Description: Design for the Dedication to Blair's 'Grave'; a female figure holding a key in each hand floating above another laid out below, and approaching an arched door with branches growing over at r. 1807
Pen and grey ink, with watercolour, over graphite
Inscriptions: Inscription Content: Inscribed by Blake: "To the Queen" and traces of his dedicatory verses beginning: "The D[oor of Death is made of gold...]"
Dimensions:
Height: 302 millimetres
Width: 238 millimetres
Curator's comments: This design of the book's dedication to the Queen was not used by the publisher, although he did print the dedicatory verses.
See the facsimile publication, 'William Blake's Watercolour Inventions in illustration of "The Grave" by Robert Blair', ed. Martin Butlin, and including essays by him and by Morton D. Paley (The William Blake Trust, 2009). For further information about this series of watercolours for Blair's 'Grave', see this book and the curatorial comment for one of the designs for the title page, 1856,0712.208.

Associated titles: Associated Title The Grave
Associated names: Illustration of Robert Blair

Acquisition date: 1894

Acquisition name:
Purchased from Herbert Harlakenden Gilchrist
Previous owner/ex-collection Anne Gilchrist

Exhibition History
1880 Boston, MFA, William Blake, no.122
1892 Philadelphia, Acad FA, English Pre-Raphaelites/William Blake, no.194
1957 BM, William Blake and his circle, no.4(4)
1975 Mar-Jul, Hamburg, Kunsthalle, William Blake, no.143
1975 Frankfurt, Städelsches Kunstinstitut, William Blake, no143
1978 Jun-Jul, Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, Blake, no. 158
2002/3 Oct-Jan, Valencia, IVAM Centre Julio Gonzalez, De Forma Cerrada
2007 April-May, Hull, Ferens AG (Sth Bank Tour), Blake
2007/8 Nov-Jan, Glasgow, Burrell Coll (Sth Bank Tour), Blake
2008 Jan-April, Manchester, Whitworth AG (Sth Bank Tour), Blake