Watercolour and gouache on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
after <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>
Parable Wise and Foolish Virgins
Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
actions: expressive
actions: postures and motions
adults
angel
architecture
Bible: New Testament
building - non-specific
emotional states and conditions
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
fine arts and music
flying
grief
heating and lighting
hill
improvidence - foolish virgin
instrument, trumpet
kneeling
landscape
light / lamp
Matthew, chapter 25
night
objects
parable
people
pointing
providence - wise virgin
religion and belief
serenity
sex and relationships
society
stupidity
symbols and personifications
times of the day
townscapes / man-made features
universal religious imagery
virgin
weeping
wisdom
woman
paper unique watercolour gouache
1 November 2011 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
1 November 2011 – 19 February 2012
2012-02-19
2011-11-01
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
3 July 2012 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
2012-07-03
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
2011-11-01
Blake Exhibition
Loan-out
The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins
support: 400 × 333 mm
Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
<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-parable-of-the-wise-and-foolish-virgins-n05196" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05196</span></a> <b>The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins</b>
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<p>N 05196 /-
<br/>Pen and watercolour 400×332 (15 3/4×13 1/8)
<br/>Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew. 1940
<br/>PROVENANCE ...; Lord Coleridge; Lady Coleridge, sold anonymously Christie's 12 December 1898 (61) £23.2.0 bt Messrs Dunthorne, sold 1899 to Miss Carthew
<br/>EXHIBITED Carfax 1904 (not in catalogue; letter in Tate Gallery files); Bradford 1904 (399); Tate Gallery (25), Manchester (24), Nottingham (17) and Edinburgh (21) 1913–14; BFAC 1927 (22, pl.17); <i>English Painting</i> Brussels 1929 (3, pl.25); <i>British Art</i> RA 1934 (783, pl.86; 710, pl.164); Paris and Vienna 1937 (8); <i>Wartime Acquisitions</i> National Gallery 1942 (16); <i>British Drawings from the Tate Gallery</i> CEMA tour 1944 (5); Paris (repr. in colour facing p.18), Antwerp (repr. in colour as frontispiece), Zurich and Tate Gallery 1947 (14); <i>Masters of British Painting</i> New York, St Louis and San Francisco 1956–7 (8, repr. p.56)
<br/>LITERATURE Keynes <i>Faber Gallery</i> 1946, pp.5–6, colour pl.2; Keynes <i>Bible</i> 1957, p.38 no.130d repr.; Blunt 1959, p,73; Butlin 1981, p.355, under no.481. <i>Also repr</i>: Binyon 1922, pl.1922, pl.85 in colour
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<p>The subject is from Matthew XXV, 1–9. Although 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> was long accepted as a genuine work by William Blake, and indeed was much reproduced and exhibited (as listed above, with many further reproductions), it was recognized in the second edition of this catalogue (1971, p.54 no.44 repr.) as a copy after a version of this subject painted for Sir Thomas Lawrence in about 1825 (Butlin 1981 no.481, colour pl.569). According to Gilchrist (1863, 1, p.357) the original was one of two replicas after earlier compositions commissioned by Lawrence for 15 guineas each, the other being ‘The Vision of Queen Katherine’ (Butlin no.549, pl.589); he states that they were among ‘the last <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>drawings</span></a> executed, or at least finished by Blake’. There is evidence that Blake was at the same dinner party as Lawrence at Lady Caroline Lamb's on either 20 January 1818 or 20 June 1820, and visited him with John Linnell on 13 July 1822 (Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, pp.249–50, 277). Lawrence was also among those who defended Blake's illustrations to Thornton's <i>Virgil</i> (see nos.73–89). The replicas painted for Lawrence presumably date from this period or, bearing in mind Gilchrist's suggestion of a very late date, later, say <i>c</i>.1825. Lawrence's watercolours are now in a private collection and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, respectively.
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<br/>Blake seems to have painted no fewer than three other versions of ‘The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins’ before that commissioned by Lawrence. The first was one of the series of biblical subjects painted for Thomas Butts and was apparently delivered to him on 12 May 1805; it is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (Butlin no.478, colour pl.566). The second was painted for John Linnell, according to William Rossetti in 1822, and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Butlin no.479, colour pl.567). A close variation of this was painted for William Haines a year or two later and is now in the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven (Butlin no.480, colour pl.568).
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<br/>As well as this copy after the Lawrence version there is a copy seemingly in the same hand of the second version, that painted for John Linnell, in the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (see Alfred Moir, ed., <i>European Drawings in the Collection of</i> <i>the Santa Barbara Museum of Art</i>, 1976, p.126, repr.; also repr. Keynes <i>Bible</i> 1957 no.130e in mistake for the Yale Center Version). Both can be attributed, for stylistic reasons, to John Linnell or one of his family or pupils; Linnell is known to have trained his pupils, who included a number of his sons, by setting them to copy works by Blake.
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<br/>The reference by Bentley (1961, p.400 n.2) to Miss Carthew as being the granddaughter of John Poynder is a result of a misreading of the Tate Gallery exhibition catalogue of 1913, which refers to the Lawrence watercolour, then in the collection of the Poynder family, as another version of that lent to the exhibition by Miss Carthew.</p>
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<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
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Catalogue entry
2004-10-07T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: expressive actions: postures and motions adults angel architecture Bible: New Testament building - non-specific emotional states and conditions emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas fine arts and music flying grief heating and lighting hill improvidence - foolish virgin instrument, trumpet kneeling landscape light / lamp Matthew, chapter 25 night objects parable people pointing providence - wise virgin religion and belief serenity sex and relationships society stupidity symbols and personifications times of the day townscapes / man-made features universal religious imagery virgin weeping wisdom woman