Drawings

Solomon

Type: Drawings(Opens in new tab)
Date: ca. 1819-1820
Accession number: 000.52
Maker: William Blake(Opens in new tab) (British, 1757–1827)
Dimensions: 8 3/4 x 7 5/16 in. (22.2 x 18.5 cm.) sheet: 10 3/16 x 8 5/16 in. (25.8 x 21.1 cm.)
Medium: pencil counterproof on laid paper
Description: A counterproof from Blake's original of ca. 1819-1820(?). The right-left relationships and the over-drawing of light lines indicate that this is a much improved counterproof from either the drawing in the Courtald Institute, University of London, or the one in the collection of Edwin Wolf 2nd, Philadelphia. [1] Either may be Blake's original; the latter, inscribed "J Linnell from Mr Blake," is "heavily gone over" (according to Butlin 1981, 509). Rossetti 1863, 244, describes Blake's near-profile of Solomon: "Age about forty; a piercing, reflective, sensuous Jewish head, the eye exceedingly far back from the line of the nose, the chin blunt and very large. Admirable." Solomon's nose is the stock Jewish type used by contemporary caricaturists, a motif Blake also used for one of the rabbis in "Christ Crucified between the Two Thieves" of ca. 1800-1803 (Fogg Art Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 494) and for one of the Roman (?) soldiers in "The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ's Garment" of 1800 (Fitzwilliam Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 495). There is also a profile by Blake or Varley with nose and eye similar to Solomon's in the Blake-Varley sketchbook (untraced; Butlin 1981, No. 692.72). See also Blake's verses on "a great hook nose," quoted above in the discussion of the second drawing. Blake's tempera painting of ca. 1799-1800, "The Judgment of Solomon" (Fitzwilliam Museum; Butlin 1981, No. 499, shows a very youthful monarch looking nothing like the "Visionary Head." Notes 1. Butlin 1981, Nos. 700, 701. The Courtald drawing is also reproduced in Keynes 1927, Pl. 43; the Wolf version in William Blake 1757=1827: A Descriptive Catalogue of an Exhibition (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1927), 148.
Credit: The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens
Department: European Art
Find out more: View in the Art Museum catalog(Opens in new tab)

Label text

In 1819 Blake began to draw "visionary" portraits of famous characters, historical and fictive, at the behest of the artist (and amateur astrologer and physiognomist) John Varley. During séance-like sessions at night, Blake would conjure up these persons before the inner eye of his imagination and sketch their faces. The Biblical King Solomon is portrayed with features that, in Blake's day, were considered typical of Semitic peoples.

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