William Blake, Richard III and The Ghosts

The British Museum, London

Date: c. 1806
Technique: Pen and black ink, and grey wash, with watercolour, 306 x 190 mm

Pen and black ink, and grey wash, with watercolour on paper Shakespeare’s Richard III is assailed by the ghosts of the many victims of his plotting and violence. To the left, the ghost of Henry VI leads one group of spectres; to the right Lady Anne, the dead wife of Richard, leads another. The spirits of the two murdered princes, the sons of Edward IV, are shown between the legs of King Richard.

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William Blake, Lear and Cordelia in Prison

Tate Britain, London

Date: c. 1779
Technique: Pen and ink and watercolour on paper, 123 x 175 mm

The ageing British king Lear lies sleeping on his daughter Cordelia’s lap while in prison. Lear’s wilfulness has split the kingdom, and Cordelia laments the fate of her father and of the nation. This is one of a group of drawings by Blake dealing with British history made around 1779. His source for this scene though was Nahum Tate’s reworking of Shakespeare’s King Lear (1681).

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William Blake, Plate 33 from Jerusalem (copy 'A')

The British Museum, London

Date: Printed around 1820
Technique: Relief etching, uncoloured

This print shows the motif of The Nightmare being stretched and reinterpreted in the most radical and complex way. It is from the original ‘illuminated’ version of Blake’s poem Jerusalem. The lower scene shows the female figure of Jerusalem laying flat, with the ‘insane and most deform’d’ Spectre evoked by the text hovering over her.

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William Blake, Pestilence: Death of The First Born

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Date: c. 1805
Technique: Pen and watercolour over pencil on paper, 304 x 342 mm

This is a Biblical allegory derived from Exodus, Chapter 12. The gigantic figure of Pestilence strides over Egypt, spreading the contagion that will claim the lives of all the firstborn. To the left and right, his victims are in despair. Beneath his feet, a woman mourns her dead child. The angel standing in the doorway presumably embodies Moses’ promise of protection to the Jews who marked their doorframes with the blood of the lamb.

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William Blake, Plague

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Date: c. 1805
Technique: Pen and watercolour over graphite pencil on paper, 302 x 430 mm

A view of a community torn apart by disease; a husband holds the lifeless body of his wife, their dead child on her lap; a daughter or wife, horrified, looks upon the body of a loved one carried on a stretcher. Blake first drew this scene around 1779, when it may have been intended to refer to the historical plague of 1665. He returned to this composition many times in his life, making the scene more generalised. This is the last of the series.

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William Blake, The Punishment of The Thieves

Tate Britain, London

Date: 1824-7
Technique: Chalk, pen and ink and watercolour on paper, 372 x 527 mm

/from Illustrations to Dante's "Divine Comedy"/
This illustrates Dante's description of the pit of thieves. This is the seventh pit of the eighth circle, described in the Inferno. Dante wrote of how

the chasm

Opening to view, I saw a crowd within

Of serpents terrible, so strange of shape

And hideous, that remembrance in my veins

Yet shrinks the vital currents.

... Amid this dread exuberance of woe

Ran naked spirits winged with horrid fear,

... with serpents were their hands behind them bound,

... And lo! on one

Near to our side, darted an adder up...

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William Blake, The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve

Tate Britain, London

Date: c. 1826
Technique: Pen and ink and tempera over gold on mahogany, 325 x 433 mm

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William Blake, The Night of Enitharmon's Joy (Hecate)

Tate Britain, London

Date: c. 1795
Technique: Colour print finished in ink and watercolour on paper, 439 x 581 mm

The dense, dark colour-printing in the sky and the rocks suggests that this was the first of the three known impressions to be printed. Blake has used pen and ink to give strong outlines to the figures, and to draw locks of hair, the bat, and the donkey’s mane and rough coat. The figures have been given form and roundness by washes of intense but transparent colour. The owl’s eyes are highlighted with a bright, opaque red wash.

Enitharmon is a character in Blake’s mythology. In her ‘night of joy’ she sets out her false religion.

Hecate is a complex work that draws together allusions from Greek mythology, several of Shakespeare's plays, and Blake's own poetry. The three figures represent the tripartite nature of the goddess who in Greek mythology combined in her person aspects of the moon, earth and underworld, with power over the sky, earth and sea; she was also associated with witchcraft, magic and the supernatural. W .M. Merchant, Milton Klonsky and David Bindman relate the scene to sources in Blake's poetry, but the immediate allusion is to Shakespeare.

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