Lithograph on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Art Fund
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/cecil-collins-930" aria-label="More by Cecil Collins" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Cecil Collins</a>
Offering
Bequeathed by Elisabeth Collins, the artist's widow, through the Art Fund 2001
abstraction
adults
astronomy
figure
figure
from recognisable sources
god
people
religion and belief
star
universal religious imagery
worship
<p>This striking lithograph shows a woman, possibly naked, holding an object which she is offering as a gesture of worship or generosity. She is held in the hand of a giant figure, and it is unclear whether it might be she herself who is the ‘offering’. The stars that surround her perhaps suggest a spiritual context of some kind. Despite the ambiguous subject matter, Collins’s use of lithography adds to the intensity of the image. Morphet commented that ‘The improvisatory potential of lithography was specially suitable to Collins at a moment when he wished simultaneously to unwind, to experiment, and to explore new directions’ (Morphet, p.19).</p>
paper print lithograph
The Offering
image: 410 × 305 mm
Bequeathed by Elisabeth Collins, the artist's widow, through the <a href="/search?gid=999999968" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Art Fund</a> 2001
<p><span>This striking <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/lithography" title="Glossary definition for 'Lithography'"><span>lithograph</span></a> shows a woman, possibly naked, holding an object which she is offering as a gesture of worship or generosity. She is held in the hand of a giant figure, and it is unclear whether it might be she herself who is the ‘offering’. The stars that surround her perhaps suggest a spiritual context of some kind. Despite the ambiguous subject matter, Collins’s use of lithography adds to the intensity of the image. Morphet commented that ‘The improvisatory potential of lithography was specially suitable to Collins at a moment when he wished simultaneously to unwind, to experiment, and to explore new directions’ (Morphet, p.19). </span>
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<br/><span>Collins pursued his vision of a lost paradise, destroyed by the mechanisation of the modern world, throughout his lifetime. Creating his own version of archetypal figures, such as the Fool and the Angel, Collins attempted to reveal to us our innermost selves. These figures, he believed, represented an innocence that had ceased to exist in the ‘Machine Age’ (Keeble, p.73). Many of Collins’s aims and beliefs were published in an essay he titled </span><i>The Vision of the Fool </i><span>which was first published in 1947. This essay, written during World War II (1939-45), affirmed the importance of the divine imagination, and has led Anderson, amongst others, to claim that Collins is the ‘most important metaphysical artist to have emerged in England since Blake’ (Anderson, p.11).  </span>
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<br/><b>Further reading:</b>
<br/><span>Richard Morphet, </span><i>The Prints of Cecil Collins, </i><span>London 1981</span>
<br/><span>William Anderson, </span><i>Cecil Collins: The Quest for the Great Happiness, </i><span>London 1988</span>
<br/><span>Judith Collins, </span><i>Cecil Collins: A Retrospective Exhibition, </i><span>Tate Gallery, London 1989</span>
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<br/><span>Heather Birchall</span>
<br/><span>September 2002</span>
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<br/></p>

Summary
2004-08-18T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
abstraction adults astronomy figure figure from recognisable sources god people religion and belief star universal religious imagery worship