Job and His Daughters

1799/1800

William Blake

Artist, British, 1757 - 1827

An old man with a long, white beard and flowing, white hair sits surrounded by three young women in a gold-toned room in this horizontal painting. The people all have dark dots for eyes and touches of pink on the cheeks of their otherwise parchment-white skin. At the center of the composition, the man holds his arms out straight to his sides, lifted slightly above shoulder level, with his index fingers pointing and his middle fingers touching his thumbs to make a ring with each hand. He looks down to our right under bushy, furrowed brows, and his beard falls to his lap. His cream-white robe falls to the floor over his legs, but the toes of one foot peek out from under the hem. Two young women with blond hair sit to either side of him, leaning against his legs and sides. The woman to our left wears a harvest-yellow, long-sleeved gown, and she holds her hands pressed to her upper chest. The woman to our right wears a muted, rose-pink gown. The third woman, in front of the man, sits with her back to us, hands palm-down on the floor to either side of her, and her face resting on the man’s knees. Her blond hair is partially held in a net at the base of her skull, and her slate-blue gown pools around her. The edges of a ruby-red seat curl to either side of the women flanking the man. On the upper half of the wall opposite us, a roundel is flanked by a square panel to each side. We can barely make out the forms of some people in the monochromatic, caramel-brown sections. The floor is loosely patterned with muted red, black, royal blue, and butter yellow. Upon closer inspection, we find that the surface of the painting is cracked throughout.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    pen and tempera on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Rosenwald Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 27.3 x 38.4 cm (10 3/4 x 15 1/8 in.)
    framed: 40.6 x 51.4 cm (16 x 20 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1943.11.11

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Painted for Thomas Butts [1757-1845];[1] by descent to Thomas Butts, Jr. (sale, Messrs. Foster, London, 29 June 1853, no. 86), bought by J.C. Strange, Highgate. (Harvey), London, by c. 1865. William Bell Scott by 1876 (sale, Sotheby's, London, 14 July 1892, no. 236), bought by (Bernard Quaritch), London. Charles Eliot Norton, Cambridge, Massachusetts [d. 1908]. Gabriel Wells. George C. Smith, Jr., by 1930 (sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, 2-3 November 1938, 1st day, no. 109, repro.), bought by (Rosenbach & Co.), Philadelphia, for Lessing J. Rosenwald, Philadelphia; gift to NGA, 1943.
[1] One of a series of over 135 illustrations to the Bible commissioned by Thomas Butts, Blake's most important patron.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1876

  • The Works of William Blake, Burlington Fine Arts Club, London, 1876, no. 107.

1886

  • International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art: Pictures of Works of Art, Edinburgh, 1886, no. 1442.

1930

  • Works of William Blake, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1930, unnumbered.

1939

  • William Blake 1757-11827: an Exhibition of the Works of William Blake selected from Collections in the United States, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1939, no. 148.

1957

  • The Art of William Blake, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1957, no. 4.

2000

  • William Blake, Tate Britain, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2000-2001, no. 43, repro. (shown only in London).

Bibliography

1863

  • "Rossetti, William. Annotated Catalogue". In Gilchrist, Alexander. Life of William Blake, "Pictor Ignotus." 2 vols. London and Cambridge, 1863: 2:no. 99.

1935

  • Binyon, Laurence, and (Sir) Geoffrey Keynes. Illustrations of the Book of Job by William Blake. New York, 1935: 46 (under no. 20).

1957

  • Keynes, Sir Geoffrey. William Blake's Illustrations to the Bible. Clairvaux (The Trianon Press), 1957: 22, no. 742, repro.

1965

  • Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 15.

1968

  • National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 8, repro.

1973

  • Lindberg, Bo. William Blake's Illustrations to the Book of Job. Abo, 1973: 23, 347, nos. xxvi, 20G.

1975

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 30, repro.

1976

  • Rosenwald, Lessing J. Recollections of a Collector. New York, 1976: 97.

1977

  • Bindman, David. Blake as an Artist. Oxford, 1977: 209.

1981

  • Butlin, Martin. The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake. 2 vols. New Haven and London, 1981: 1:no. 394; 2:color pl. 500.

1985

  • European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 49, repro.

1992

  • Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 17-19, repro. 18.

2004

  • Hand, John Oliver. National Gallery of Art: Master Paintings from the Collection. Washington and New York, 2004: 340-341, no. 275, color repro.

Wikidata ID

Q20180367

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