Relief etching printed in orange ink, with watercolor and pen and black ink on moderately thick, smooth, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 13 1/2 x 10 3/8 inches (34.3 x 26.4 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:
Lettered inside image: "Bath who is Legions; he is the Seventh, the physician and | The poisoner; the best and worst in Heaven and Hell; | Whose Spectre first assimilated with Luvah in Albion's mountains. | A triple octave he took, to reduce Jerusalem to twelve, | To cast Jerusalem forth upon the wilds to Poplar & Bow, | To Maiden & Canterbury in the delights of cruelty: | The Shuttles of death sing in the sky to Islington & Pancrass, | Round Marybone to Tyburn's River, weaving black melancholy as a net, | And despair as meshes closely wove over the west of London, | Where mild Jerusalem sought to repose in death & be no more. | She fled to Lambeth's mild Vale and hid herself beneath | The Surrey Hills where Rephaim terminates; her Sons are siez'd | For victims of sacrifice; but Jerusalem cannot be found; Hid | By the Daughters of Beulah, gently snatch'd away, and hid in Beulah. | There is a Green of Sand in Lambeth that Satan cannot find, | Nor can his Watch Fiends find it; 'tis translucent & has many Angles, | But he who finds it will find Oothoon's palace, for within, | Opening into Beulah, every angle is a lovely heaven. | But should the Watch Fiends find it, they would call it Sin, | And lay its Heavens & their inhabitants in blood of punishment. | Here Jerusalem & Vala were hid in soft slumberous repose, | Hid from the terrible East, shut up in the South & West. | The Twenty-eight trembled in Death's dark caves, in cold despair | They kneel'd around the Couch of Death in deep humiliation | And tortures of self condemnation while their Spectres rag'd within. | The Four Zoas in terrible combustion clouded rage, | Drinking the shuddering fears & loves of Albion's Families, | Destroying by selfish affections the things that they most admire, | Drinking & eating, & pitying & weeping, as at a tragic scene, | The soul drinks murder & revenge, & applauds its own holiness. They saw Albion endeavouring to destroy their Emanations."; reversed lettering lower left: "Each Man is in his Spectre's power | Untill the arrival of that hour. | When his Humanity awake | And cast his Spectre into the Lake"
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1992.8.1(41)
Classification:
Prints
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
men | women | paper | mourning | text | scroll (information artifact) | book | nudes | religious and mythological subject | literary theme | sitting
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
William Blake: Visionary (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2023-10-17 - 2024-01-14)The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)William Blake (Tate Britain, 2000-11-02 - 2001-02-04)The Human Form Divine - William Blake from the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Center for British Art, 1997-04-02 - 1997-07-06)
Publications:
William Blake : Visionary, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, p. 150, pl. 107, NJ18.B57 A12 2020 OVERSIZE (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
William Blake insisted that Jerusalem, his final prophetic book, was divinely inspired. Of the five copies he printed in his lifetime, only the edition now at the Yale Center for British Art was colored. Blake described his narrative as a “Sublime Allegory,” which he divided into four chapters that correspond to spiritual stages of human history, addressed “To the Public,” “To the Jews,” “To the Deists,” and “To the Christians.” The text has been linked to biblical precedents, particularly the Book of Revelation, as it begins after a universal fall and ends with redemption. However, Jerusalem is not a straightforward expression of Christian devotion. The illuminated text offers a critique of organized religion at a moment of spiritual uncertainty across Europe. Blake called for radical religious reform by liberating faith from the corruption and dogmatism of institutional churches and reimagining it in modern terms. Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)