Sabrina's Silvery Flood, from Thornton's "Pastorals of Virgil" (1821, Met-Objekt 3890)
Original title: Sabrina's Silvery Flood, from Thornton's "Pastorals of Virgil"
kurzbeschreibung
This 1821 wood engraving by William Blake presents a river landscape with a thatched house and trees. It belongs among the illustrations Blake made for Robert John Thornton's 'Pastorals of Virgil' and survives here in a second state of the print.
Description
A river winds from the left edge of the image to the right. On the right side stands a plain building with a steep straw roof. Along the left bank trees and shrubs crowd together, while farther off more clusters of trees and hinted hills can be made out. Shades of grey in various steps carry the whole sheet; the light stays soft and emerges from delicate hatching.
Context
Blake contributed this vignette to Thornton's 'Pastorals of Virgil', intended for an edition of Virgil's pastoral poems published in 1821. He chose wood engraving, a medium common for book illustration in his day. Blake's work for Thornton is known for its close observation of nature, held in high esteem during the Romantic period.
Impact
Calm emanates from the sheet, almost silence. The eye follows the course of the river, which carries it from one side to the other, while the sparse contrasts bring out the natural details. The restrained colouring strengthens the idyllic, almost meditative impression.
Technique
In wood engraving the design is cut out of the block and then printed. In the second state, fine shading and textures come forward, resulting from the varying depths of the cuts. At only about 3.2 x 7.3 cm, the format demanded extremely precise work.
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Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)