NEWS
RECENT BLAKE SALES—See Robert Essick’s essay “Blake at Auction 1971” below, Notes.
BLAKE IN THE GALLERIES
The Tate Gallery, London, announces that “following the very successful exhibition of William Blake’s illustrations to the poems of Thomas Gray, organized by the William Blake Trust in association with the Tate Gallery, the Tate’s own collection of works by Blake has been re-hung in Gallery 29. Some additional works normally in store have been added to the display but more exciting are two important loans, “Winter” and “Evening,” lent by the Trustees of the Rev. B. T. Vaughan Johnson. These were painted by Blake to flank a fireplace at his friend The Rev. John Johnson’s Rectory at Yaxham, Norfolk, which was rebuilt in about 1820-21; they have remained in the possession of the family ever since. Unfortunately, a third painting, a frieze showing Olney Bridge, which ran across the top of the fireplace, seems to have been destroyed early this century.”
The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, exhibited the Blake collection of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne from 19 November to 22 January. The collection of books, manuscripts, drawings, and engravings had never been seen before as a unit in public exhibition. At the same time the Library showed Blake’s watercolors for Milton and the Library’s recently purchased copy of Poetical Sketches. A catalogue of the exhibition, The Blake Collection of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne (60 pp. of text, 30 pls.) by G. E. Bentley, Jr., has been published.
The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, in late 1971 exhibited its copy of Blake’s Job engravings and of the seven Dante engravings, both proof copies. They were purchased by the Gallery in 1943, but have never been shown there as a unit, and have been shown only once outside the Gallery, at Buffalo’s 20th Century Club in 1951. (Our thanks to Professor Thomas Connolly for calling our attention to the Albright-Knox exhibit. Eds.)
Paris, early 1972, will see Blake well represented in a major exhibition of British Romantic painting. The catalogue entries for the Blake pictures have been written by David Bindman (Lecturer in the History of Art, Westfield College, London). There are likely to be twelve items shown: The Adoration of the Kings (Brighton Art Gallery); The Head of Voltaire (Manchester Art Gallery); The Ancient of Days, colored print (Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester); The House of Death, monotype (Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge); Death on a Pale Horse (Fitzwilliam); Pity, monotype (Tate Gallery); Newton, monotype (Tate); Beatrice on the Car, watercolor (British Museum); The Circle of the Lustful, watercolor (Birmingham City Art Gallery); Thornton’s Virgil, wood engravings (Victoria and Albert Museum); Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Kings College, Cambridge); Small Book of Designs, four plates (British Museum).