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Lot Essay
The Book of Job is an ancient Hebrew text, included in both Jewish and Christian scriptures, which tells the story of Job, a wealthy and righteous man who was ‘blameless and upright, fearing God and shunning evil’ (Job 1:1). Job’s piety is challenged by Satan, who claims that Job’s righteousness is dependent on God’s blessing, and that, should God withdraw it, Job would curse Him. God grants Satan permission to test Job, and Job is afflicted with grievous trials, losing his children, wealth and health. The narrative centres on Job’s complaint to God, in which he protests his innocence and the unjustness of his fate. The Book of Job is a meditation on the mystery of human suffering and challenges the conventional notion that God rewards virtue and punishes sin. When God finally speaks in the famous concluding chapters he neither explains his reasons for Job’s suffering nor defends his justice, but instead expounds his divine wisdom and authority which both established and maintains creation.
In 1821 the artist John Linnell asked William Blake to make him a copy of a set of watercolours of the story of Job, which Blake had first created in 1805-06 for his patron Thomas Butts (The original is today at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Linnell’s copy set is at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard.) The commission was intended to relieve Blake’s precarious finances, and in 1823 Linnell had another idea to help his protégé: to create an engraved series of the subject. A contract was issued in March 1823, and Blake began to revisit his original designs. He reduced the scale of the images and sketched additional pencil studies and ideas for border designs. Although the engravings carry a publication date of 8 March 1825, they did not in fact appear until the following year.
Formally and technically, the ‘Illustrations for The Book of Job’ are undoubtedly his most coherent and sophisticated works in the print medium. They are perhaps the most elegant expression of his very idiosyncratic style and understanding of the world. His treatment of the story of Job is characteristically unconventional and interwoven with his own personal mythology of Jerusalem and the figure of Albion: ‘Instead of the exemplary figure whose faith is sorely tested…Job is seen like Albion as we first encounter him, as a Fallen man, cut off from his spiritual life. Like Albion he [Job] achieves redemption through suffering’. (Robin Hamlyn & Michael Phillips, William Blake, London, 2000, p. 170-71).
In 1821 the artist John Linnell asked William Blake to make him a copy of a set of watercolours of the story of Job, which Blake had first created in 1805-06 for his patron Thomas Butts (The original is today at the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, Linnell’s copy set is at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard.) The commission was intended to relieve Blake’s precarious finances, and in 1823 Linnell had another idea to help his protégé: to create an engraved series of the subject. A contract was issued in March 1823, and Blake began to revisit his original designs. He reduced the scale of the images and sketched additional pencil studies and ideas for border designs. Although the engravings carry a publication date of 8 March 1825, they did not in fact appear until the following year.
Formally and technically, the ‘Illustrations for The Book of Job’ are undoubtedly his most coherent and sophisticated works in the print medium. They are perhaps the most elegant expression of his very idiosyncratic style and understanding of the world. His treatment of the story of Job is characteristically unconventional and interwoven with his own personal mythology of Jerusalem and the figure of Albion: ‘Instead of the exemplary figure whose faith is sorely tested…Job is seen like Albion as we first encounter him, as a Fallen man, cut off from his spiritual life. Like Albion he [Job] achieves redemption through suffering’. (Robin Hamlyn & Michael Phillips, William Blake, London, 2000, p. 170-71).