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Lot Essay
This exceptionally rare impression of The Tyger, William Blake’s most famous poem, is from the very first issue of his Songs of Experience (circa 1794), a collection of seventeen poems richly illustrated, etched and printed by Blake himself. Conceived as a counterpoint to his earlier Songs of Innocence (1789), ‘Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’, Blake printed only four separate copies of Experience (the First Issue), before combining them with Innocence after 1794.
Drawing on the popular reputation of the tiger in the eighteenth century ‘as fierce without provocation, and cruel without necessity, its thirst for blood is insatiable’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh, First to Third Edition, 1771-1797, quoted in: M. Phillips, 2000, p. 68), The Tyger may be a metaphor for the violent upheavals of the French Revolution. In particular for Blake as a dissenter, the great cat may allude to the government of William Pitt and the draconian laws enacted against radicals such as himself to avert the threat of revolution at home. This febrile political atmosphere, and Blake’s own sense of vulnerability within this new status quo, is perhaps reflected in the change of mood in Experience from the lighter tone of the earlier Innocence poems.
‘[Experience] is a reflection of Blake’s disappointment upon a second look at the world. His message of truth did not receive the acceptance and understanding which he in his naïve assurance had expected. There were realities in London all around him which belied the optimism of the Songs of Innocence; poverty, prejudice, deceit and despair were everywhere. The Songs of Experience are Blake’s bitter picture of life as the innocent child must find it as he emerges from the happy, confident days of childhood’ (G. Keynes, 1953, p. 51).
The sonorous timbre of The Tyger and its metaphysical interrogations recall The Book of Job in the Old Testament, which Blake illustrated towards the end of his life, and in particular Jehovah’s response to Job’s complaint about the calamities he had suffered: ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?’ (Job 38, 4-7).
While Blake evokes ambivalence towards the inscrutable and capricious nature of reality, The Tyger simultaneously exults in its majesty and wildness, stretching prosaic orthodoxies and evoking a sense of ‘awfulness’ in an older sense of the word, ‘full of awe’. The illumination of the text, however, is much lighter in spirit – the ‘forests of the night’ indicated with a solitary, gnarly tree, and his wild cat cub-like and docile. Blake took the form of his Songs from what was then a newly emerging genre, picture books of moralising tales in rhyming verse, published for children. While not written specifically for this audience, in The Tyger and the other poems from Songs, Blake subverts their patronising and self-righteous tone, proposing a very different way of seeing the world, one which embraces ambiguity and mystery, and the life of the imagination. As a fascinating aside, there is a tantalising link between Blake’s legacy and twentieth-century children’s literature in that this impression of The Tyger, together with My Pretty ROSE TREE (lot 149), were once owned by Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows.
Blake’s genius as an artist and poet are matched by his ingenuity as a printer. Experience is printed using ‘Illuminated Printing’, a technique of his own invention in which he wrote his text in mirror writing and drew his designs with stop-out varnish on a single copper plate, which was then etched in relief by immersion in an acid-bath. This was a radical innovation from conventional publishing where text was outsourced to letter-press workshops, and designs executed by copy engravers.
In true visionary fashion, the method had been inspired by a visitation from his deceased brother Robert, recounted by an early biographer:
‘After deeply perplexing himself as to the mode of accomplishing the publication of his illustrated songs, without their being subject to the expense of letter-press, his brother Robert stood before him in one of his visionary imaginations, and so decidedly directed him in the way in which he ought to proceed’ (J. T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 1828, vol. II, p. 461; quoted in: G. Keynes, 1953, p. viii).
Once etched, the plates were hand-inked and printed by Blake. While for Innocence, Blake printed word and image in a single colour, and then, assisted by his wife Catherine, used thin, transparent watercolour washes to elaborately hand colour the designs; for the first copies of Experience he developed his technique of `Illuminated Printing’ further. Using stubble brushes and opaque pigments thickened with glue or gum, Blake meticulously inked his designs, both the areas in relief, and the surrounding, recessed etched areas, varying the colours and their application with each inking of the plate so that no two impressions are the same. While some early impressions from Experience, like this one, were finished with watercolour (see also lots 149, 150, 152 & 155), the effect relies almost entirely on the colour printing rather than any hand embellishing. After 1794, Blake no longer employed this colour printing method for the combined issues of Songs. With their autumnal palette and richly textured surfaces, the first issues of Experience contrast with the watercoloured freshness of Innocence, creating a visual metaphor for the two states of being. As Michael Phillips comments: ‘In the translucent watercolour wash of Songs of Innocence, and the opaque colour printing of Songs of Experience, Blake’s conception of the ‘Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’ is most fully realised (M. Phillips, 2000, p. 110).
This impression of The Tyger is from the only First Issue copy of Experience, designated by scholars as Copy G, to have been disbound then dispersed in the nineteenth century. It is one of ten plates partially reassembled by the renowned Blake scholar and collector Sir Geoffrey Keynes in the early twentieth century ‘from various sources at various times’ (Keynes, 1964, p. 56), eight of which are being sold here (lots 148-155). The remaining three First Issue copies of Experience are collated and largely extant: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (Copy F, complete); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (Copy T1, lacking Plate 37, part of a composite set of Songs); and Private Collection (Copy H, complete; formerly collection of Maurice Sendak, sold his sale, Christie’s New York, 10 June 2025, lot 30, for $1,865,000). Later impressions of The Tyger printed by Blake after 1794 are also largely accounted for, within complete or partial sets, the majority in public collections. To our knowledge no other impression has been offered in at least forty years. This is the only impression of The Tyger from its earliest colour printed iteration that remains in private hands.
Drawing on the popular reputation of the tiger in the eighteenth century ‘as fierce without provocation, and cruel without necessity, its thirst for blood is insatiable’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Edinburgh, First to Third Edition, 1771-1797, quoted in: M. Phillips, 2000, p. 68), The Tyger may be a metaphor for the violent upheavals of the French Revolution. In particular for Blake as a dissenter, the great cat may allude to the government of William Pitt and the draconian laws enacted against radicals such as himself to avert the threat of revolution at home. This febrile political atmosphere, and Blake’s own sense of vulnerability within this new status quo, is perhaps reflected in the change of mood in Experience from the lighter tone of the earlier Innocence poems.
‘[Experience] is a reflection of Blake’s disappointment upon a second look at the world. His message of truth did not receive the acceptance and understanding which he in his naïve assurance had expected. There were realities in London all around him which belied the optimism of the Songs of Innocence; poverty, prejudice, deceit and despair were everywhere. The Songs of Experience are Blake’s bitter picture of life as the innocent child must find it as he emerges from the happy, confident days of childhood’ (G. Keynes, 1953, p. 51).
The sonorous timbre of The Tyger and its metaphysical interrogations recall The Book of Job in the Old Testament, which Blake illustrated towards the end of his life, and in particular Jehovah’s response to Job’s complaint about the calamities he had suffered: ‘Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know! Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone - while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?’ (Job 38, 4-7).
While Blake evokes ambivalence towards the inscrutable and capricious nature of reality, The Tyger simultaneously exults in its majesty and wildness, stretching prosaic orthodoxies and evoking a sense of ‘awfulness’ in an older sense of the word, ‘full of awe’. The illumination of the text, however, is much lighter in spirit – the ‘forests of the night’ indicated with a solitary, gnarly tree, and his wild cat cub-like and docile. Blake took the form of his Songs from what was then a newly emerging genre, picture books of moralising tales in rhyming verse, published for children. While not written specifically for this audience, in The Tyger and the other poems from Songs, Blake subverts their patronising and self-righteous tone, proposing a very different way of seeing the world, one which embraces ambiguity and mystery, and the life of the imagination. As a fascinating aside, there is a tantalising link between Blake’s legacy and twentieth-century children’s literature in that this impression of The Tyger, together with My Pretty ROSE TREE (lot 149), were once owned by Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willows.
Blake’s genius as an artist and poet are matched by his ingenuity as a printer. Experience is printed using ‘Illuminated Printing’, a technique of his own invention in which he wrote his text in mirror writing and drew his designs with stop-out varnish on a single copper plate, which was then etched in relief by immersion in an acid-bath. This was a radical innovation from conventional publishing where text was outsourced to letter-press workshops, and designs executed by copy engravers.
In true visionary fashion, the method had been inspired by a visitation from his deceased brother Robert, recounted by an early biographer:
‘After deeply perplexing himself as to the mode of accomplishing the publication of his illustrated songs, without their being subject to the expense of letter-press, his brother Robert stood before him in one of his visionary imaginations, and so decidedly directed him in the way in which he ought to proceed’ (J. T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 1828, vol. II, p. 461; quoted in: G. Keynes, 1953, p. viii).
Once etched, the plates were hand-inked and printed by Blake. While for Innocence, Blake printed word and image in a single colour, and then, assisted by his wife Catherine, used thin, transparent watercolour washes to elaborately hand colour the designs; for the first copies of Experience he developed his technique of `Illuminated Printing’ further. Using stubble brushes and opaque pigments thickened with glue or gum, Blake meticulously inked his designs, both the areas in relief, and the surrounding, recessed etched areas, varying the colours and their application with each inking of the plate so that no two impressions are the same. While some early impressions from Experience, like this one, were finished with watercolour (see also lots 149, 150, 152 & 155), the effect relies almost entirely on the colour printing rather than any hand embellishing. After 1794, Blake no longer employed this colour printing method for the combined issues of Songs. With their autumnal palette and richly textured surfaces, the first issues of Experience contrast with the watercoloured freshness of Innocence, creating a visual metaphor for the two states of being. As Michael Phillips comments: ‘In the translucent watercolour wash of Songs of Innocence, and the opaque colour printing of Songs of Experience, Blake’s conception of the ‘Two Contrary States of the Human Soul’ is most fully realised (M. Phillips, 2000, p. 110).
This impression of The Tyger is from the only First Issue copy of Experience, designated by scholars as Copy G, to have been disbound then dispersed in the nineteenth century. It is one of ten plates partially reassembled by the renowned Blake scholar and collector Sir Geoffrey Keynes in the early twentieth century ‘from various sources at various times’ (Keynes, 1964, p. 56), eight of which are being sold here (lots 148-155). The remaining three First Issue copies of Experience are collated and largely extant: Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (Copy F, complete); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (Copy T1, lacking Plate 37, part of a composite set of Songs); and Private Collection (Copy H, complete; formerly collection of Maurice Sendak, sold his sale, Christie’s New York, 10 June 2025, lot 30, for $1,865,000). Later impressions of The Tyger printed by Blake after 1794 are also largely accounted for, within complete or partial sets, the majority in public collections. To our knowledge no other impression has been offered in at least forty years. This is the only impression of The Tyger from its earliest colour printed iteration that remains in private hands.