1943.180: Christ Blessing

Identification and Creation

Object Number

1943.180

People

William Blake, British (London, England 1757 - 1827 London, England)

Title

Christ Blessing

Other Titles

Alternate Title: The Saviour / Head of Christ in Glory / Head of our Saviour

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

painting

Date

c. 1810

Culture

British

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/230048

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Tempera on canvas

Dimensions

76.5 x 63.5 cm (30 1/8 x 25 in.)
framed: 99.5 x 86.5 cm (39 3/16 x 34 1/16 in.)

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Thomas Butts, by descent; to Thomas Butts, Jr., sold [through Fosters, London, June 29, 1853, lot 74, as "The Saviour"]; to J. C. Strange. Francis Harvey, 1865. James Jackson Jarves, by descent; to his daughter, Mrs. Annabel Kerr, 1876, by descent; to her husband, Captain Walter R. Kerr?. Private collector, sold [through Christe's, London, July 17, 1925, lot 51]. [Scott and Fowles, New York], sold; to Grenville Lindall Winthrop, 1930, bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop

Accession Year

1943

Object Number

1943.180

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.

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Publication History

• Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus (3 vols.), Macmillan and Co. (London, Cambridge, 1863), II, 231; no. 201
• The Works of William Blake, exh. cat., Burlington Fine Arts Club (London, England, 1876), no. 127
• Exhibition of Books, Water Colors, Engravings, etc., by William Blake, exh. cat., A. Mudge and Son (Boston, 1891), p. 11, no.14
• Mona Wilson, The Life of William Blake (London, England, 1927), p. 316, repr. plate XVIII
• Thomas Wright, Life of William Blake, Bucks (Olney, England, 1929), vol II, 152, no. 30
• Sir Geoffrey Keynes, William Blake's Illustrations to the Bible, Trianon Press for the William Blake Trust (New York, NY, 1957), p. 34, no. 122
• Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Blake Studies, The Clarendon Press (Oxford, England, 1971), p. 156
• David Bindman, William Blake 1757-1827, exh. cat., British Council (London, England, 1975), no. 113 and fig. 76
• David Bindman, Blake as an Artist, Phaidon Press / E. P. Dutton (Oxford, England /New York, NY, 1977), p. 171
• Martin Butlin, William Blake, exh. cat., Tate Britain (London, England, 1978), no. 214 and fig. 18
• Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT and London, England, 1981), no. 670, p. 484, repr. pl. 892
• Raymond Lister, The Paintings of William Blake, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, England, 1986), no. 50 and repr., color, opposite
• Robert N. Essick, William Blake and the Language of Adam, The Clarendon Press (Oxford, England, 1989), repr. b/w plate 8, facing p. 23
• Edgar Peters Bowron, European Paintings Before 1900 in the Fogg Art Museum: A Summary Catalogue including Paintings in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, Harvard University Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 1990), p. 98; repr. as no. 29
• Morris Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake, Cornell University Press (Ithaca, NY, 1992), repr. in b/w, fig. 4-13, p. 198; listed p. xi
• Barbara Maria Stafford, Artful Science: Enlightenment, Entertainment,and the Eclipse of Visual Education, MIT Press (Cambridge, MA, 1994), repr. in b/w p. 207, fig. 145
• Chikashi Kitazaki and Mina Oya, ed., Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, exh. cat., National Museum of Western Art (Ueno, 2002), pp. 112-113, cat.#22, color repr.
• Stephan Wolohojian, ed., A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Yale University Press (U.S.) (New York, 2003), no. 144, pp. 338-340, repr. in color
• Christopher Riopelle, Harvard's Winthrop Collection: Nineteenth-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, exh. cat., National Gallery Company Limited (London, 2003), p. 14, cat. 1, ill.
• Stephan Wolohojian, Ingres, Burne-Jones, Whistler, Renoir... La Collection Grenville L. Winthrop, exh. cat., Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon and Réunion des Musées Nationaux (Paris, France, 2003), no. 144, pp. 350-351, repr. in color

Exhibition History

• Exhibition of the Works of William Blake, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 01/01/1876 - 12/31/1876
• Exhibition of Books, Water Colors, Engravings, Etc. by William Blake, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 02/07/1891 - 03/15/1891
• Blake Room, Tate Britain, London, 01/01/1927 - 12/31/1928
• Between Reality and Dreams: Nineteenth Century British and French Art from the Winthrop Collection of the Fogg Art Museum, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo, 09/14/2002 - 12/08/2002
• A Private Passion: 19th-Century Paintings and Drawings from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection, Harvard University, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon, Lyon, 03/15/2003 - 05/26/2003; National Gallery, London, 06/25/2003 - 09/14/2003; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 10/23/2003 - 01/25/2004
• For Students of Art and Lovers of Beauty: Highlights from the Collection of Grenville L. Winthrop, Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 04/16/2004
• Looking Back: The Western Tradition in Retrospect, Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, 01/20/2018 - 05/06/2018

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