Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper
Tate Britain
Tate Collection
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Works on display
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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>
Lamech and his Two Wives
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
actions: expressive
actions: postures and motions
adults
Bible: Old Testament
birth to death
comforting
crime and punishment
death
embracing
emotions and human qualities
emotions, concepts and ideas
Genesis, chapter 4
guilt
head in hand / hands
horror
Lamech
landscape
man
murder
people
religion and belief
rocky
society
woman
<p>This work illustrates a Biblical scene from the Old Testament book of Genesis. Lamech, a descendant of Adam, confesses to his wives Adah and Zillah: ‘I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.’ Blake depicts the dead man sprawled face down, while Lamech stands beside him, passionately clutching at his hair. Adah and Zillah fearfully cling to one another. This is one of a series of 12 large colour prints Blake made using an experimental hybrid of printing, drawing, and painting. It was bought by Thomas Butts, one of Blake’s most important patrons.</p><p><em>Gallery label, June 2024</em></p>
paper unique colour print ink watercolour
24 November 2003 – 22 November 2004
2004-11-22
10 November 2003
2003-11-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-11-24
William Blake the Painter at Work
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
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
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
24 June 2024
24 June 2024
2024-06-24
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2024-06-24
Blake
Collection based display
Lamech and his Two Wives
support: 431 × 608 mm
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<div><p><span>This work illustrates a Biblical scene from the Old Testament book of Genesis. Lamech, a descendant of Adam, confesses to his wives Adah and Zillah: ‘I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me.’ Blake depicts the dead man sprawled face down, while Lamech stands beside him, passionately clutching at his hair. Adah and Zillah fearfully cling to one another. This is one of a series of 12 large colour prints Blake made using an experimental hybrid of printing, drawing, and painting. It was bought by Thomas Butts, one of Blake’s most important patrons.</span></p></div>
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2024-06-06T00:00:00
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-lamech-and-his-two-wives-n05061" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05061</span></a> <b>Lamech and his Two Wives</b> 1795
<br/></p>
<p>N 05061 / B 297
<br/>Colour print finished in ink and watercolour 431×608 (17×23 15/16), the corners cut across approx. 55 (2 1/4) from each corner, on paper approx. 545×755 (21 1/2×29 3/4)
<br/>Signed ‘WB inv [in monogram] 1795’ b.l. and inscribed ‘Lamech and his two Wives’ below design
<br/>Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<br/>PROVENANCE Thomas Butts; Thomas Butts jun.; Capt. F. J. Butts, offered Sotheby's 24 June 1903 (1) £156 bought in Stephens; his widow, sold through Carfax April 1906 to W. Graham Robertson
<br/>EXHIBITED BFAC 1876 (171); Carfax 1904 (1); Carfax 1906 (35); <i>Wartime Acquisitions</i> National Gallery 1942 (12); Tate Gallery 1947 (53); Tate Gallery 1978 (93, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Rossetti 1863, p.203 no.19, and 1880, p.209 no.21; Robertson in Gilchrist 1907, p.410, repr. facing p.366; Preston 1952, pp.32–3 no.2, pl.2; Keynes <i>Bible</i> 1957, p.6 no.17a repr.; Blunt 1959, p.59; Damon 1965, pp.4–5, 223, 458; Hagstrum in Hilles and Bloom 1965, p.329 n.30; Keynes <i>Letters</i> 1968, p.117; Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, p.572; Kostelanetz in Rosenfeld 1969, p.128; Mellor 1974, pp.160–1; Bindman 1977, p.99; Bindman <i>Graphic Works</i> 1978, no.330, repr.; Paley 1978, p.37; Essick <i>Printmaker</i> 1980, pp.134–5, pl.130; La Belle in <i>Blake</i>, XIV, 1980–1, p.77, pl.12; Butlin 1981, pp.162–3 no.297, colour pl.391; Warner 1984, p.68
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<p>Listed in Blake's account with Thomas Butts of 3 March 1806 as ‘Lamech’; it had apparently been delivered on 5 July 1805. There is a second copy of 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/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>print</span></a>, almost certainly the second pull, in the collection of Robert N. Essick (Butlin 1981, no.298, pl.387). The format of the Tate Gallery's print, with the corners cut across diagonally, is also found in the version of ‘Naomi entreating Ruth and Orpah to Return to the Land of Moab’ in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Butlin no.299, colour pl.392). The colouring and manner of printing of these two works is also similar and suggests that they were both pulled in 1795.
<br/>The format and manner of treatment also suggests that the two works were designed by Blake as <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/pendant" title="Glossary definition for 'Pendant'"><span>pendants</span></a>, but it is difficult to see any connection in subject beyond the fact that each deals with a family relationship: Lamech with his two wives, and Naomi with her two Moabite daughters-in-law. David Bindman groups these two designs with two other Old Testament subjects (<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> and <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>) as representing consequences of Jehovah's moral law.
<br/>
<br/>The obscure subject of this print is from Genesis, iv, 23–4. Lamech, Cain's great-great-great-grandson, tells his wives that he has slain a man: ‘If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and seven fold’. There was a tradition, partly derived from the text in Genesis, iv, 15 and 13, and spelt out in full in the Apocrypha, that Lamech did in fact accidently kill Cain (see Denis Grivot and George Zarnecki, <i>Gislebertus, <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>sculptor</span></a> of Autun</i>, 1961, p.70, quoting Byzantine and Romanesque prototypes). Bindman suggests that the reason Blake chose Lamech rather than Cain himself to epitomise murder and vengeance was that Lamech was father by his two wives of Jubal, representing music, and Tubalcain, ‘an instructor of every artifice in brass and iron’; the two wives would thus represent the state of the arts in the Fallen World.
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<br/>Janet Warner, demonstrating that one of Blake's sources for his visual language of gesture was the English pantomime, likens the gesture of Lamech's hands passionately applied to his forehead to the standard motif of indignation described by the dancing master John Weaver in his <i>History of the Mimes and Pantomimes</i> of 1728. This gesture is also found in Blake's ‘Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve’, <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-body-of-abel-found-by-adam-and-eve-n05888" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05888</span></a>.
<br/>
<br/>This similarity is presumably the reason for David Erdman's mistaken relating of the Emblem <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> <span>N05059</span> on p.49 of Blake's sketchbook to the figure of Cain in Blake's depictions of this subject rather than directly to the figure of Lamech in the colour print, to which it is much closer though, as one would expect, in reverse (Butlin no.201 <i>49</i>, repr. Erdman and Moore 1973).</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: expressive actions: postures and motions adults Bible: Old Testament birth to death comforting crime and punishment death embracing emotions and human qualities emotions, concepts and ideas Genesis, chapter 4 guilt head in hand / hands horror Lamech landscape man murder people religion and belief rocky society woman