Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
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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>
Pity
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
‘Macbeth’
abstract concepts
actions: expressive
actions: postures and motions
adults
animals: actions
animals: mammals
baby
cherub
children
compassion
embracing
emotional states and conditions
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
family
flying
horse
landscape
literature and fiction
lying down
male
material world - abandoned mother
mother and child
night
nudes
people
pity - baby
prayer
religion and belief
rocky
Shakespeare
society
storm
symbols and personifications
times of the day
universal religious imagery
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woman
<p>This picture is based on the playwright William Shakespeare’s imagery in <span>Macbeth. </span>The play describes: ‘pity, like a naked newborn babe / Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin horsed / Upon the sightless couriers of the air, / Shall blow the horrid deed in ev’ry eye’. Blake’s visualisation of ‘pity’ takes Shakespeare’s words literally. Underneath the floating figures representing ‘pity’, Blake has included a young woman lying on the ground, her hands clasped as though in prayer. She may represent the infant’s mother, or someone influenced by pity.</p><p><em>Gallery label, October 2023</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
16 March 2009 – 14 June 2009
2009-06-14
1 April 2009 – 28 June 2009
2009-06-28
2009-04-01
Petit Palais, Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris (Paris, France)
Musée de la vie Romantique (Paris, France)
2009-03-16
William Blake
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
20 April 2012 – 27 August 2012
2012-08-27
20 April 2012 – 2 September 2012
2012-09-02
2012-04-20
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2012-04-20
Marianne Faithfull and John Dunbar
Collection based display
13 May 2013 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
13 May 2013 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
2013-05-13
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2013-05-13
William Blake
Collection based display
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
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
Pity
support: 425 × 539 mm
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<div class="text">
<p>This picture is based on the playwright William Shakespeare’s imagery in <i>Macbeth. </i>The play describes: ‘pity, like a naked newborn babe / Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubin horsed / Upon the sightless couriers of the air, / Shall blow the horrid deed in ev’ry eye’. Blake’s visualisation of ‘pity’ takes Shakespeare’s words literally. Underneath the floating figures representing ‘pity’, Blake has included a young woman lying on the ground, her hands clasped as though in prayer. She may represent the infant’s mother, or someone influenced by pity.  </p>
</div>

Display caption
2023-10-26T00:00:00
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-pity-n05062" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05062</span></a> <b>Pity</b> <i>c.</i>1795
<br/></p>
<p>N 05062 / B 310
<br/>Colour print finished in ink and watercolour, irregular 425×539 (16 3/8×21 1/16) on paper approx. 545×775 (21 15/16×30 13/16)
<br/>Signed ‘Blake’ incised b.r.
<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 (28); Cambridge 1910; Tate Gallery 1913 (48); on loan to Tate Gallery 1920–7; BFAC 1927 (46, pl.34); <i>British Art</i>
RA 1934 (786; 704, pl.165); Whitechapel 1934 (46); <i>Two Centuries of English Art</i> Amsterdam 1936 (188, repr.); <i>British Painting</i> Paris 1938 (159); <i>Wartime Acquisitions</i> National Gallery 1942 (14); Paris, Antwerp (pl.21), Zurich (repr.) and Tate Gallery 1947 (31); Tate Gallery 1978 (95, repr.); <i>The Painterly Print</i>, Metropolitan Museum, New York, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, October 1980–March 1981 (17, repr.); New Haven and Toronto 1982–3 (52, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Rossetti 1863, p.237 under no.218; Robertson in Gilchrist 1907, p.407, repr. facing p.188; Blunt in <i>Warburg Journal</i>, VI, 1943, pp.201, 207–8, 212, pl.57b; Keynes <i>Faber Gallery</i> 1946, p.5, 10, colour pl.4; Grigson in <i>Architectural Review</i>, CVIII, 1950, p.218; Preston 1952, pp.44–6 no.7, pl.7; Blunt 1959, pp.39, 60–1, pl.28a; Merchant in <i>Apollo</i>, LXXIX, 1964, p.322, pl.9 (reprinted in Essick 1973, pp.244–6, pl.69); Damon 1965, p.370; Hagstrum in Hilles and Bloom 1965, p.311, 316, 318–20, 329 n.40; Kostelanetz in Rosenfeld 1969, p.129, pl.4; Mellor 1974, pp.161–3, pl.45; Bindman 1977, pp.98–9, 106; Klonsky 1977, p.61, repr. in colour; Bindman <i>Graphic Works</i> 1978, no.326, repr.; Paley 1978, p.38; Essick <i>Printmaker</i> 1980, p.134, pl.126; Sue Welsh Reed, catalogue entries on three versions of ‘Pity’ in exh. cat. <i>The Painterly Print</i>, 1980, pp.84–9; La Belle in <i>Blake</i>, XIV, 1980–1; Butlin 1981, pp.168–9 no.310, colour pl.395; Heppner in <i>Bulletin of Research in the Humanities</i>, LXXXIV, 1981, pp.337–54, repr. p.349; Butlin in <i>Blake</i>, XV, 1981–2, p.102; Bindman in <i>Blake</i>, XVI, 1982–3, p.162
<br/></p>
<p>There are two other full-size versions of this design, one in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, and one at the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection, New Haven (Butlin 1981, nos.311 and 312, pls.410 and 411). None 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>prints</span></a> are dated, nor do they bear dated watermarks, but all seem to date from the initial phase of Blake's work on his large colour prints, <i>c.</i>1795. The sequence of the three pulls seems to have been Tate Gallery, Metropolitan Museum and Yale Center.
<br/>
<br/>There is also a smaller colour print of the same <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>, measuring 7 7/8×10 3/4 in, in the British Museum (Butlin no.313, pl.412) which seems to have been a try-out not just for this composition but for the technique of the series of large colour prints as a whole.
<br/>
<br/>In composition the smaller colour print lies mid-way between the large printed versions of the composition and two preliminary <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> <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> with the composition reversed which are also in the British Museum (Butlin nos.314 and 315, pls.413 and 414). The earlier of these two drawings (no.314) is upright in composition, suggesting that Blake had not yet fixed a format 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/proportion" title="Glossary definition for 'Proportion'"><span>proportions</span></a> of the composition. The second drawing in the British Museum is however in the oblong format of the later colour prints, as is what may be another sketch for the same composition, much rougher and partly obscured by writing, in Blake's Notebook (Butlin no.201 <i>106</i>, and Erdman and Moore 1973, Caption 2 N106 repr.). On the back of the second, oblong British Museum drawing there is another sketch related at least in part, recently uncovered when the drawing was remounted. At the bottom of the composition the same small child appears leaping upwards, towards however a completely different figure of a nude woman apparently clambering up rocks.
<br/>
<br/>The first, upright British Museum drawing is inscribed by Frederick Tatham with the words ‘Shakespeares Pity/. And Pity like a naked new-born Babe/ &amp;c &amp;c[?]/ F. Tatham -’. Although no title seems to have been inscribed by Blake on the margin of the Tate Gallery print, and no account between Butts and Blake giving the title can be traced, it seems to be universally accepted that Tatham was correct in his identification with the verses from Shakespear's <i>Macbeth</i>, 1, vii:
<br/></p>
<p>Besides, this Duncan
<br/>Hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been
<br/>So clear in his great office, that his virtues
<br/>Will plead, like angels, trumpet-tongu'd against
<br/>The deep damnation of his taking off;
<br/>And Pity, like a naked new-born babe,
<br/>Striding the blast, or heav'n's cherubin hors'd
<br/>Upon the sightless couriers of the air,
<br/>Shall blow the horrid deed in ev'ry eye;
<br/>That tears shall drown the wind - I have no spur
<br/>To prick the sides of my intent, but only
<br/>Vaulting ambition, which o'er leaps itself,
<br/>And falls on th'other -.</p>
<p></p>
<p>Blake, rather than illustrating the incident in Shakespeare's play, illustrates his figures of speech, recreating his imagery, as Christopher Heppner says, ‘in the form of a dramatized episode implying a supportive <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/n/narrative" title="Glossary definition for 'Narrative'"><span>narrative</span></a>’. This illustration of the figure of speech rather than the dramatic situation had been anticipated by John Hamilton Mortimer (see Grigson, <i>loc. cit.</i>) and Fuseli (see Bindman 1977, p.106). Both of Shakespeare's alternative similes for pity are illustrated, the babe and the female cherubin leaning from the horse's back to snatch it up from the mother lying below. In one sense the design is an amazingly literal illustration of Shakespeare's images, including the ‘sightless couriers of the air’, with the ‘tears’ being shown as rain. However, the mother does not appear in Shakespeare's text but forms part of Blake's new narrative context.
<br/>
<br/>Until recently the design has more usually been seen as negative in content, illustrating pity as a divisive force as in the line ‘For pity divides the soul’ from <i>Urizen</i> of 1794. In this book Pity appears as the first woman, Blake's character Enitharmon, who divides off from Los, a division paralleling the creation of Eve from Adam, and this leads, through her mating with Los, to ‘Man begetting his likeness, On his own divided image’ (Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, pp.230–2). However, in part anticipated by A.S. Roe (exh. cat., <i>William Blake: An Annotaled Catalogue</i>, Andrew Dixon White Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, February–March 1965, p.28 no.32, the Metropolitan Museum version repr.), Christopher Heppner, who has given the fullest and probably the closest analysis of the design up to the present, sees the design as positive in intent, demonstrating the possibilities of salvation through pity in the fallen world typified by the abandoned mother. Certainly the general impression is positive, as opposed to the negative impact of the companion print usually identified as ‘Hecate’ (no.31). Pity, as embodied in the figure of the babe, is one of Blake's typical figures of positive energy, that personified most usually by Orc in his earliest, innocent state.
<br/>
<br/>The farther horseman or cherubin, with arms outstretched, who seems to be male in contrast to the female figure on the nearer horse, is probably based on one of Raphael's representations of God the Father in the Vatican Loggie (e.g. that repr. Blunt 1959, pl.32d). At this period in his life Blake saw God the Father, the God of the Old Testament, as a negative force in contrast to Christ, and Heppner has suggested that the two cherubim are similarly contrasted, the nearer one being Pity, the farther one Wrath. On the other hand the attitude of the farthest figure may merely have been adopted by Blake to stress a sense of continuing movement against which is set the momentarily more static action of the nearer figure snatching up the babe.</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
2004-10-06T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
abstract concepts actions: expressive actions: postures and motions adults animals: actions animals: mammals baby cherub children compassion embracing emotional states and conditions emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas family flying horse landscape literature and fiction lying down ‘Macbeth’ male material world - abandoned mother mother and child night nudes people pity - baby prayer religion and belief rocky Shakespeare society storm symbols and personifications times of the day universal religious imagery weather woman