Graphite on paper
Tate Collection
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<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>
Soul Hovering over Body Reluctantly Parting with Life
Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941
actions: postures and motions
adults
birth to death
Blair, Robert, ‘The Grave’
death
flying
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
lying down
male
man
nudes
people
religion and belief
society
soul
universal religious imagery
woman
<p>This delicate sketch illustrates a passage from Robert Blair’s poem <span>The Grave, </span>in which a soul laments departing from the body. Blake was commissioned to design and engrave the illustrations for a new edition of this poem in 1805. This was likely influenced by the popularity of ‘graveyard poetry’, meditating on death, burial and the afterlife. However, Blake was bitterly disappointed when the illustrations were engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti rather than himself. When published in 1808, the print had these lines added: ‘How wishfully she looks/ On all she’s leaving, now no longer hers!’</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</em></p>
paper unique graphite
1 September 2016 – 30 April 2017
2017-04-30
1 September 2016 – 30 April 2017
2017-04-30
2016-09-01
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2016-09-01
Tracey Emin & William Blake in Focus
Collection based display
15 November 2021 – 10 April 2022
2022-04-10
15 November 2021 – 10 April 2022
2022-04-10
2021-11-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2021-11-15
Poetical Bodies: Works on Paper by Blake and his Contemporaries
Collection based display
17 April 2023 – 12 May 2024
2024-05-12
17 April 2023 – 12 May 2024
2024-05-12
2023-04-17
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-04-17
Blake
Collection based display
The Soul Hovering over the Body Reluctantly Parting with Life
support: 272 × 456 mm
frame: 470 × 655 × 20 mm
Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941
<div class="text">
<p>This delicate sketch illustrates a passage from Robert Blair’s poem <i>The Grave, </i>in which a soul laments departing from the body. Blake was commissioned to design and engrave the illustrations for a new edition of this poem in 1805. This was likely influenced by the popularity of ‘graveyard poetry’, meditating on death, burial and the afterlife. However, Blake was bitterly disappointed when the illustrations were engraved by Luigi Schiavonetti rather than himself. When published in 1808, the print had these lines added: ‘How wishfully she looks/ On all she’s leaving, now no longer hers!’ </p>
</div>

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2023-10-26T00:00:00
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<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-the-soul-hovering-over-the-body-reluctantly-parting-with-life-n05300" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05300</span></a> <b>The Soul Hovering over the Body Reluctantly Parting with Life</b>
<i>c.</i>1805
<br/></p>
<p>N 05300 / B 625
<br/>Pencil on paper 272×456 (10 3/4×17 7/8)
<br/>Bequeathed by Sir Hugh Walpole 1941
<br/>PROVENANCE ? Mrs Blake; ? Frederick Tatham; ?Joseph Hogarth, sold Southgate's 7–23 June 1854, 12th evening (in 5082 with 21 other works) 16/- bt Edsall; ...; Richard Johnson, sold Platt's 25 April 1912 (in 702 with 16 other works) purchaser unknown; sold Sotheby's 28–30 May 1934, 1st day (167) £22 bt Bain for Sir Hugh Walpole
<br/>EXHIBITED Tate Gallery 1947 (81); Tate Gallery 1978 (155, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Robert T. Stothard, ‘Stothard and Blake’, <i>Athenaeum</i>, 19 December 1863, p.838; Keynes <i>Drawings</i>, 11, 1956, no.17 repr.; Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, pp.861–2; Keynes <i>Letters</i>
1968, pp.120–3, pl.20; Keynes <i>Drawings</i> 1970, no.40 repr.; Erdman <i>Notebook</i> 1973, p.18 and at N29; G.E. Bentley jun., ‘Blake and Cromek: The Wheat and the Tares’, <i>Journal of Modern Philology</i>, LXXI, 1974, pp.366–9; Helmstadter 1978, p.50 n.23; Butlin 1981, p.461 no.625, pl.861; Robert N. Essick and Morton D. Paley, <i>Robert Blair's The Grave illustrated by William Blake</i>, 1982, p.61 and <i>passim</i>, fig.8
<br/></p>
<p>This is a sketch for plate 6 of Robert Blair's <i>The Grave</i>, commissioned by Robert Hartley Cromek in 1805 and published in 1808. Originally it was intended that Blake, as well as providing the designs, should do the more renumerative job 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>engraving</span></a> them himself, but the task was eventually entrusted to the more fashionable Luigi Schiavonetti. This book, like Edward Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i>, for a deluxe edition of which Blake had executed no fewer than 537 <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>watercolours</span></a> <i>c.</i> 1795–7 (Butlin 1981, no.330), was an example of the contemporary taste for ‘graveyard poetry’ and had been first published in 1743.
<br/>Schiavonetti's engraving is entitled as above with a quotation from Blair's lines describing the death of a voluptuary:
<br/></p>
<p>...How wishfully she looks
<br/>On all she's leaving, now no longer her's!</p>
<p></p>
<p>In the engraving the figure of the soul hovering above is the same but the dead voluptuary is shown lying on his back without the lyre and wreath shown in 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/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a>. An earlier stage in the evolution of the design appears to have been the untraced 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 listed by William Rossetti as being in the collection of F.T. Palgrave, ‘The Death of a Voluptuary’ (Butlin no.626). The reclining figure has some affinity with that in Emblem 11 on p.29 of Blake's <i>Notebook</i> (Butlin no.201 <i>29</i>, repr.; Erdman and Moore <i>Notebook</i> 1973); Erdman seems however to overstress the closeness of this relationship while unjustifiably questioning Keynes's interpretation and dating.
<br/>
<br/>The commission to illustrate Blair's <i>The Grave</i> is first recorded in a letter of 18 October 1805 from John Flaxman to William Hayley: ‘Mr Cromek has employed Blake to make a set of drawings from Blair's poem of the Grave 20 of which he proposes [to] have engraved by the Designer’. On 27 November 1805 Blake himself wrote to Hayley, repeating much the same information and continuing ‘In consequence of this I produced about twenty Designs which pleased so well that he with the same liberality with which he set me about the drawings has now set me to Engrave them’. However the first version of Cromek's prospectus, dated November 1805, speaks of only ‘fifteen <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> from designs invented and to be engraved by William Blake’, adding that ‘The original Drawings, and Specimen of the Stile of Engraving, may be seen at the Proprietor's Mr. Cromek’. What happened next was later described by Thomas Stothard's son Robert: ‘Cromek found, and explained to my father, that he [Blake] had <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/etching" title="Glossary definition for 'Etching'"><span>etched</span></a> one of the subjects, but so indifferently and so carelessly...that he employed Schrovenetti [<i>sic</i>] to engrave them’. This change of plan was reflected in a second version of Cromek's Prospectus also but perhaps incorrectly (the type was only partly reset) dated November 1805, which announced, reducing the number of plates again, ‘twelve very spirited engravings by Louis Schiavonetti, from designs invented by William Blake’ (a copy of Cromek's first prospectus annotated to bring it into line with the second version was sold with the Townley Papers by Lord O'Hagen at Sotheby's on 22–23 July 1985 (550, repr.); the words ‘and to be engraved [by William Blake;]’ have been deleted and a new line has been inserted after ‘William Blake;’ reading ‘and to be engraved by L. Schiavonetti’). Blake was still unaware of this change when he wrote to Hayley on 11 December 1805. Paradoxically these designs of Blake, despite having been engraved by someone else, were to become his best known works for nearly half a century, although contemporary reviews ridiculed his contribution.
<br/>
<br/>In view of the common <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/provenance" title="Glossary definition for 'Provenance'"><span>provenance</span></a> from the Joseph Hogarth sale shared by a number of drawings later sold from the Richard Johnson collection the history of this work as given above is the most likely, but the position is confused by the number of drawings that have been sold with similar titles.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
<br/>
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-07T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults birth to death Blair, Robert, ‘The Grave’ death flying literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) lying down male man nudes people religion and belief society soul universal religious imagery woman