The Death of the Virgin

Mary lies across the foot of the picture, her pale body enclosed in a long, almost transparent shroud. Four angels kneel around her, two at her head and two at her feet. Above this quiet act of attendance, a rainbow opens across the entire sheet. Its bands contain small winged faces, bringing a second company of angels into the coloured light. William Blake makes the deathbed feel both intimately tended and open to an immense surrounding presence. ^[1]

The Death of the Virgin belongs to Tate and dates from 1803. It is a watercolour on paper, measuring 378 by 371 millimetres: an almost square sheet whose lower horizontal body and tall central figure fit beneath the great arch of colour. Blake signed it with his monogram and the year in the lower-right corner. It was made for Thomas Butts, the patron whose biblical commissions supported Blake’s sustained exploration of religious subjects. ^{[1] [2]}

The effect depends on the relationship between stillness and movement. Mary remains stretched out close to the lower edge, while wings, drapery and rays rise around her. The rainbow gathers these upward movements into one embracing curve. Death occupies a definite physical place, but the picture gives the viewer more to look towards than the body alone. ^[1]

Attending the body

The angels bend close enough to make their care tangible. On the left, a kneeling figure supports the region of Mary's head, with another face appearing just behind. On the right, the corresponding pair incline towards her covered feet. Their wings sweep upwards along the sides of the sheet, enclosing the scene without building a room around it. The broad feathers create a loose counterpart to the rainbow's continuous arch. ^[1]

Their gestures differ from the posture of the standing figure. The angels lean and reach; the solitary figure faces forwards, hands joined at the breast. Long folds descend from those hands towards the bier. The upright body provides a firm axis inside the curve, linking the space above Mary's body with the halo that rises beyond the rainbow. The frontal posture steadies the more fluid forms around it. ^[1]

The figure's identity deserves care. The Burlington Fine Arts Club's 1876 exhibition catalogue identified the person within the rainbow as Saint John. That is valuable evidence of how the picture was understood in the nineteenth century, although it is not a surviving identification written by Blake. Tate's later catalogue discussion does not name the figure. We can securely follow the youthful face, joined hands and luminous clothing while retaining the early Saint John identification as an attributed reading. ^{[1] [2] [14]}

Mary's face is visible within the covering around her head. The fine lines of the shroud continue down her body, allowing its form to register through the pale fabric. Her head lies towards the left, while the narrow shape of the covered feet extends towards the right. The body gives the eye a long, unbroken passage across the composition. The bowed angels return attention to either end, making the simple horizontal arrangement feel carefully sustained. ^[1]

Below it, the bier introduces a strikingly different density. Its blue-green surface is covered with small repeated marks; warm vertical bands interrupt the darker colour. Beneath these runs a pattern of crossing diagonals, followed by a narrow ornamental border. These tightly packed details give the lower part of the picture weight and texture. The pale figures above seem less substantial by comparison, even though their outlines remain clear. ^[1]

There is little description of an ordinary domestic setting. No wall or window explains the light, and no distant landscape opens behind the group. Instead, slanting lines spread through the brownish background, turning the surrounding space into a field of radiance. The contrast between the richly patterned support and the open space above it gives the deathbed a secure position without confining what happens around it. ^[1]

A remembered Gospel inscription

An older inscription helps explain why Saint John entered the picture's history. Martin Butlin's Tate catalogue reports William Michael Rossetti's account of words associated with the watercolour: Christ's instruction to the beloved disciple in John 19:27, followed by the statement that the disciple took Mary into his home. Butlin notes that the inscription is no longer visible and suggests that it may have appeared on the mount. The report should therefore be distinguished from lettering still readable on the sheet. ^[2]

The Gospel passage belongs to Christ's Crucifixion. Mary and other women stand near the cross; Jesus addresses his mother and the disciple whom he loves, establishing a relationship of care between them. His own death follows shortly afterwards. John 19 does not describe Mary's deathbed. The remembered verse connects Blake's traditional subject with the care promised to Mary, rather than supplying a biblical account of the event painted here. ^[15]

That distinction gives the image room to be understood on its own terms. The verse concerns a future household, while Blake shows a body attended by angels under a rainbow. The human arrangement of care has acquired a celestial setting. If the central figure is read with the 1876 catalogue as Saint John, his prayer can be considered alongside that remembered responsibility, without turning the Gospel's few words into a detailed script for the whole design. ^{[1] [14] [15]}

Blake treated the actual exchange at the cross in The Crucifixion: ‘Behold Thy Mother’. The link between the subjects is a relationship that continues through separation. Here the cross has disappeared, and attention rests on Mary's own still body. The rainbow and the angels carry the composition beyond the immediate circumstances of the instruction recorded in John. ^{[1] [2] [15]}

A work taking shape at Felpham

Blake's letters bring this visionary scene into the practical sequence of work for Butts. On 6 July 1803, writing from Felpham, he listed seven drawings in progress for his patron. The deaths of Joseph and the Virgin Mary appear consecutively among them. The other subjects range from Jephthah and Ruth to Saint Paul and Adam and Eve. It is a varied list of commissions, rather than a numbered narrative of Mary's final days. ^[16]

The letter distinguishes those drawings from the Riposo, which Blake says he is sending at that moment. He describes the seven remaining works as advanced and expresses confidence in his continuing improvement. This makes the July letter particularly useful: it catches The Death of the Virgin during production, with the artist still thinking about what his work could become. Its signed year agrees with that documentary setting. ^{[1] [16]}

On 16 August he announced that he was sending seven drawings and believed that the delivery approximately balanced his account with Butts. He also thanked his patron for kindness and an offer to exhibit two other pictures. The letter does not repeat the seven titles. Butlin reasonably connects the delivery with the July list, while retaining the qualification that the other five were presumably the same works. The correspondence supports a summer of preparation and delivery without identifying each enclosed sheet afresh. ^{[2] [17]}

These exchanges belong near the end of Blake's stay at Felpham, as he looked forward to returning to London and seeing friends again. His gratitude to Butts runs through the practical business of commissions, accounts and future work. That relationship matters to the watercolour: the sacred subject was also a drawing made for someone whose attention and financial support Blake valued. ^{[16] [17]}

Colour and the claim to improve

Tate's display caption places this sheet within Blake's renewed study of design, light and colour at Felpham. The museum draws attention to the balanced composition, flowing outlines and radiant colouring. The white and pale grey clothing, the blue band of winged heads and the warmer outer arc make that radiance visible. The background can be dark without casting the central figures into deep, concealing shadows. ^[1]

The artist's own explanation comes in an earlier letter to Butts, dated 22 November 1802. He described two years of intense attention to light, shade and colour, and said he had reconsidered his art by putting himself back into the position of a learner. The letter is also a forceful defence of the pictures he had already supplied. He insists that they fulfilled his intentions and that remaking them might lose the energy with which they had first been produced. ^[18]

That context prevents the later watercolour from becoming a simple story of Blake correcting youthful mistakes. He could value earlier work while continuing to test his methods. In the same letter he rejects the heavy dark-and-yellow shadows he associated with admired paintings, and defends the independence of his own manner. The Death of the Virgin lets us look at the resulting choices: extended pale forms, an emphatic contour and colour that travels across the composition in broad, connected bands. ^{[1] [18]}

The companion deathbed

The Death of Saint Joseph, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, provides a particularly useful comparison. The Gallery dates it to 1803 and records Blake's signed monogram and year. The two works share more than a title pattern: each places a recumbent body beneath a rainbow filled with winged faces, above a richly patterned support. Their connection is recognised both by Butlin and by the 1876 exhibition catalogue. ^{[2] [14] [19]}

The arrangements are nevertheless distinct. Joseph's head lies on the right, reversing Mary's direction, and the two attendants gather closely around his upper body. The early exhibition catalogue identifies them as Christ and Mary. A blue covering extends along the bed towards the left, giving the horizontal body a stronger area of colour. The rainbow rises over a large interval of dark, radiating space, while the three figures form a compact group below. ^{[14] [19]}

In the Virgin watercolour, the central standing person occupies much of that interval. The four kneeling angels spread attendance to both ends of the bier, and Mary's pale shroud carries light across its width. Seen together, the pictures offer two ways of joining a deathbed to an encompassing spiritual space. The shared rainbow makes the relationship immediately apparent; the changed positions of bodies and attendants give each scene its own emotional rhythm. ^{[1] [19]}

What the rainbow may mean

The rainbow's function begins with what it does to the composition. It spans the full breadth of the sheet, joining the groups at the sides and passing behind the standing figure. Faces emerge within its coloured bands, so that colour itself seems inhabited. The eye can travel through this arc and return to the body below without crossing a firm boundary between earthly room and heavenly apparition. ^[1]

Butlin reports Kathleen Raine's suggestion that the symbolism of both companion rainbows may draw on Jacob Boehme's Mysterium Magnum. In chapter 33, Boehme develops the rainbow as a sign of the covenant with Noah and as an image of a coming revelation of the spiritual world. The proposed connection offers a way to understand Blake's arch as more than a consoling decoration. It remains Raine's proposed source, transmitted through Butlin's discussion, rather than a documented explanation supplied by Blake. ^{[2] [20]}

The relevant passage moves from the visible colours to worlds concealed within nature. Boehme associates the bow with the Last Judgement and describes Christ appearing in judgement, in protective love towards the saints, and in humanity. The emphasis on an inward world becoming manifest is suggestive beside Blake's luminous deathbed. Yet the painting does not provide a key assigning each band or figure to a particular part of Boehme's account. That restraint preserves the distinction between an illuminating comparison and a proven programme. ^{[1] [20]}

Butlin also mentions John Gage's proposal that Blake reversed the Newtonian sequence of rainbow colours in works from 1804 onwards. The date matters: this watercolour is signed 1803. The suggestion cannot simply be transferred backwards as proof that its colours constitute a deliberate challenge to Newton. Its visible combination of warm outer bands, cooler inner colour and angelic forms already gives the rainbow an active role, without requiring that further claim. ^{[1] [2]}

From a private commission to Tate

The watercolour remained in the Butts family before passing through Carfax to W. Graham Robertson in 1906. Robertson's executors presented it to Tate through the National Art-Collections Fund, now the Art Fund, in 1949. The 1876 catalogue records Captain Butts as its lender and praises the rainbow's colour. That early response is telling: the arch commanded attention long before the later proposals about Boehme and Newton. ^{[1] [2] [14]}

Its power continues to rest in the whole arrangement. The patterned bier supports the long body, the angels bend towards it, and the standing figure holds a prayerful stillness within the rainbow. Small faces inhabit the arc overhead. Blake gives death its full horizontal weight while allowing light and attention to gather around it. The image makes care visible at a point where ordinary action has come to an end. ^[1]