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Artist or Maker: William Blake (1757-1827)

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Description: The Man sweeping the Interpreter's Parlour (Binyon 474; Keynes XI; Bindman 619b; Essik XX)
white-line metal cut, on wove, watermark J Whatman, with wide margins, with pale offsetting from The Ghost of Abel (B. 620), with some mount staining, hinged at the left sheet edge, otherwise generally in good condition, framed
P. 80 x 161 mm., S. 330 x 230 mm.

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Provenance: Captain George Fenwick-Owen 1927, sold Sotheby's London, 4 May 1954, lot 105 (£40 to Colnaghi).
George Goyder by 1956.

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Exhibited: London, Burlington Fine Arts Club, Blake Centenary Exhibition, 1927, no. 69.

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Published: G. Keynes, Engravings by Blake: The Separate Plates, Dublin, 1956, p. 31.
R.N. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, Princeton, 1983, pp. 103-4, no. XX 2F.

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Notes: Property from the Collection of the late George Goyder, C.B.E. (1908-1997)

The earlier part of the provenance given above is suggested by Essick on the basis of the faint offset from plate 1 of Blake's The Ghost of Abel published in 1822.

The subject, from Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, was first identified by William Michael Rossetti ('Engravings' in A. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, London, 1863, vol. II, p. 258): in Bunyan's text the dust, which was first swept and 'began so abundantly to fly about' and was then settled by sprinkling water, typifies Man's sins, disturbed by the Law but settled by the Gospel. Blake shows the Law as an old man with bat-like wings and the Gospel as Bunyan's Damsel; the small figures are presumably the sins.

This is an example of the second state of the print, dateable to circa 1821-2 by the 1821 watermarks on three of the other known impressions. The work has been variously described as a 'woodcut on copper', a 'relief-etching and white-line engraving' and a 'woodcut on pewter'; Essick remains undecided (op. cit., p. 110; his account on pp. 102-110, with illustrations, is the fullest on the states, dating, technique and subject of this work).

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