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Lot Essay
This charming scene of a nurse with two children under her care, one standing, another sitting on a door ledge, before a lush garden, delicately printed and hand coloured in pale hues of yellow, blue, pink, green and brown, belies the world weariness of the verses which accompany it. The nurse, reminded by their playful shouts on the green, recalls bitterly her own lost childhood and envies their carefree pursuits. In a fit of pique, she calls them home from their games, anticipating their own loss of innocence as they grow into adults.
This exceptionally rare impression of NURSES SONG 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 them after 1794 with his earlier collection of poems, Songs of Innocence (1789).
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).
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 this plate, 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 NURSES SONG 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 NURSES SONG is an example, please see the catalogue note for Lot 148, The Tyger.
This exceptionally rare impression of NURSES SONG 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 them after 1794 with his earlier collection of poems, Songs of Innocence (1789).
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).
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 this plate, 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 NURSES SONG 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 NURSES SONG is an example, please see the catalogue note for Lot 148, The Tyger.