Ink and watercolour on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39" aria-label="More by William Blake" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Blake</a>
Lear and Cordelia in Prison
Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
‘King Lear’
actions: postures and motions
actions: processes and functions
adults
characters
compassion
Cordelia
crime and punishment
daughter
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
family
father
imprisonment
interiors
king
King Lear
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
looking / watching
lying down
man, old
Milton, John, ‘History of Britain’
people
princess
prison
public and municipal
royalty and social rank
Shakespeare
sitting
sleeping
society
tenderness
woman
work and occupations
<p>Blake became a student in the Royal Academy Schools in October 1779. There he seems to have met the Academy’s President, Sir Joshua Reynolds. One of Blake’s friends later said that when the young Blake showed Reynolds his designs, Reynolds recommended that Blake work with ‘less extravagance and more simplicity, and to correct his drawing.’</p><p>This watercolour, showing a scene from Shakespeare’s play King Lear, hints at what Reynolds meant. But the drawing of Niobe, hung above, shows Blake could draw carefully. He was always equally careful in his experiments with different paint mediums.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2004</em></p>
paper unique ink watercolour
24 November 2003 – 22 November 2004
2004-11-22
10 November 2003
2003-11-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-11-24
William Blake the Painter at Work
Collection based display
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
2006-02-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-02-15
Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination
Exhibition
20 April 2015 – 7 May 2017
2017-05-07
20 April 2015 – 7 May 2017
2017-05-07
2015-04-20
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-04-20
William Blake
Collection based display
29 October 2024 – 30 September 2025
2025-09-30
30 October 2024 – 2 February 2025
2025-02-02
2024-10-30
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
1 September 2025 – 31 January 2026
2026-01-31
2025-09-01
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
1 March 2026 – 31 August 2026
2026-08-31
2026-03-01
External
2024-10-29
William Blake and the Age of Romantic Fantasy: British Art & Imagination
Loan-out
Lear and Cordelia in Prison
support: 131 × 182 mm
Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
<div class="para3">
<span class="text9">Blake became a student in the Royal </span><span class="text8">Academy Schools in October 1779. There he seems to have met the      Academy’s President,</span><span class="text6"> Sir Joshua Reynolds.      One of Blake’s friends </span><span class="text8">later said that      when the young Blake showed </span><span class="text7">Reynolds his      designs, Reynolds recommended</span><span class="text6"> that Blake work      with ‘less extravagance and </span><span class="text9">more      simplicity, and to correct his <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a>.’</span><span class="text6">
<br/>
</span>
</div>
<div class="para3">
<span class="text8">This <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a>, showing a scene from </span><span class="text9">Shakespeare’s play </span><span class="text10">King      Lear</span><span class="text9">, hints at </span><span class="text6">
what      Reynolds meant. But the drawing  </span><span class="text8">of Niobe, hung      above, shows Blake could </span><span class="text9">draw carefully. He was      always equally careful in his</span><span class="text6"> </span><span class="text8">experiments with different  paint mediums.</span><span class="text6">
<br/> </span>
</div>

Display caption
2004-09-09T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-lear-and-cordelia-in-prison-n05189" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05189</span></a> <b>Lear and Cordelia in Prison</b> <i>c.</i>1779
<br/></p>
<p>N 05189 / B 53</p>
<p>Pen and watercolour 123×175 (4 15/16×6 7/8) on paper 132×182 (5 3/16×7 3/16)</p>
<p>Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
<br/>PROVENANCE Mrs Blake, sold c.1828–9 to Mrs Samuel Smith and Miss Julia Smith; by descent to Miss Thena Clough, sold Sotheby's 5–6 March 1934, 2nd day (337, repr.) £30 bt Miss Carthew
<br/>EXHIBITED BFAC 1876 (in 223); <i>Shakespeare in Art</i>, Arts Council, April–May 1964 (32)
<br/>LITERATURE Blunt 1959, p.10, pl.8a; Merchant in <i>Apollo</i>, LXXIX, 1964, p.359, pl.2 (reprinted in Essick 1973, pp.236–7, pl.64); Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, p.367; Bindman in Paley and Phillipps 1973, pp.34, 41–2, pl.9; Butlin 1981, pp.17–18 no.53, pl.45
<br/>
<br/>On the matt below the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> is written ‘Lear and Cordelia (early manner)’ and, on the back, presumably by Mrs Samuel Smith or Miss Julia Smith, ‘Bought of Mrs Blake the first or second year after her husband's death. Price for this and “The Grave” was about £8.8.’ A further inscription on the back of the matt reads ‘Exhibited at Burlington Fine Arts Club 1876 No.223 lent by Miss Julia Smith. It is described as 2 drawings in one frame. The other drawing was offered to me with this by their owner a connection of Miss Smith but I did not care for it’. The other drawing is of ‘A Female Figure Crouching in a Cave’ (possibly later used for plate 16 of <i>The Gates of Paradise</i>), now in the collection of Anthony E. Wolf (Butlin 1981, no.134, pl.150).
<br/>
<br/>This <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a> is similar in style and dimensions to, and probably forms part of, a series of small watercolours of historical subjects that also includes the first version of ‘The Penance of Jane Shore’ (see no.14). The subject was therefore almost certainly chosen to illustrate an incident from early English history rather than Shakespeare's play, in which this scene does not appear. David Bindman has suggested that, although the incident does occur in Nahum Tate's adaptation of <i>King Lear</i> of 1681 (as a stage direction for the third scene of Act V, ‘Scene, <i>A Prison.</i>
Lear asleep, with his head on Cordelia's lap’), a more likely source is Milton's <i>History of Britain</i>, 1670, in which Lear appears as the last in line from the Trojan Brutus, in legend the great-grandson of Æneas and the first king of England; Trojan Brutus's landing in England is the subject of another of this series of watercolours, now in Princeton University Library (Butlin no.51, pl.47).
<br/>
<br/>Blake, in his <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i> of 1809, describes what seems to be the first version of ‘The Penance of Jane Shore’ as having been ‘done above Thirty Years ago’, and another watercolour from this series, ‘The Death of Earl Goodwin’ now in the British Museum (Butlin no.60, colour pl.178) was almost certainly exhibited at the Royal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a> in 1780 (315). Blake later planned to publish ‘The History of England, a small book of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>Engravings</span></a>, Price 3s.’, as he announced in his <i>Prospectus to the Public</i> of 10 October 1793. No copy of this is known but a list of subjects in Blake's Notebook seems to refer to its contents. The most accurate transcription of this list is in Erdman and Moore 1973, at N116; see also Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, pp.208–9. A number of these subjects are the same as those of the early series of watercolours and Blake seems to have painted at about this time larger, more accomplished versions of some of them; in view of the fact that these reworkings are close in size to the separate engraving of ‘Edward &amp; Elenor’ also announced in the 1793 <i>Prospectus</i> it may be that when Blake came to look again at his early watercolours he was led, rather than to use them for ‘a small book of Engravings’, to rework them on a larger scale with an eye to further separate larger <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>prints</span></a>. <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-penance-of-jane-shore-in-st-pauls-church-n05898" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05898</span></a> below is an example of one of these larger reworkings. (For the two series of illustrations to English history and related drawings see Butlin 1981, nos.51–70 and the introductory text on p.16.)
<br/>
<br/>What may have been a sketch for this <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> is the indian <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/ink" title="Glossary definition for 'Ink'"><span>ink</span></a> drawing, said to measure 11 1/4×15 1/4in, sold at Puttick's on 21 July 1937 (432) and untraced since. The subject also appears as one of the seven small watercolours, oval in format, now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Butlin no.84<i>4</i>, pl.84, where dated <i>c.</i>1780, but Essick 1982–3 dates them rather later, say <i>c.</i>1783).
<br/>
<br/>Blunt, who also dates this work slightly later than the other historical watercolours of <i>c.</i>1779, sees the figure of Cordelia as a reflection of a drawing by or after Daniele da Volterra.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990</p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-07T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions actions: processes and functions adults characters compassion Cordelia crime and punishment daughter emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas family father imprisonment interiors king ‘King Lear’ King Lear literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) looking / watching lying down man, old Milton, John, ‘History of Britain’ people princess prison public and municipal royalty and social rank Shakespeare sitting sleeping society tenderness woman work and occupations