Beschreibung:

Blake, WilliamChaucers Canterbury Pilgrims. Painted in Fresco by William Blake & by him Engraved & Published October 8, 1810. London: 1810 [but Philadelphia: Sessler, circa 1941]
Engraving (image size: 298 x 940 mm; sheet size: 438 x 1,010 mm). Printed on Rives wove paper watermarked "France," fifth state (of five), a rich impression. Final state of the largest Blake engraving. "Every age is a Canterbury Pilgrimage; we all pass on, each sustaining one of these characters; nor can a child be born who is not one or other of these characters of Chaucer. … Thus the reader will observe that Chaucer makes every one of his characters perfect in his kind; every one is an Antique Statue, the image of a class and not of an imperfect individual" (William Blake . Working in a style intended to evoke the engravings of Chaucer's time, Blake's composition presents the various characters of The Canterbury Tales as they begin their pilgrimage. "The time chosen is the early morning, before sunrise, when the jolly company are leaving the Tabarde Inn," Blake wrote. "The Knight and Squire with the Squire's Yeoman lead the Procession; next follow the youthful Abbess, her nun, and three priests; her greyhounds attend her. … Next follow the Friar and Monk, and then the Tapiser, the Pardoner, and the Sompnour and Manciple. After this 'Our Host,' who occupies the centre of the cavalcade, and directs them to the Knight, as the person who would be likely to commence their task of each telling a tale in their order. After the Host follows the Shipman, the Haberdasher, the Dyer, the Franklin, the Physician, the Ploughman, the Lawyer, the Poor Parson, the Merchant, the Wife of Bath, the Miller, the Cook, the Oxford Scholar, Chaucer himself; and the Reev comes as Chaucer has described:- And ever he rode hindermost of the rout." The view is eastward from the Tabard in Southwark, across the Bridge from London, as Blake conceived it to have been in Chaucer's day. He based his costumes on ancient monuments and other records. "As a literary piece," it has been noted, Blake's engraving "has hardly an equal in the whole field of art." The engraving was begun late in 1809, and issued by the artist in October of the following year. In his Prospectus for the issue, Blake declared that the English nation would "flourish or decay" according to the recognition they gave him for his year's labor. The printing plate survived, and passed after Blake's death through the estate of Catherine, Blake's wife, eventually finding its way to the collection of John Giles. Sold at auction with the Giles collection in 1881, the printing plate was then purchased by Colnaghi, who issued restrikes on laid India paper. By 1940, the plate was in the possession of a New York art dealer, who sold it to the wife of noted collector A. Edward Newton for her to present to her husband as a fiftieth anniversary present. After Newton's death, the plate was sold with his famed library at auction on 16 April 1941, for the princely sum of $2300 to Charles J. Rosenbloom via his agent at the Parke Bernet sale, Philadelphia bookseller Charles Sessler.  Before delivering the printing plate to Rosenbloom, Sessler had a small number of prints pulled on French handmade paper. Although Rosenbloom only authorized 35 prints, Essick and Young identified at least ninety-one impressions. "Whereas most of the identifiable Colnaghi restrikes were flatly printed, the Sessler prints were heavily inked and printed. The plate shows minimal wear and the Sessler prints are generally preferable to Colnaghi's earlier printings—probably because of better cleaning of the copper and superior presswork" (Essick and Young). Rosenbloom donated the plate to Yale University in 1973. REFERENCE:Robert Essick and Michael Young "Blake's Canterbury Print: The Posthumous Pilgrimage of the Copperplate" in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 2, Fall 1981, pp. 78-82; Essick, Separate Plates of William Blake XVI