Sabrina's Silvery Flood, from Thornton's "Pastorals of Virgil" (1821, Met-Objekt 3877)
Original title: Sabrina's Silvery Flood, from Thornton's "Pastorals of Virgil"
kurzbeschreibung
A wood engraving by William Blake from 1821, showing a river landscape with a building and trees. The print is in its second state and belongs to the illustrations for Virgil's Pastorals. Executed as a wood engraving, the sheet presents a quiet rural view.
Description
A river runs from the left to the right side of the image. On the right stands a simple building with a pitched roof; on the left bank, trees and bushes line up. Further woods close the view toward the horizon. Light falls evenly across the surface, with no shadows, suggesting a time of day without direct sunlight. The motif is kept monochrome in shades of gray.
Context
Blake made this wood engraving for the 1821 edition of Robert John Thornton's The Pastorals of Virgil. It is one of the illustrations Blake contributed to this classical text edition. The prints were executed as wood engravings, a method Blake used in his later years for book illustration. The sheet belongs to a series intended for a broad public.
Impact
The evenly distributed brightness and delicate lines create a quiet, almost meditative mood. Because the image is restricted to gray tones, the texture of the landscape comes forward and the sheet gains a timeless calm.
Technique
As a wood engraving, the motif was cut into a woodblock and then printed. Characteristic of the method are the fine, parallel lines that produce the various gray tones. The present sheet is the second state of the print, indicating later revisions to the block.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)