, three Blake watercolors from the Esmond Morse collection have been given to British public collections by the Morse family. The Victoria and Albert Museum has received “The Angels hovering over the body of Jesus in the Sepulchre” and “The Angel rolling the stone from the Sepulchre,” two of the Biblical subjects painted for Thomas Butts circa 1800-1805. Butlin remarks that “These are two of the best and most moving examples [of the Biblical subjects painted by Blake for Butts], very sensitive in their quiet emotion and delicate symmetry, and seem to form a group within the main group together with ‘The Resurrection’ in the Fogg Museum, ‘The Magdelene at the sepulchre’ belonging to the Mount Trust, and the two watercolors at the Tate Gallery, ‘The Crucifixion’ and ‘The Entombment.’ It is perhaps a pity that the new gifts cannot be seen together with the works at the Tate Gallery, but that is typical of the illogicalities of the London art scene!” The third gift, “And the Waters prevailed upon the Earth an hundred and fifty days,” has gone to the Abbot Hall Art Gallery at Kendal in Westmorland. On the back, according to Butlin, is “a drawing of a humanoid elephant dangling an infant on its foot which has sometimes been seen as a caricature of John Varley.”