The Poems of Thomas Gray, Design 19, "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College."
Date:
between 1797 and 1798
Materials & Techniques:
Watercolor with pen and black ink over graphite on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper with letterpress inset
Dimensions:
Sheet: 16 1/2 x 12 3/4 inches (41.9 x 32.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Inscribed in gray ink upper right: "7"; in graphite center: "+"; on verso in gray ink upper left: "8"; in graphite upper center: "+"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1992.8.11(10)
Classification:
Drawings & Watercolors
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
nudes | sceptre | women | flame | spears | boy | king (person) | men | nude | queen (person) | crowns (costume components) | literary theme | blood | text | throne | fire
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (The State Hermitage Museum, 2007-10-23 - 2008-01-13)Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, 2007-07-11 - 2007-09-30)
Publications:
Colin Cross, Blake revealed, William Blake : Discovery of a Masterwork , Observer, vol. 12, November 21, 1971, pp. 19-23, V 1245 Detached from Observer colour magazineJohn Russell, Blake the Craftsman, Art , Sunday Times, Issue no. 7749, December 12, 1971, p. 27, Sunday Times Digital ArchiveArnold Fawcus, Unknown Watercolours by William Blake, Illustrated London News, vol. 259, No. 6881, December 25, 1971, pp. 45-46, 49-51, Illustrated London News Historical ArchiveYale Center for British Art, Great British watercolors : from the Paul Mellon Collection, Yale University Press, New Haven, 2007, pp. 70-72, nos. 29A & B, ND1928 .Y35 2007 (LC)+ Oversize (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
In about 1797 the sculptor John Flaxman approached his friend William Blake to illustrate the poems of Thomas Gray as a birthday gift for his wife Nancy. A standard edition of Gray’s poems was dismembered and the individual pages mounted within large sheets of watercolor paper on which Blake drew his designs. The present sheet is from Gray’s “Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College,” a lament for the loss of youthful innocence, with the poet looking back at his halcyon schooldays at Eton compared to the bitter realities of later life. Blake shows Thomas Gray in three separate states: first, climbing the hill towards Ambition, who stands ready to crown him with laurels; second, being cast off the hillside through the thwarting of Ambition; and third, spread-eagled unconscious on the ground, mocked by Scorn and Infamy. On the reverse Blake adds his own gloss to Gray’s passage on the ultimate fate of human existence. At the top presides the bearded Urizen, a deity of Blake’s own devising who was the creator of the corrupt, rule-bound, materialistic world we inhabit. Trudging past Urizen are the sorry masses who follow him, now paying the ultimate price for submitting to his dominion, while to the left sits a figure corresponding to Gray’s “Queen of Death.” Gallery label for Great British Watercolors from the Paul Mellon Collection at the Yale Center for British Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2008-06-09 - 2008-08-17)