Water-Colour Designs For The Poems Of Thomas Gray. A Facsimile with Introduction and Commentary by Sir Geoffrey Keynes.
1971. London: Trianon Press, 1971.
Small folio, 72 pages, with 16 color facsimile leaves, suites of progressive plates, and 116 monochrome illustrations. Marbled boards, morocco backstrip, slipcase. Signed by Keynes. A fine copy as issued.
§ Limited to 28 copies so inscribed and signed by Geoffrey Keynes (this particular volume is labeled no. 2). This is the de luxe edition of the trade version of the Gray issued by the Trianon Press in 1972 using 8-color printing. Although the three-volume folio edition is a magnificent piece of book making, this version is more accessible and easier to use and enjoy, and the quality of the color printing is Trianon Press at its best.
The 116 water-color illustrations to Thomas Gray's poems are among Blake's major achievements as an illustrator. They were commissioned in 1797 by Blake's friend, the sculptor John Flaxman, as a gift for his wife Ann, to whom Blake addressed the poem that ends the series. The commission may have been inspired by the Flaxmans' seeing Blake's water-color designs to Edward Young's Night Thoughts, begun in 1795. The Gray illustrations follow the same basic format. Blake cut windows in large sheets of the same type of Whatman paper used for the Night Thoughts illustrations and mounted in these windows the texts of Gray's poems from a 1790 octavo edition published by John Murray, leaving out some prefatory materials, fly-titles, the notes, and the 7 engraved illustrations. Blake then drew and colored his designs surrounding the letterpress texts. On blank versos near the beginning of each poem, and in one case on a separate piece of paper pasted over letterpress text, Blake inscribed with pen and ink either titles for each design or quotations from the poem to indicate the passage illustrated. On most text pages, Blake also drew a pencil cross left of the first line of the illustrated passage. He numbered most leaves consecutively in pen and ink, beginning a new sequence for each of the 13 poems.
Blake conceived of his work as an illustrated book, rather than a series of unbound designs, as indicated by his offsetting Gray's texts above and to the right (left on versos) from the middle of each leaf—then the convention for all letterpress books. Although listed by William Michael Rossetti in his catalogue of Blake's drawings and paintings, published in the 1863 and 1880 editions of Alexander Gilchrist's Life of William Blake, the Gray illustrations were virtually unknown until their rediscovery by Herbert Grierson in 1919.
The Trianon Press reproductions are recognized as the finest examples of the art of facsimile reproduction; working from the originals in Paul Mellon’s collection, each leaf is faithfully hand-colored through stencils to achieve an astonishing exactitude. The Times Literary Supplement stated that nothing like these books had ever been printed before and that it was highly unlikely that they could be printed again. Bentley, Blake Books, 385. Item #102882
Price: $1,250.00