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Lot Essay
'In the visionary imagination of William Blake there is no birth and no death, no beginning and no end, only the perpetual pilgrimage within time towards eternity.' — Peter Ackroyd
As an artist and a visionary, William Blake stands alone amid his contemporaries. His upbringing was both blue-collar and pious; he was the son of a hosier and spent his whole life in London save for three years in the south. Raised in a household of dissenters from the Church of England, he learned criticism of organized religion at a young age. Biographer Peter Ackroyd notes that the Bible defined his childhood, calling it his 'closest and most significant attachment' (Blake: A Biography, p. 25). Deeply spiritual, he was prone to visions of angels throughout his life; it would all profoundly influence his work. Blake was without formal academic schooling; at age ten he attended drawing school before beginning a seven-year apprenticeship with a commercial engraver at 14. He started writing poetry in earnest around the same time.
Blake has been variously described as wild and contrary, eccentric if not mad, obstinate and pugnacious, full of extravagant self-confidence—and the more obscure he became the grander his vision of himself grew. Ackroyd writes that he was unreliable and tardy with engraving work, 'day-dreaming to the point of genius,' and known as the man who sees spirits and talks to angels ('William Blake: the Man,' p.12, in Hamlyn & Phillips). His marriage was a loving one, however, and his wife Catherine was immensely supportive, believing the visions he was always surrounded by. Though he died in obscurity (an early biography would be sub-titled Pictor Ignotus), among his best-known works today are his illuminated books—his term for the works he engraved, printed, and colored, together with Catherine’s crucial assistance, of which Songs of Innocence was the first major example. These books beautifully intertwine words and pictures.
The songs comprising Innocence are largely a celebration of childhood—in 'The Ecchoing Green,' 'Spring,' 'Cradle Song,' and 'Nurse’s Song,' Blake evokes merriment and joy with idyllic 'happy skies' and outdoor play, tired little children gathering at the laps of their mothers, sleeping babies and sweet dreams. In the introduction, which is illustrated with the frontispiece, the speaker is asked to 'pipe a song about a Lamb,' to which he answers 'with merry chear,' and closes, 'I wrote my happy songs, / Every child may joy to hear.' Though it was written in the tradition of then-ubiquitous Divine Songs for Children (1715), a compilation of didactic, moral poetry by Isaac Watts, Blake’s work is more secular, and the purity and simplicity of the small, colorful volume seemingly aimed at children is perhaps misleading. There is a deeper meaning to be found, particularly in a poem such as 'The Chimney Sweeper,' and when read alongside Songs of Experience. 'The Chimney Sweeper' comments on a society that has overlooked the welfare of some of its children, though this commentary is more direct in Experience. Marilyn Butler notes that 'Songs of Innocence is a children’s book of a most subtle kind: a nostalgic recollection of an urban childhood, of walking out to fields at the edges of London, of remembering the child-centred world of play and the images and metre of Isaac Watts’s hymns. Songs of Experience (1794), a fully adult politicised sequel reflects the intense intellectual activity of the contentious revolution years. Together the two books read best as opposites, neither a pair nor a simple succession, with the world of the child celebrated and preferred' ('Blake in his Time,' p.16, in Hamlyn & Phillips). Innocence can be read as symbolizing before the Fall, and Experience after. It is worth noting that Songs of Innocence, along with Songs of Experience, were initially conceived and printed as two separate works, as they are in Sendak’s collection, rather than the later combined work—Songs of Innocence and of Experience—more commonly seen. They were listed individually in Blake’s prospectus of 1793, for five shillings each.
In 1788, Blake had invented a method of reproducing poetry and design: he called it illuminated printing and it would define the rest of his career. A contemporary of the artist recounts that Blake, '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, that he immediately followed his advice…' (John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 1828, p. 461). Essentially an inversion of the traditional intaglio printing process that involved etching a picture into a copper plate, Blake’s process used an acid-resistant varnish to write his poetry and designs directly onto a copper plate, using it like a notebook, after which an acid bath would leave the text and designs standing in relief. As the printing process would reverse his text, everything had to be written backwards. His first experiment with illuminated printing was in 1788’s prose works All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion, and by 1789’s Songs of Innocence he had mastered the technique. Another contemporary of Blake’s, his good friend and patron John Linnell, remarked that the 'most extraordinary facility seems to have been attained by Blake in writing backwards & that with a brush dipped in a glutinous liquid for the writing is in many instances highly ornamental & varied in character as may be seen in his Songs of Innocence' (qtd. in Blake Records, p. 460). After etching, Blake would then begin the painstaking process of inking the relief surfaces, using a palette he mixed himself, which he then carefully applied with a dauber, wiping the plate borders and any ink in the etched shallows. After printing on his rolling press, he or Catherine would lastly apply a thin of wash of watercolor.
No two copies of Songs of Innocence are exactly alike: they exhibit wide variation in coloring and sequence. Blake’s very first copy of Songs of Innocence (Copy U) was considered a trial, printed in charcoal black, uncolored, and on only one side of the leaf. It is now in the Houghton Library at Harvard. After the trial, the next four copies—of which this is one—were printed in green ink that Blake mixed from Prussian blue and gamboge and printed on both recto and verso. These are:
• Copy F, at the Yale Center for British Art, originally owned by George Cumberland, a lifelong friend and patron of Blake (complete, with 31 plates);
• Copy I, at the Huntington Library, originally owned by John Linnell, a lifelong friend and patron of Blake (31 plates);
• Copy J, the present Grabhorn-Berland-Sendak copy (21 plates); and
• Copy X, at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (14 plates).
Green plates probably originating from the above printings are additionally found in Copy E, at the Huntington Library (8 green plates); and Copy S, at Cincinnati Art Museum (1 plate). None of the prints survive in more than four known copies printed in green ink.
Michael Phillips notes that each of the green copies vary also in their impositions, with different combinations of plates printed on rectos and versos. This 'suggests that the copies printed in green were either printed on separate occasions or, what is more likely, they were printed together in a not very orderly manner … Blake was feeling his way in this first printing session of Songs of Innocence. All of these combinations are also noticeably different from the next set of copies Blake printed' (William Blake: The Creation of the Songs, p.24).
Subsequent to the green-ink copies there were 16 more printed in 1789 in varying shades of ochre and brown. The coloring palette used in the green-ink copies favors green watercolor in the backgrounds and similarly in other copies the dominant watercolor wash matches the ink. The green copies favor what can be thought of as a Georgian or pastel palette, with sage and pea greens, sky and Wedgwood blues, dusky pinks, and soft yellows and greys. Phillips notes that 'For the first copies printed in green, Blake characteristically applied a thin wash across the impression in order to create tints of colour behind text and design as well as highlighting particular elements and letter formations. For the copies he printed in yellow ochre and raw sienna, Blake was characteristically more sparing in his use of water colour, just highlighting elements of the design and colouring larger images including the Frontispiece and title-page ... What is clear and distinctive about Blake’s colouring of these early copies is that he consistently used thin transparent wash, sparingly and unobtrusively, and carefully maintained the balance between text and design, making clear that they were complementary' (pp. 26-27).
The first copies of Songs of Innocence were sold to Blake’s friends and acquaintances, among them art collector and writer George Cumberland, poet Samuel Rogers, and sculptor John Flaxman. The delicate pastels employed in Sendak Copy J are most similar to that of Copy I at the Huntington whose first known owner was John Linnell, one of Blake’s closest friends and most active patrons. Approximately 30 lifetime printings of Songs of Innocence are known to be extant, with some of them now bound with Experience. Of these, only eight (including this one) are in private hands and one is untraced. This is the only copy of the original 1789 printing Songs of Innocence to come to auction since 1990.
The present copy contains 21 plates of a possible suite of 31. As noted above, copy E at the Huntington contains 8 plates printed in green ink. These comprise 8 of the 10 plates lacking in Copy J, strongly suggesting that copies E and J derive from the same set. Copy E is probably the one assembled for William Blake's friend and patron Thomas Butts in 1806. The plates in Copy J are as follows, with numbers in brackets corresponding to Keynes and Wolf’s census: [1] Frontispiece [Piper] (recto blank); [2] Songs of Innocence title (verso blank); [3] Introduction (verso blank); [15] The Shepherd; [29-30] The Little Black Boy (2 pp.); [31] The Voice of the Ancient Bard; [12] The Divine Image; [4] A Dream; [10-11] The Ecchoing Green (2 pp.); [24] On Another’s Sorrow; [14] Infant Joy; [8] The Lamb; [25-26] Spring (2 pp.); [9] The Blossom; [22] Nurses Song; [13] The Chimney Sweeper; [18-19] A Cradle Song (2 pp.).
Small octavo (162 x 110mm). E&P watermark. Comprising 21 (of 31) relief etchings on 12 leaves, printed in green and finished with watercolor, two plates with text strengthened in blue ink presumably by Blake. Near contemporary half sheep over marbled boards. Embroidered Arts & Crafts chemise by Lola F. Frampton (according to the 1925 sale catalogue), the wife of painter Edward Reginald Frampton (c. 1870-1923), a trained book designer and embroiderer whose work was exhibited at the 1914 Leipziger Buchgewerbe-Austellung; modern custom box.
Works cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Blake. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.
Bentley, Jr. G.E. Blake Books. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
---. Blake Records. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
---. 'G.E. Bentley: Blake Collection.' William Blake: Poet & Printmaker. https://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/collections/special_collections/bentley_blake_collection/. Accessed April 2025.
---. 'Ozias Humphry, William Upcott, and William Blake.' Humanities Association Review 26 (1975): 116-120.
Blake, William and Andrew Lincoln, ed. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake’s Illuminated Works, Volume 2. General editor David Bindman. Princeton UP and the William Blake Trust, 1998.
Butlin, Martin. William Blake. London: Tate Gallery, 1978.
Essick, Robert and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. www.williamblakearchive.org. Accessed April 2025.
Essick, Robert. Sendak and Blake Illustrating Songs of Innocence. New York: Battledore Ltd & Society of Illustrations, 2008.
---. William Blake, Printmaker. Princeton UP, 1980.
Gilchrist, Alexander. Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus.' London: Macmillan and Co., 1863.
Hamlyn, Robin and Michael Phillips. William Blake. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000.
Keynes, Geoffrey & Edwin Wolf, 2nd. William Blake’s Illuminated Books: A Census. New York: the Grolier Club, 1953.
Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. The Letters of William Blake. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968.
Myrone, Martin and Amy Concannon, eds. William Blake. Princeton UP, 2019.
Phillips, Michael. William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing. London: The British Library, 2000.
Smith, John Thomas. Nollekens and his times. London: H. Colburn, 1828.
As an artist and a visionary, William Blake stands alone amid his contemporaries. His upbringing was both blue-collar and pious; he was the son of a hosier and spent his whole life in London save for three years in the south. Raised in a household of dissenters from the Church of England, he learned criticism of organized religion at a young age. Biographer Peter Ackroyd notes that the Bible defined his childhood, calling it his 'closest and most significant attachment' (Blake: A Biography, p. 25). Deeply spiritual, he was prone to visions of angels throughout his life; it would all profoundly influence his work. Blake was without formal academic schooling; at age ten he attended drawing school before beginning a seven-year apprenticeship with a commercial engraver at 14. He started writing poetry in earnest around the same time.
Blake has been variously described as wild and contrary, eccentric if not mad, obstinate and pugnacious, full of extravagant self-confidence—and the more obscure he became the grander his vision of himself grew. Ackroyd writes that he was unreliable and tardy with engraving work, 'day-dreaming to the point of genius,' and known as the man who sees spirits and talks to angels ('William Blake: the Man,' p.12, in Hamlyn & Phillips). His marriage was a loving one, however, and his wife Catherine was immensely supportive, believing the visions he was always surrounded by. Though he died in obscurity (an early biography would be sub-titled Pictor Ignotus), among his best-known works today are his illuminated books—his term for the works he engraved, printed, and colored, together with Catherine’s crucial assistance, of which Songs of Innocence was the first major example. These books beautifully intertwine words and pictures.
The songs comprising Innocence are largely a celebration of childhood—in 'The Ecchoing Green,' 'Spring,' 'Cradle Song,' and 'Nurse’s Song,' Blake evokes merriment and joy with idyllic 'happy skies' and outdoor play, tired little children gathering at the laps of their mothers, sleeping babies and sweet dreams. In the introduction, which is illustrated with the frontispiece, the speaker is asked to 'pipe a song about a Lamb,' to which he answers 'with merry chear,' and closes, 'I wrote my happy songs, / Every child may joy to hear.' Though it was written in the tradition of then-ubiquitous Divine Songs for Children (1715), a compilation of didactic, moral poetry by Isaac Watts, Blake’s work is more secular, and the purity and simplicity of the small, colorful volume seemingly aimed at children is perhaps misleading. There is a deeper meaning to be found, particularly in a poem such as 'The Chimney Sweeper,' and when read alongside Songs of Experience. 'The Chimney Sweeper' comments on a society that has overlooked the welfare of some of its children, though this commentary is more direct in Experience. Marilyn Butler notes that 'Songs of Innocence is a children’s book of a most subtle kind: a nostalgic recollection of an urban childhood, of walking out to fields at the edges of London, of remembering the child-centred world of play and the images and metre of Isaac Watts’s hymns. Songs of Experience (1794), a fully adult politicised sequel reflects the intense intellectual activity of the contentious revolution years. Together the two books read best as opposites, neither a pair nor a simple succession, with the world of the child celebrated and preferred' ('Blake in his Time,' p.16, in Hamlyn & Phillips). Innocence can be read as symbolizing before the Fall, and Experience after. It is worth noting that Songs of Innocence, along with Songs of Experience, were initially conceived and printed as two separate works, as they are in Sendak’s collection, rather than the later combined work—Songs of Innocence and of Experience—more commonly seen. They were listed individually in Blake’s prospectus of 1793, for five shillings each.
In 1788, Blake had invented a method of reproducing poetry and design: he called it illuminated printing and it would define the rest of his career. A contemporary of the artist recounts that Blake, '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, that he immediately followed his advice…' (John Thomas Smith, Nollekens and his Times, 1828, p. 461). Essentially an inversion of the traditional intaglio printing process that involved etching a picture into a copper plate, Blake’s process used an acid-resistant varnish to write his poetry and designs directly onto a copper plate, using it like a notebook, after which an acid bath would leave the text and designs standing in relief. As the printing process would reverse his text, everything had to be written backwards. His first experiment with illuminated printing was in 1788’s prose works All Religions are One and There is No Natural Religion, and by 1789’s Songs of Innocence he had mastered the technique. Another contemporary of Blake’s, his good friend and patron John Linnell, remarked that the 'most extraordinary facility seems to have been attained by Blake in writing backwards & that with a brush dipped in a glutinous liquid for the writing is in many instances highly ornamental & varied in character as may be seen in his Songs of Innocence' (qtd. in Blake Records, p. 460). After etching, Blake would then begin the painstaking process of inking the relief surfaces, using a palette he mixed himself, which he then carefully applied with a dauber, wiping the plate borders and any ink in the etched shallows. After printing on his rolling press, he or Catherine would lastly apply a thin of wash of watercolor.
No two copies of Songs of Innocence are exactly alike: they exhibit wide variation in coloring and sequence. Blake’s very first copy of Songs of Innocence (Copy U) was considered a trial, printed in charcoal black, uncolored, and on only one side of the leaf. It is now in the Houghton Library at Harvard. After the trial, the next four copies—of which this is one—were printed in green ink that Blake mixed from Prussian blue and gamboge and printed on both recto and verso. These are:
• Copy F, at the Yale Center for British Art, originally owned by George Cumberland, a lifelong friend and patron of Blake (complete, with 31 plates);
• Copy I, at the Huntington Library, originally owned by John Linnell, a lifelong friend and patron of Blake (31 plates);
• Copy J, the present Grabhorn-Berland-Sendak copy (21 plates); and
• Copy X, at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne (14 plates).
Green plates probably originating from the above printings are additionally found in Copy E, at the Huntington Library (8 green plates); and Copy S, at Cincinnati Art Museum (1 plate). None of the prints survive in more than four known copies printed in green ink.
Michael Phillips notes that each of the green copies vary also in their impositions, with different combinations of plates printed on rectos and versos. This 'suggests that the copies printed in green were either printed on separate occasions or, what is more likely, they were printed together in a not very orderly manner … Blake was feeling his way in this first printing session of Songs of Innocence. All of these combinations are also noticeably different from the next set of copies Blake printed' (William Blake: The Creation of the Songs, p.24).
Subsequent to the green-ink copies there were 16 more printed in 1789 in varying shades of ochre and brown. The coloring palette used in the green-ink copies favors green watercolor in the backgrounds and similarly in other copies the dominant watercolor wash matches the ink. The green copies favor what can be thought of as a Georgian or pastel palette, with sage and pea greens, sky and Wedgwood blues, dusky pinks, and soft yellows and greys. Phillips notes that 'For the first copies printed in green, Blake characteristically applied a thin wash across the impression in order to create tints of colour behind text and design as well as highlighting particular elements and letter formations. For the copies he printed in yellow ochre and raw sienna, Blake was characteristically more sparing in his use of water colour, just highlighting elements of the design and colouring larger images including the Frontispiece and title-page ... What is clear and distinctive about Blake’s colouring of these early copies is that he consistently used thin transparent wash, sparingly and unobtrusively, and carefully maintained the balance between text and design, making clear that they were complementary' (pp. 26-27).
The first copies of Songs of Innocence were sold to Blake’s friends and acquaintances, among them art collector and writer George Cumberland, poet Samuel Rogers, and sculptor John Flaxman. The delicate pastels employed in Sendak Copy J are most similar to that of Copy I at the Huntington whose first known owner was John Linnell, one of Blake’s closest friends and most active patrons. Approximately 30 lifetime printings of Songs of Innocence are known to be extant, with some of them now bound with Experience. Of these, only eight (including this one) are in private hands and one is untraced. This is the only copy of the original 1789 printing Songs of Innocence to come to auction since 1990.
The present copy contains 21 plates of a possible suite of 31. As noted above, copy E at the Huntington contains 8 plates printed in green ink. These comprise 8 of the 10 plates lacking in Copy J, strongly suggesting that copies E and J derive from the same set. Copy E is probably the one assembled for William Blake's friend and patron Thomas Butts in 1806. The plates in Copy J are as follows, with numbers in brackets corresponding to Keynes and Wolf’s census: [1] Frontispiece [Piper] (recto blank); [2] Songs of Innocence title (verso blank); [3] Introduction (verso blank); [15] The Shepherd; [29-30] The Little Black Boy (2 pp.); [31] The Voice of the Ancient Bard; [12] The Divine Image; [4] A Dream; [10-11] The Ecchoing Green (2 pp.); [24] On Another’s Sorrow; [14] Infant Joy; [8] The Lamb; [25-26] Spring (2 pp.); [9] The Blossom; [22] Nurses Song; [13] The Chimney Sweeper; [18-19] A Cradle Song (2 pp.).
Small octavo (162 x 110mm). E&P watermark. Comprising 21 (of 31) relief etchings on 12 leaves, printed in green and finished with watercolor, two plates with text strengthened in blue ink presumably by Blake. Near contemporary half sheep over marbled boards. Embroidered Arts & Crafts chemise by Lola F. Frampton (according to the 1925 sale catalogue), the wife of painter Edward Reginald Frampton (c. 1870-1923), a trained book designer and embroiderer whose work was exhibited at the 1914 Leipziger Buchgewerbe-Austellung; modern custom box.
Works cited
Ackroyd, Peter. Blake. New York: Ballantine Books, 1997.
Bentley, Jr. G.E. Blake Books. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
---. Blake Records. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
---. 'G.E. Bentley: Blake Collection.' William Blake: Poet & Printmaker. https://library.vicu.utoronto.ca/collections/special_collections/bentley_blake_collection/. Accessed April 2025.
---. 'Ozias Humphry, William Upcott, and William Blake.' Humanities Association Review 26 (1975): 116-120.
Blake, William and Andrew Lincoln, ed. Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake’s Illuminated Works, Volume 2. General editor David Bindman. Princeton UP and the William Blake Trust, 1998.
Butlin, Martin. William Blake. London: Tate Gallery, 1978.
Essick, Robert and Joseph Viscomi, eds. The William Blake Archive. www.williamblakearchive.org. Accessed April 2025.
Essick, Robert. Sendak and Blake Illustrating Songs of Innocence. New York: Battledore Ltd & Society of Illustrations, 2008.
---. William Blake, Printmaker. Princeton UP, 1980.
Gilchrist, Alexander. Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus.' London: Macmillan and Co., 1863.
Hamlyn, Robin and Michael Phillips. William Blake. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2000.
Keynes, Geoffrey & Edwin Wolf, 2nd. William Blake’s Illuminated Books: A Census. New York: the Grolier Club, 1953.
Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. The Letters of William Blake. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968.
Myrone, Martin and Amy Concannon, eds. William Blake. Princeton UP, 2019.
Phillips, Michael. William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing. London: The British Library, 2000.
Smith, John Thomas. Nollekens and his times. London: H. Colburn, 1828.