Lot Essay
The subject is the Whore of Babylon as St John describes her in Chapter 17 of the Book of Revelation. 'And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me, saying unto me, Come hither; I will show unto thee the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters...So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arranged in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus...'
With this and lots 58-59, all dating from 1902, the evidently strong-minded Osmaston acquired the first of the eight illustrations to Revelation which formed the core of his collection of Stocks. No doubt the artist knew that the subject had been treated by Dürer in a well-known sequence of woodcuts, and that G.F. Watts had painted the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But the obvious influence is Blake, whose Biblical watercolours painted for Thomas Butts in the 1800s had included a group of Revelation subjects. Stock's designs are full of Blakean touches; notable in this one is the conception of the 'scarlet beast' and the echo of Blake's sinuous line in the 'Art Nouveau' form of the smoke issuing from the 'cup of abominations'. It is possible that Stock even knew one or two of Blake's Revelation drawings, including The Whore of Babylon; this had been in the British Museum since 1847 and anticipates all the main features of his own design (see Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, 1981, no.523 and pl.584)
With this and lots 58-59, all dating from 1902, the evidently strong-minded Osmaston acquired the first of the eight illustrations to Revelation which formed the core of his collection of Stocks. No doubt the artist knew that the subject had been treated by Dürer in a well-known sequence of woodcuts, and that G.F. Watts had painted the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But the obvious influence is Blake, whose Biblical watercolours painted for Thomas Butts in the 1800s had included a group of Revelation subjects. Stock's designs are full of Blakean touches; notable in this one is the conception of the 'scarlet beast' and the echo of Blake's sinuous line in the 'Art Nouveau' form of the smoke issuing from the 'cup of abominations'. It is possible that Stock even knew one or two of Blake's Revelation drawings, including The Whore of Babylon; this had been in the British Museum since 1847 and anticipates all the main features of his own design (see Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, 1981, no.523 and pl.584)