# The Ancient of Days > William Blake - 1794 (plate first etched and printed); this impression traditionally dated to shortly before August 1827 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/artworks/william-blake/blake-ancient-of-days/ > Published by Servola Systems GmbH. Last verified: 2026-08-28 ## Tombstone - **Artist:** William Blake - **Date:** 1794 (plate first etched and printed); this impression traditionally dated to shortly before August 1827 - **Medium:** Relief etching printed in colour, finished by hand in pen and ink, watercolour, body colour and gold, on paper - **Dimensions:** Design approximately 23.3 x 16.8 cm, based on other named impressions of the same plate (British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum). Full sheet measurements for the Whitworth's own impression, the one this record is anchored on, were not published in the sources consulted. - **Object type:** Print - **Period:** British, Romantic era, late eighteenth to early nineteenth century - **Current location:** The Whitworth, The University of Manchester - **Attribution:** accepted ## Summary A single Blake design, etched in 1794 as the frontispiece to his illuminated book Europe a Prophecy, showing his mythological figure Urizen reaching down through cloud and fire to set a pair of compasses against the void: a design widely read as Blake's rejection of a purely rational, Newtonian account of creation, though scholars differ on how far to press that reading. Blake kept reprinting and individually hand-colouring the plate for nearly three decades, so no two surviving impressions are identical and there is no single canonical original.This record is anchored on one specific, named impression: the sheet held by the Whitworth, The University of Manchester, traditionally identified, on the strength of an account by Blake's friend and executor Frederick Tatham, as the last impression Blake worked on, days before his death in August 1827. Modern scholarship treats the dramatic deathbed staging of that story with real skepticism, even while accepting that Blake did finish a late impression for Tatham around that time; this record reports both the tradition and the doubt.The Whitworth's sheet entered its collection in 1892 as part of a large gift from the Manchester newspaper proprietor and collector John Edward Taylor. How it reached him from Tatham across the preceding sixty-five years is not documented in the sources consulted, and no recorded market sale of this specific impression was found. ## Provenance Every link carries a grade. `documented` means a cited source supports it, `disputed` means the identification is argued but not established, `unknown` means we have no owner for that span and have not bridged it. - **1794-1820s** William and Catherine Blake, working from their own household `[documented]` (creation and repeated reprinting) Blake first etched and printed the plate as the frontispiece to Europe a Prophecy in 1794, and continued to pull and hand-colour individual impressions of it for decades afterward. The Fitzwilliam's copy K impression carries the 1794 title-page date but its paper is watermarked 1820-1821, direct physical proof that Blake was still printing from the same plate more than a quarter-century after the nominal publication date. - **1827** Frederick Tatham `[disputed]` (commission) By Tatham's own later account, repeated by Alexander Gilchrist, Blake finished and hand-tinted an impression of this print for Tatham in the last days of his life, for a fee higher than he had ever previously been paid for the design, working on it propped up in bed. That Blake made and coloured a late impression for Tatham around this time is not itself disputed. The dramatic staging of the story, that Blake then threw down the finished sheet declaring he could not improve it, sketched Catherine, and sang, is treated with scholarly skepticism by Robson and Viscomi (1996), who argue on medical grounds that Blake was almost certainly too ill in his final hours for such activity, and suggest Tatham dramatized or relocated an episode that likely took place somewhat earlier in his final illness. - **1827-1892** Unknown intermediate owner or owners `[unknown]` (gap) How the impression passed out of Tatham's hands, or out of whatever remained of Blake's estate after Tatham's disputed claim to it, and into the collection of John Edward Taylor is not documented in the sources consulted. Tatham dispersed much of his Blake holdings over the following decades and, by his own later admission after joining an Irvingite sect, destroyed some works he judged diabolically inspired. Whether this sheet passed through the print trade, a private sale, or a more direct route is unknown. - **1892-present** The Whitworth, The University of Manchester `[documented]` (gift) Given to the Whitworth Institute, now the Whitworth, The University of Manchester, in 1892 by John Edward Taylor (1830-1905), proprietor of the Manchester Guardian, as part of a gift of more than 150 of the finest watercolours and drawings in his collection. Taylor continued giving to the gallery until his death in 1905. The impression remains in the Whitworth's collection, catalogued as Europe Plate i, Frontispiece, The Ancient of Days. ## Open questions - How many copies of Europe a Prophecy actually survive. Sources consulted disagree, one giving nine known copies and a separate tally of named institutional holdings running closer to a dozen or thirteen, with no dated modern census reconciling the two figures found. - Whether Blake literally coloured this impression propped up in bed days before his death, exclaimed over it and then sketched his wife and sang, as Tatham recorded and Gilchrist repeated, or whether that vivid sequence is a later dramatization: Robson and Viscomi's 1996 medical reading of Blake's final illness argues the latter. - How the Whitworth's impression passed from Frederick Tatham, or from Blake's contested estate, into John Edward Taylor's collection before his 1892 gift. No source consulted documents the intervening sixty-five years. - Whether any impression of this specific frontispiece, as distinct from a complete bound copy of Europe a Prophecy, has ever changed hands at public auction with a recorded price. None was found in the sources consulted. - The Whitworth's current formal accession number for the object was not found in the sources consulted; only its online catalogue title and system identifier were available. ## Sources - [1] Wikipedia, 'The Ancient of Days'. Tertiary source, consolidating the frontispiece's publication history, named copies, the Tatham story and later reception. Flagged for replacement with the Blake Archive's own copy-by-copy catalogue and Butlin's or Bentley's descriptive bibliographies. - [2] Wikipedia, 'Europe a Prophecy'. Tertiary source, for the book's plate count, printing history and the stated figure of nine surviving copies. Flagged for replacement with G. E. Bentley's Blake Books or the William Blake Archive's own copy census. - [3] Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, 'Pictor Ignotus' (London, 1863), vol. 1, pp. 379-380, for the traditional account of Blake colouring the print for Tatham on his deathbed. - [4] Lane Robson and Joseph Viscomi, 'Blake's Death', Blake, An Illustrated Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 36-49, for the medical and source-critical argument that the deathbed staging of the Tatham story is likely dramatized. - [5] Joseph Viscomi, 'Blake's Death', companion summary page to the Robson and Viscomi article. - [6] The Whitworth, The University of Manchester, online catalogue record, ''Europe' Plate i: Frontispiece, 'The Ancient of Days'', for the object's medium, the 'thought to be the last that Blake worked on' identification, and the John Edward Taylor gift. - [7] Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, catalogue record for Europe a Prophecy, copy K, plate 1, accession P.127-1950(19), for the medium, the 1794 title-page date, and the 1820-1821 watermark dating. - [8] British Museum, Collection Online, object P_1859-0625-72, for the British Museum's own impression of the frontispiece. - [9] Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 Supplement, 'Taylor, John Edward', for Taylor's biography, his 1892 gift of over 150 watercolours and drawings to the Whitworth Institute, and his death in 1905. - [10] Wikipedia, 'Frederick Tatham'. Tertiary source, for Tatham's role as Blake's later companion and self-asserted heir, his dispute with John Linnell, and his later destruction of Blake material after joining an Irvingite sect. - [11] Wikipedia, 'Newton (Blake)'. Tertiary source, for Newton's technique, dimensions, Tate holding, and the shared compass motif with The Ancient of Days. - [12] Tate, 'William Blake's cast of characters', for the description of Urizen's role and meaning in Blake's mythology. - [13] Joseph Viscomi, 'Posthumous Blake: The Roles of Catherine Blake, C. H. Tatham, and Frederick Tatham in Blake's Afterlife', Blake, An Illustrated Quarterly, for the dispersal of Blake's estate after his and Catherine's deaths and Tatham's contested claim to it. - [14] Wikimedia Commons, Category:The Ancient of Days by William Blake, and the individual file API records for each image used, for licence verification (LicenseShortName: Public domain in every case checked) and institutional attribution. - [15] Wikipedia, 'William Blake'. Tertiary source, for the artist's biography: dates, apprenticeship, invention of relief etching, marriage to Catherine Boucher, patronage by Thomas Butts, Swedenborgian influence, reported visions, the Ancients, burial at Bunhill Fields, and posthumous losses of his work. Flagged for replacement with a scholarly biography (Bentley's The Stranger from Paradise or Ackroyd's Blake) and primary Blake Archive material. - [16] Wikisource, 'Laocoon (Blake)', for the text of Blake's engraved annotations including 'Science is the Tree of Death. Art is the Tree of Life.' - [17] Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, biography entry 'John Edward Taylor (1830-1905)' in the Thomas Girtin catalogue raisonne project, for the confirmed detail that Taylor gave over 150 of the finest watercolours in his collection to the newly created Whitworth Institute in 1892. Neither the Whitworth's own catalogue record (source 6) nor the Dictionary of National Biography entry (source 9) states this figure or date directly; this source was added to close that gap. --- Images on this record are public domain or CC0 and are hosted by us. No image on this site is generated or simulated. If you quote this record, quote the provenance grades with it.