William Blake's Illustrations for the Book of Job: Engravings for the Book of Job

Blake's masterpiece of printmaking comprises a series of 22 prints engraved in pure line without preliminary etching. Created in 1826, these were based on the artist's watercolours of the same subject from 1806 (Morgan Library, New York) and 1821 (Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard). Unlike these watercolours, the prints have complex marginal decorations that comment on the biblical text. Ruskin remarked that the work 'is of the highest rank in certain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of obtaining certain effects of light it will also prove a very useful example to you. In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt.' SELLING POINTS: . Handsome new 64-page edition reproducing all 22 of William Blake's engraved illustrations for the Book of Job . Blake's printmaking masterpiece (1826), engraved entirely in pure line without preliminary etching . Authoritative texts by Katharine Dell, Professor of Old Testament Literature and Theology at the University of Cambridge, and Joseph Viscomi, Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and co-editor of the Blake Archive . Published to coincide with the exhibition of works by Richard Dadd, a near-contemporary of Blake