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Lot Essay
This exceptionally rare impression of My Pretty ROSE TREE, AH! SUNFLOWER, THE LILLY is from the very first issue of William Blake’s Songs of Experience (circa 1794), a collection of seventeen poems richly illustrated, etched and printed by Blake himself. Blake printed only four separate copies of Experience (the First Issue), before combining it after 1794 with his earlier collection of poems, Songs of Innocence (1789). The plate includes three poems, inspired by garden flowers which reflect upon themes of love and love lost. At the top 'My Pretty ROSE TREE' is separated from 'AH! SUNFLOWER' by a vignette of a couple beneath a tree, the man's head bowed in an attitude of despair, while the woman lies with her head `turn’d away with jealousy'. While the sunflower is caught in its desire for the unobtainable, following the daily passage through the sky of the sun, the lily in its purity is impervious to the travails of love.
This impression comes 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 (see lots 148-155). It was also once owned, with The Tyger (see lot 148), by Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willow.
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 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 of My Pretty ROSE TREE has been offered in at least forty years, and this is the only impression from its earliest colour printed iteration that remains in private hands.
For a more comprehensive description of Songs of Experience and William Blake’s radical ‘Illuminated Printing’ method of which this impression of My Pretty ROSE TREE is an example, please see the catalogue note for Lot 148, The Tyger.
This impression comes 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 (see lots 148-155). It was also once owned, with The Tyger (see lot 148), by Kenneth Grahame, the author of The Wind in the Willow.
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 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 of My Pretty ROSE TREE has been offered in at least forty years, and this is the only impression from its earliest colour printed iteration that remains in private hands.
For a more comprehensive description of Songs of Experience and William Blake’s radical ‘Illuminated Printing’ method of which this impression of My Pretty ROSE TREE is an example, please see the catalogue note for Lot 148, The Tyger.