Illustrations to the Bible.
1957. London: Trianon Press, 1957.
Folio, with 9 color plates and 156 illustrations. Original quarter morocco, a superb copy virtually mint, preserved in a quarter blue morocco box lettered in gilt.
§ Copy #219 of an edition limited to 20 de luxe and 460 regular copies. A very scarce book in good let alone fine condition as the size of the book and the fact that it was not issued with a box or even a slipcase means most copies are more or less worn. This was the first time that Blake’s biblical illustrations had been brought together. The catalogue raisonné was compiled by Sir Geoffrey Keynes and comprises virtually every Biblical painting by Blake in existence. “The Bible had an enormous influence on Blake’s work as both artist and poet. Among his many and complex responses to that text is a group of paintings he created for his patron Thomas Butts, beginning in 1799. Most were executed in that year and the next, but at least three were probably completed while Blake was in Felpham, 1802 and 1803. Fifty-three of these “cabinet paintings” (as small works of this type were called in Blake’s time) have been recorded. Only thirty are now traceable, seven based on the Old Testament and the remainder on the New.
The medium of these paintings, now generally called “tempera,” is water-based with a glue and/or gum binder. Blake applied his pigments in multiple layers, including intervening applications of transparent glue or gum. Outlines were often reinforced with black ink and the finished compositions glazed with glue. Blake was probably trying to create jewel-like paintings; in his Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, he compared them to “enamels” and “precious stones” (Erdman page 531). He never used the word “tempera” but called his medium “fresco”—a term that recalls Renaissance wall paintings—and claimed that he had invented the new genre of “portable Fresco” (Exhibition of Paintings in Fresco, Erdman pages 527), an alternative to paintings in oil. Most were executed on canvas, but three are on copper and one (The Agony in the Garden) is on tinned iron. Bentley, BB, 681. Item #123810
Price: $1,575.00