Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper
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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>
Nebuchadnezzar
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
actions: postures and motions
adults
beard
Bible: Old Testament
body
crawling
Daniel, chapter 4
diseases and conditions
male
man
mental illness
Nebuchadnezzar
nudes
people
religion and belief
root
sensuality
sex and relationships
society
trunk
<p>In the prospectus for his book, Varley announced his intention to include an engraving of Blake’s <i>Nebuchadnezzar</i>. This was never completed but, as with <i>Ghost of a Flea</i>, Varley may have been interested in the transformation of man into beast. The Bible describes how King Nebuchadnezzar was driven mad and forced to live like a wild animal as punishment for excessive pride. The association between moral corruption and bestial appearance is also suggested by Lavater, who traces a scale of perfection from the head of a frog to the face of Apollo (see the nearby panel).</p><p><em>Gallery label, March 2011</em></p>
paper unique colour print ink watercolour
15 October 2001 – 7 July 2002
2002-07-07
15 October 2001 – 7 July 2002
2002-07-07
2001-10-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-10-15
William Blake and His Followers
Collection based display
8 July 2002 – 1 October 2003
2003-10-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
William Blake Body and Soul
Collection based display
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
2002-07-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
Body and Soul
Collection based display
22 September 2005 – 23 April 2006
2006-04-23
22 September 2005 – 2 January 2006
2006-01-02
2005-09-22
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (Paris, France)
28 January 2006 – 23 April 2006
2006-04-23
2006-01-28
Neue Nationalgalerie (Berlin, Germany)
http://www.neue-nationalgalerie.de/
2005-09-22
Genius and Madness in the West. A History of Melancholy
Loan-out
10 March 2008 – 1 March 2009
2009-03-01
26 June 2008 – 5 October 2008
2008-10-05
2008-06-26
Pergamonmuseum (Berlin, Germany)
13 November 2008 – 1 March 2009
2009-03-01
2008-11-13
British Museum (London, UK)
http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk
2008-03-10
Babylone
Loan-out
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
2010-11-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-11-11
Blake and Physiognomy
Collection based display
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)
2011-11-01
Blake Exhibition
Loan-out
4 December 2014 – 1 March 2015
2015-03-01
4 December 2014 – 1 March 2015
2015-03-01
2014-12-04
Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, UK)
http://www.ashmol.ox.ac.uk/
2014-12-04
William Blake, Apprentice and Master
Loan-out
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
11 September 2019 – 2 February 2020
2020-02-02
11 September 2019 – 2 February 2020
2020-02-02
2019-09-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2019-09-11
William Blake: The Artist
Exhibition
Nebuchadnezzar
support: 543 × 725 mm
image: 445 × 619 mm
frame: 662 × 830 × 50 mm
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<p>In the prospectus for his book, Varley announced his intention to include an engraving of Blake’s <i>Nebuchadnezzar</i>. This was never completed but, as with <i>Ghost of a Flea</i>, Varley may have been interested in the transformation of man into beast. The Bible describes how King Nebuchadnezzar was driven mad and forced to live like a wild animal as punishment for excessive pride. The association between moral corruption and bestial appearance is also suggested by Lavater, who traces a scale of perfection from the head of a frog to the face of Apollo (see the nearby panel).  
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Display caption
2011-03-18T00:00:00
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-nebuchadnezzar-n05059" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05059</span></a> <b>Nebuchadnezzar</b> 1795/<i>c.</i> 1805
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<br/>N 05059 / B 301
<br/>Colour print finished in ink and watercolour, irregular 446×620 (17 5/8×24 3/8) on paper approx. 545×725 (21 1/2×28 1/2)</p>
<p>Signed ‘1795 WB inv [in monogram]’ b.r. and inscribed ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ below design Watermarked ‘JWHATMAN/1804’
<br/>Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<br/>PROVENANCE Thomas Butts; Thomas Butts jun.; Capt. F.J. Butts; his widow, sold through Carfax April 1906 to W. Graham Robertson
<br/>EXHIBITED Carfax 1906 (33); Tate Gallery 1913 (17); on loan to Tate Gallery 1923–7; BFAC 1927 (11, pl.11); <i>Wartime Acquisitions</i> National Gallery 1942 (10); Paris, Antwerp (pl.7), Zurich and Tate Gallery (repr.) 1947 (12); <i>Romantic Movement</i> Arts Council 1959 (611); Tate Gallery 1978 (91, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Gilchrist 1863, 1, p.88; Rossetti 1863, p.202 no.13, and 1880, p.202 no.15; Robertson in Gilchrist 1907, pp.408–9, repr. facing p.90; Russell <i>Engravings</i> 1912, p.20; Figgis 1925, at pl.77, repr. in colour; Blunt in <i>Warburg Journal</i>, VI, 1943, pp.203–4, pl.60a; Keynes <i>Faber Gallery</i> 1946, pp.4–5, 8, colour pl.3; Grigson in <i>Architectural Review</i>, CVIII, 1950, p.218; Preston 1952, pp.37–8 no.4, pl.4; Digby 1957, p.102; Keynes <i>Bible</i> 1957, p.26 no.84a repr.; Blunt 1959, pp.51, 60, pl.31c; Preston in <i>Apollo</i>, LXXXIV, 1966, pp.384–6, pl.6; Keynes <i>Letters</i> 1968, p.118; Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, p.573; Erdman 1969, pp.193–4; Kostelanetz in Rosenfeld 1969, pp.125–6; Mellor 1974, pp.97, 155; Bindman 1977, pp.98–100; Klonsky 1977, p.63, repr. in colour; Bindman <i>Graphic Works</i> 1978, no.332, repr.; Paley 1978, pp.11, 37, 178; La Belle in <i>Blake</i>, XIV, 1980–1, p.76, pl.9; Butlin 1981, pp.164–5 no.301, colour pl.393; Butlin in <i>Blake</i>, XVII, 1983–4, p.159; Warner 1984, p.44, pl.19; Boime 1987, pp.326–30, pl.4.28 in colour; <i>Also repr: Mizue</i>, no.882, 1978, 9, p.9.
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<p>Listed in Blake's account with Thomas Butts of 3 March 1806, apparently as having been delivered on 7 September 1805. There are two other versions, in the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Butlin 1981, nos.302 and 303, pls.406 and 407). In 1981, before the discovery of the 1804 <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/watermark" title="Glossary definition for 'Watermark'"><span>watermark</span></a>, I suggested that the Tate copy of 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/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>print</span></a> was probably the first of the known pulls of this design. The variations between the three copies, and the general nature of the two other prints, suggests that this view is still the most likely one, and that none of the known copies of the design can therefore have been executed before 1804. There is however a possibility, though an unlikely one, that there was, uniquely, a fourth copy of this design belonging <i>c.</i> 1880 to Arthur Burgess (see Butlin no.304).
<br/>This is an illustration to Daniel, iv, 31–3. Blake had already used 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> on a smaller scale on p.24 of <i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i>, <i>c.</i>1790–3 (repr. Erdman <i>Illuminated Blake</i> 1974, p.121). There are two <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/graphite" title="Glossary definition for 'Graphite'"><span>pencil</span></a> sketches on pages 44 and 48 of Blake's Notebook (Butlin nos.201 <i>44</i> and <i>48</i>, repr. Erdman and Moore 1973). An untraced sepia <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> was in the William Bell Scott sale at Sotheby's on 21 April 1885 (181); see Butlin no.305.
<br/>
<br/>The figure of Nebuchadnezzar also appears, in a modified form, in one of the watercolour illustrations to Young's <i>Night Thoughts</i>, 1796–7 (Night VII, page 27; Butlin no.330 <i>299</i>, repr. David V. Erdman, ed., <i>William Blake's Designs for Edward Young's Night Thoughts</i>, 1980). The pose of the figure is probably based on Dürer's <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> of ‘The Penance of St John Chrysostomus’. Blake greatly admired Dürer's prints and there is also an <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/iconography" title="Glossary definition for 'Iconography'"><span>iconographic</span></a> connection: St John Chrysostomus deliberately based his penance on Nebuchadnezzar's bestial madness (see Edgar Wind, ‘The Saint as Monster’ in <i>Journal of the Warburg Institute</i>, 1, 1937–8, p.183, the Dürer repr.; also repr. Preston 1966, p.8).
<br/>
<br/>Geoffrey Grigson has demonstrated the influence of John Hamilton Mortimer's engraving of ‘Nebuchadnezzar Recovering his Reason’ of <i>c.</i> 1778 (repr. Grigson <i>loc. cit.</i>, Erdman 1969, pl.7a, and Blunt <i>op. cit.</i>, pl.31b). Erdman associates Nebuchadnezzar with Blake's own character Urizen; thus Blake is seen to be representing
<br/>
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‘Reason losing his reason’. This work and ‘Newton’ (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-newton-n05058" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05058</span></a>) seem to have been designed as a pair and may therefore represent two aspects of the rational will. On the other hand, as Blunt has suggested, Nebuchadnezzar may be seen as slave to the senses, with Newton as slave to Reason. This is supported by the text accompanying the earlier version of the design in <i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i>, which illustrates the last ‘Memorable Fancy’ in which Blake, speaking through a Devil, asserts that the greatest men should be especially loved and honoured and demonstrates how Christ transcended and broke the Ten Commandments; the design is captioned ‘One Law for the Lion and Ox is Oppression’, the sense being that in this instance Man, in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, is being subjected to the Law of the Beast, in other words to the senses alone. What appear to be massive twisted roots behind the figure, with some foliage, were perhaps suggested by the great tree of Nebuchadnezzar's dream in Daniel, iv, 10–16, and in particular by ‘the stump of his roots’ which were to remain when the rest had been hewn down; in addition these forms give a feeling of oppressive materialism to the design.
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<br/>Boime points out that, whereas in the illustration to <i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell</i> Nebuchadnezzar is shown wearing a crown, an allusion to the recent downfall of the French Monarchy which is also alluded to in ‘The Song of Liberty’ that begins on the next page of the book, the colour prints omit this detail. Presumably this was to make the meaning of the composition more general, less topical.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-06T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults beard Bible: Old Testament body crawling Daniel, chapter 4 diseases and conditions male man mental illness Nebuchadnezzar nudes people religion and belief root sensuality sex and relationships society trunk