William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job

[3][4] In 1793 Blake engraved a composition based upon these drawings, which he offered for sale in the Prospectus to the Public for twelve shillings.

Blake's next illustration was the tempera painting Job and his Daughters (1800), commissioned by Thomas Butts (see gallery below).

These were initially believed to be from Blake's hand, but their authenticity has been all but refuted by scholars such as Martin Butlin[8] and Bo Lindberg.

Unlike Blake's own productions in relief etching, this, like other commissioned work, was produced using the intaglio method of engraving.

The completed engravings differ from Blake's original watercolours mainly in the complex marginal designs that they employ.

After completing the engravings, Blake painted an additional tempera of Satan Smiting Job with Boils in 1826.

Harold Bloom has interpreted Blake's most famous lyric, The Tyger, as a revision of God's rhetorical questions in the Book of Job concerning Behemoth and Leviathan.

[20] In his Public Address (possibly from 1810[21]), Blake also indicates "Marc Antonio" (Marcantonio Raimondi), as an artist who inspired his linear technique of engraving.

Such notables as John Constable and Lady Caroline Lamb invited him to dine, and the collector Charles Alders introduced him to Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

As early as 1857 John Ruskin wrote of Blake in The Elements of Drawing that The Book of Job, engraved by himself, is of the highest rank in certain characters of imagination and expression; in the mode of obtaining certain effects of light it will also prove a very useful example to you.

[24]The triple-mirror design in the background of plate 20, Job and his Daughters, is believed to have influenced William Holman Hunt's use of the same motif in his painting The Lady of Shalott; Blake was highly regarded by the Pre-Raphaelites.

No it is bought with the priceOf all that a man hath his house his wife his children Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy And in the witherd field where the farmer plows for bread in vain