Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<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>
House Death
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
actions: postures and motions
adults
arm / arms raised
beard
birth to death
birth to death
body
characters
cloud
dagger / knife
death
death - hovering figure
despair - standing figure
diseases and conditions
emotional states and conditions
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
flying
furnishings
God
grief
illness
Judaeo-Christian imagery
leprosy
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
lying down
male
man
man, old
Milton, John, ‘Paradise Lost’, 1667
nudes
objects
people
reading, writing, printed matter
reclining
religion and belief
religious and ceremonial
rug
scroll
society
standing
symbols and personifications
thunderbolt
Urizen
weapons
weather
<p>The English poet John Milton, who died in 1674, was viewed by Blake as England's greatest poet, worthy of emulation but by no means above criticism. It was inevitable that in the large colour prints, his most important printing project, Blake would include Miltonic subjects.This print illustrates lines from Book XI of Milton's poem Paradise Lost. The Archangel Michael shows Adam the misery that will be inflicted on Man now he has eaten the Forbidden Fruit. In a vision of 'Death's 'grim Cave' Adam sees a 'monstrous crew' of men afflicted by 'Diseases dire'.</p><p><em>Gallery label, August 2004</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
6 December 2004 – 15 August 2005
2005-08-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2004-12-06
Blake and Jerusalem
Collection based display
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
2006-02-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-02-15
Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination
Exhibition
1 March 2007 – 31 May 2007
2007-05-31
25 March 2007 – 29 July 2007
2007-07-29
2007-03-25
Palazzo del Mercato Vecchio (Verona, Italy)
2007-03-01
II settimo splendore. Percorsi e smarrimenti
Loan-out
18 October 2008 – 5 April 2009
2009-04-05
18 October 2008 – 19 April 2009
2009-04-19
2008-10-18
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2008-10-18
Blake and Collins
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)
3 July 2012 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
2012-07-03
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
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
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
29 October 2024 – 30 September 2025
2025-09-30
30 October 2024 – 2 February 2025
2025-02-02
2024-10-30
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
1 September 2025 – 31 January 2026
2026-01-31
2025-09-01
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
1 March 2026 – 31 August 2026
2026-08-31
2026-03-01
External
2024-10-29
William Blake and the Age of Romantic Fantasy: British Art & Imagination
Loan-out
The House of Death
support: 485 × 610 mm
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<p>The English poet John Milton, who died in 1674, was viewed by Blake as England's greatest poet, worthy of emulation but  by no means above criticism. It was inevitable that in the large colour <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>, his most important printing project, Blake would include Miltonic subjects.This print illustrates lines from Book XI of Milton's poem Paradise Lost. The Archangel Michael shows Adam the misery that  will be inflicted on Man now he has eaten the Forbidden Fruit. In a vision of 'Death's 'grim Cave' Adam sees a 'monstrous crew' of men afflicted by 'Diseases dire'.
</p><p>
</p>
Display caption
2004-08-18T00:00:00
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-the-house-of-death-n05060" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05060</span></a> <b>The House of Death</b> 1795/<i>c.</i> 1805
<br/>
<br/>N 05060 / B 320
<br/>Colour print finished in ink and watercolour 485×610 (19 1/8×24) on paper approx. 545×770 (21 1/2×30 1/4)</p>
<p>Signed ‘WB 1795’ b.l. and inscribed ‘The House of Death Milton’ below design Watermarked ‘1794/1 TAYLOR’
<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 (26); Tate Gallery (51a), Manchester (56), Nottingham (39) and Edinburgh (42) 1913–14; on loan to Tate Gallery 1923–7; BFAC 1927 (49, pl.37); <i>Wartime Acquisitions</i> National Gallery 1942 (13); Tate Gallery 1947 (55); Cambridge 1971 (73); Tate Gallery 1978 (101, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Rossetti 1863, p.202 no.17, and 1880, p.209 no.19; Robertson in Gilchrist 1907, p.409, repr. facing p.338; Blunt in <i>Warburg Journal</i>, VI, 1943, p.212, pl.63b; Keynes <i>Faber Gallery</i>
1946, pp.5, 12, colour pl.5; Preston 1952, pp.50–2 no.9, pl.9; Digby 1957, pp.46–7, pl.46; Blunt 1959, pp.20, 41, 59, pl.27a; Gert Schiff, <i>Johann Heinrich Füsslis Milton-Galerie</i>, 1963, pp.78–9, pl.38; Hagstrum 1964, pp.67–8, pl.42b; Beer 1968, p.192; Keynes <i>Letters</i> 1968, p.17; Raine 1968, 11, p.96, pl.151; Taylor and Grant in <i>Blake Studies</i>, 1, 1968–9, pp.42–6, 195–6, repr. p.43; Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, p.572; Kostelanctz in Rosenfeld 1969, p.128, pl.5; Pointon 1970, p.135, pl.124; Tomory <i>Fuseli</i> 1972, pp.211–2; Mellor 1974, pp.160–1, pl.44; Bindman 1977, pp.98, 100, 104, pl.81; Klonsky 1977, p.59, repr. in colour; Bindman <i>Graphic Works</i> 1978, no.335, repr.; Paley 1978, pp.37–8, pl.33; La Belle in <i>Blake</i>, XIV, 1980–1, pp.73–6, pl.8; Butlin 1981, pp.172–3 no.320, colour pl.397; Raine 1982, at pl.64, repr.; Behrendt 1983, pp.143, 179–81; Butlin in <i>Blake</i>, XVII, 1983–4, p.159; Warner 1984, pp.87, 94, 102, 121; Hoagwood 1985, pp.69, 76, pl.1. <i>Also repr</i>: Figgis 1925, pl.73; <i>Mizue</i>, no.882, 1978, 9, p.19 in colour
<br/></p>
<p>This copy of the design was listed in Blake's account with Thomas Butts of 3 March 1806 as ‘House of Death’, apparently having been delivered on 5 July 1805. There are two other known copies of the design, at the British Museum and in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Butlin 1981, nos.321 and 322, colour pls.398 and 399). The Tate Gallery 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> may be the first pull, the British Museum one the second, and the Fitzwilliam Museum one, in which the left-hand of the foremost reclining figure is made much more expressive by being open, with extended figures, instead of resting on a shoulder, the third. This ordering is the case if one holds that all the pulls were made at the same time, in 1795; the modelling of the right-hand figure in the British Museum pull in particular has affinities with other works attributed to <i>c.</i>1795. Alternatively however, it could be that the British Museum pull and that in the Fitzwilliam Museum were made in about 1795, in that order, while the Tate Gallery copy was done.afresh <i>c.</i>1804–5. For a related pen and wash <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> of <i>c.</i>1790 see <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-house-of-death-n05192" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05192</span></a>.
<br/>
<br/>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/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a>, also known as ‘The Lazar House’, illustrates Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i>, XI, 477–93. Death hovers above; Despair stands on the right. The latter figure recurs on page 51 of <i>Jerusalem</i>, probably <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> <i>c.</i>1804–7 (repr. Erdman <i>Illuminated Blake</i> 1974, p.330), a design that also exists as a separate coloured print, ‘Vala, Hyle and Skofeld’ of <i>c.</i>1820 (see Butlin 1981, nos.578 and 579, pl.812 and colour pl.961). The figure of Death is based on a figure in the copy of Fuseli's ‘Fertilisation of Egypt’ made by Blake for his <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> published in Erasmus Darwin's <i>The Boianic Garden</i> in 1791; this was probably based in its turn on the Jupiter Pluvius on the Column of Marcus Aurelius and is modified from Fuseli's original figure (both drawings are in the British Museum; the Blake, Butlin no.173, pl.213, and the Fuseli are repr. Blunt 1959, pls.21b and 21a respectively). The position of the figure, right across the top of the design instead of in one corner as in no.12, is common to Fuseli's pen and wash drawing of the same subject in the Kunsthaus, Zurich, presumably made for the oil completed for his Milton Gallery in 1793 (repr. Schiff 1963, pl.37, Tomory, <i>op.cit.</i>, p.101, and Schiff 1973, 11, p.305 no.1023; see also <i>ibid.</i>
p.569 no.1764), but Blake's composition is otherwise different.
<br/>
<br/>Death is shown in the guise of Blake's character Urizen, close to the depiction of God the Father in ‘Elohim Creating Adam’ (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-elohim-creating-adam-n05055" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05055</span></a>) and ‘God Judging Adam’ (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-god-judging-adam-n05063" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05063</span></a>). Blake's meaning is perhaps to show the Creator presiding over the inevitable decay of his material creation; He blasts them with the scroll of Law, its ends transformed into thunder-bolts, as has been suggested by Kathleen Raine. Visually the design seems to be the counterpart of ‘Christ Appearing to the Apostles’ (<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-christ-appearing-to-the-apostles-after-the-resurrection-n05875" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05875</span></a>): the wrath of the Old Dispensation is contrasted with the mercy of the New.</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
actions: postures and motions adults arm / arms raised beard birth to death birth to death body characters cloud dagger / knife death death - hovering figure despair - standing figure diseases and conditions emotional states and conditions emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas flying furnishings God grief illness Judaeo-Christian imagery leprosy literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) lying down male man man, old Milton, John, ‘Paradise Lost’, 1667 nudes objects people reading, writing, printed matter reclining religion and belief religious and ceremonial rug scroll society standing symbols and personifications thunderbolt Urizen weapons weather