BLAKE’S PAINTINGS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20522, 25 September 1928, Page 13

BLAKE’S PAINTINGS.

DISCOVERED IN AUCKLAND. ART EXPERT’S CONFIRMATION. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, September 24. Art experts in London have decided that complete set of “ Illustrations to the Book of Job,” which had remained hidden from public recognition in a quiet little home in Ellerslie for over half _ a century, are substantially the work of the poet, painter, and mystic, William Blake. According to private cabled advice received yesterday, Dr Laurancc Binyon, the well-known author and deputy keeper-in-charge of the Sub-department of Oriental Prints and Drawings, who is the authority | at the British Museum on Blake and his I works, has made a statement after careful I examination of the set of 21 water colours i that “ the drawings are substantially | Blake’s own work, except the drawing for i the title page. This was copied from an I engraving.” I Dr Jeffrey Keynes, another expert who is described in England as knowing more about Blake than .anyone else, has expressed himself as being in agreement with i Dr Binyon. An English artist, Mr Albin Martin, brought the paintings to New Zealand when he arrived in 1851. Romance surrounds tho manner in which the works found their way to tho Dominion. In 1823 Blake painted his first set of “ illustrations ” for Thomas Butts, a man who befriended unrecognised genius with a bountiful hand. It was soon after the pictures were completed that Blake met John Linncll, then a young man and a profound admirer of the eccentric painter’s art. He commissioned Blake to paint a duplicate set, very possibly as an excuse to place the older man on a pension. It was intended, to take engravings from the pictures, which were finished in 1825. Linncll paid Blake £IOO for the set, and a further £SO on account of the sales of engravings. Two years after the set was completed Blake died, and seven yeras later Mr Martin became associated with Linncll as a friend and pupil. He sailed for New Zealand 14 years later, and it is believed that ho received the Blake paintings from Linnell and brought them with him to New Zealand.