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Los Illustration for First Book of Urizen | William Blake | 1794

Los Illustration for First Book of Urizen | William Blake | 1794

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About the artwork:

In William Blake's mythological framework, Los represents the embodiment of human creativity and imagination, serving as the earthly manifestation of Urthona, one of the four Zoas. As the "eternal prophet," Los is depicted as a blacksmith and craftsman, laboring at his forge to shape the material world and construct the visionary city of Golgonooza, which symbolizes artistic and spiritual endeavor. Blake's illustrations often portray Los in the act of creation, emphasizing his role in the continuous struggle against the forces of reason and oppression, as personified by Urizen. These depictions highlight Los's significance as a creative force striving to infuse the world with imagination and spiritual vitality. 

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  • Title "Los howld in a dismal stupor..." — Plate 10 of The (First) Book of Urizen (Copy A; also numbered Plate 7 in the standard Blake Archive sequence)
  • Artist William Blake (English Romantic poet, painter, printmaker, mystic and engraver; London, 28 November 1757 - London, 12 August 1827; trained at the Royal Academy Schools; pupil and assistant of the antiquarian engraver James Basire)
  • Year of creation 1794 (composed, etched, printed and coloured by Blake in his Lambeth period — the years 1790-1800 — at his house at 13 Hercules Buildings in Lambeth, south London, where he produced the so-called "Lambeth Books," his most concentrated outpouring of prophetic illuminated works including The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, America: a Prophecy, Europe: a Prophecy, The Song of Los, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los. The First Book of Urizen — printed in Lambeth in 1794, "Printed by Will Blake 1794" — is Blake's radical mythic rewriting of the Pentateuch and a parody of the Book of Genesis. Together with The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania, both of 1795, it forms a triptych retelling of the creation and fall from three different mythological points of view; Blake seems to have been dissatisfied with the two 1795 sequels, since each survives in only a single copy, whereas eight copies of Urizen exist. The plate shown — Plate 10 in Copy A's arrangement — depicts the moment from Chapter II of the poem in which Los, the eternal prophet and embodiment of the imagination who has been bound to and finally torn from the side of the fallen, ossified Urizen, howls in agony at the wrenching-apart: a figure of creative anguish at the cost of the original division between imagination and reason in Blake's myth. Note that the plate order varies considerably between the eight copies, which contain twenty-four, twenty-six, twenty-seven or twenty-eight plates in different sequences; this image appears in the standard Blake Archive / G. E. Bentley, Jr., Blake Books 1977 numbering as object 7 in Copy G [Library of Congress] and as Plate 10 in Copy A [Yale])
  • Technique/Medium Color-printed relief etching, finished with watercolour (and in some copies with pen and ink). The plate was etched in relief in 1794 in Blake's "illuminated printing" method — with colour ink applied directly to the copperplate before the page was printed — then hand-coloured. Copies A-F were colour-printed c.1794-96; Copy G was printed c.1815 in orange ink and then entirely covered in watercolour
  • Original dimensions Plate (image area): approximately 15.2 x 10.5 cm; sheet: approximately 25.4 x 18.1 cm (per the Yale Center for British Art's Copy A; size varies slightly between copies due to different paper trimming and printing arrangements)
  • Collection/Museum Multiple impressions exist, since The (First) Book of Urizen survives in only eight known copies (copies A through H), produced and coloured by Blake himself between 1794 and c.1818, and the various copies are dispersed across major rare-book collections: the Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection [Copy A, accession B1992.8.5(10)]; the Morgan Library & Museum, New York [Copy B, PML 63139, one of only two surviving copies containing the complete twenty-eight plates]; the Library of Congress, Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection [Copy G]; the Houghton Library, Harvard; the British Museum [a separate impression in A Small Book of Designs]; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale; and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne (which holds a separate color-printed impression of one of the related plates). None of the original copperplates survives

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