God Blessing the Seventh Day

An elderly figure faces us with both hands raised and open. His white beard descends over a pale garment, while six youthful faces gather around him, three on either side. Long curves enclose the group, meeting above his head and curling beneath his feet. Beyond them, rays spread towards the edges of the picture. William Blake gives this divine appearance a remarkable combination of stillness and expansion: the central body rests, but almost everything surrounding it seems to move. ^[1]

The watercolour is conventionally known as God Blessing the Seventh Day and is dated to around 1805. Robert N. Essick identifies it with number 434 in Martin Butlin’s catalogue of Blake’s paintings and drawings. Its subject, however, has been questioned. David Bindman proposed that it represents the creation of light, an event at the beginning of Genesis rather than the completion of creation. The difference changes how we understand the whole image. Are these open hands blessing a finished world, or participating in its first illumination? ^[1]

A still figure within a moving enclosure

The central figure establishes a strong vertical line. His head, beard, garment and exposed foot draw the eye down the middle of the sheet. His knees spread to either side, making the seated body broad and substantial. The hands open that central arrangement towards the surrounding figures. Their exposed palms give the gesture an outward address, reaching everyone before him, including the viewer. ^[1]

His gaze reinforces that address. While the surrounding heads turn in several directions, he looks almost straight ahead. The beard adds age and gravity, while the open eyes beneath a high forehead give his face an attentive presence. His steady gaze holds the centre as the younger faces turn away from its axis. ^[1]

The attendants create a descending sequence on each side. The upper pair look upwards and outwards, their faces close to the raised hands. The middle heads turn more towards the sides, although the left-hand face remains more open to our view. Lowest down, two profiles incline towards the bottom corners. These changes of angle keep the group from becoming a row of repeated faces. Each head occupies a different relation to the central figure and the light beyond. ^[1]

Their bodies are much less fully exposed than his. Shoulders, arms, hair and enclosing curves overlap, making it difficult to separate every part at a glance. The design draws the attendants into the shape containing them. At the top, elongated forms rise into a pointed arch; below, broad curves sweep inward and end in a folded, scrolling shape. The enclosure seems formed from the same life that it shelters. ^[1]

There are six youthful heads, a number that readily suggests the six days preceding the seventh. That association is tempting under the familiar title, but it remains an interpretation. Counting the faces does not establish that each represents a particular day, and the figures carry no clearly differentiated attributes identifying the successive acts of Genesis. ^[1][2]

The rays complicate the enclosure further. They extend beyond its boundary, connecting the compact group with the surrounding field. Within the group, curved contours repeatedly return the eye towards the centre; outside it, long streaks carry attention outwards. The figure can therefore appear enthroned within a protected space and simultaneously present at the centre of an expanding radiance. Both effects matter to the competing readings of the subject. ^[1]

What happens on the seventh day?

The conventional title directs us to the opening of Genesis 2. The heavens, earth and everything belonging to them have been completed. God ends his work, rests on the seventh day, blesses it and makes it holy. The passage gives the seventh day a special status through the cessation of work. Its blessing concerns time itself: a day is distinguished from the creative activity that precedes it. ^[2]

Seen in that context, Blake’s seated figure has a clear expressive role. His body appears settled, with the knees and garment providing a broad foundation beneath the upright head. The open hands can be read as a blessing extending from a state of rest. The movement continues through the attendants, surrounding curves and rays, allowing the picture to hold together completion and continuing vitality. This is a reading made possible by the title and biblical passage, rather than a literal set of details prescribed by Genesis. ^[1][2]

The preceding chapter makes that distinction useful. Its creative acts unfold through speech, division, gathering and the bringing forth of life. Light is separated from darkness; waters are divided; dry land appears; plants, heavenly lights, living creatures and humanity follow. The repeated declarations of goodness culminate in God’s judgement that the whole creation is very good. The seventh day comes after that ordered abundance has been established. ^[2]

Blake does not show its contents spread out before the creator. There is no recognisable landscape containing sea, plants, animals and the first human pair. The composition concentrates instead on the divine figure and his immediate company. If the familiar title is retained, completion has become an inwardly gathered vision, with the surrounding radiance suggesting an extent beyond what the picture individually describes. ^[1][2]

Blessing also occurs before the seventh day. Genesis describes God blessing the creatures of water and air and, later, blessing the human beings he has made. Those blessings accompany the command to multiply. At the end of the sequence, blessing and sanctification give the day of rest its distinction. An open-handed divine gesture can therefore belong to the general language of creation without, by itself, proving which moment Blake intended. The specific seventh-day identification requires evidence beyond the gesture’s familiarity. ^[2]

The inscription and the creation of light

That evidence includes a biblical reference associated with the work, but its location matters. In the caption to his 2001 reproduction, Essick reported Morton Paley’s reminder that Butlin records a reference to Genesis 2:3 at the lower right. Essick then specified that the reference is on the mount, rather than on the watercolour itself, and is not in Blake’s handwriting. It records an identification attached to the picture; it cannot carry the authority of an explanation written by Blake. ^[1]

The distinction leaves room for Bindman’s alternative. Essick reported that Bindman, writing to him privately, had suggested the creation of light as the subject. He also raised the possibility that the sheet might be identifiable with Butlin’s number 433, a work untraced since 1853. These were proposals reported within Essick’s caption. They did not amount to a demonstrated reassignment of the surviving watercolour from number 434 to number 433. ^[1]

Genesis places the creation of light at the beginning of the first day. Darkness lies over the deep before God speaks: “Let there be light”. Light appears, is declared good and is divided from darkness. The naming of day and night follows. This is a moment of emergence and differentiation, well before the finished order blessed on the seventh day. ^[2]

The picture’s radiance becomes especially prominent when viewed through that passage. Its outward streaks can suggest illumination spreading through a space, while the central figure’s raised hands acquire the force of an initiating action. The attendants’ upward and outward gazes can make the surrounding field feel newly active. These visual correspondences help explain the appeal of Bindman’s proposal, although the image contains no written speech identifying the command. ^[1][2]

The first light should also be distinguished from the sun, moon and stars. Genesis introduces the heavenly lights on the fourth day, assigning them the regulation of days, seasons and years. The light of the opening creative act has already appeared before them. A luminous image need not therefore display a recognisable solar disc to evoke Genesis 1:3. Equally, the presence of rays cannot establish that verse as its exclusive subject. Radiance can accompany a blessing as readily as an act of creation. ^[2]

The two interpretations give different temporal directions to the same forms. Under the traditional title, stillness follows accomplishment and the hands bless what has been made. Under Bindman’s proposal, illumination begins and the gesture participates in a world coming into being. The quiet centre and active surroundings give each reading a substantial place in the arrangement. ^[1][2]

Colour and the watercolour’s appearance

In the colour reproduction, pale pinks and warm creams distinguish the central figure from the cooler blues within the enclosure. Yellow and orange passages intensify the radiance around its upper and side edges, while darker blue appears towards the lower corners. The contrast strengthens the impression that the compact company occupies a luminous space. Thin drawn contours remain visible through the changing colour, articulating hair, fingers, facial profiles and folds. ^[1]

The garment deserves particular attention. Long lines descend from the knees, gather near the feet and turn into curls. Their movement connects the seated body with the larger curves beneath it. What might initially appear to be a rigid, symmetrical arrangement is full of small changes in direction. Blake makes the sensation of flow depend as much upon these continuous contours as upon the rays. ^[1]

Essick’s report of the work’s appearance adds a historical perspective. Writing about the attempted sale in 2000, he described the watercolour as unfaded and its colours as luminous. He also ranked it exceptionally highly among Blake’s paintings and watercolours then in private hands. Those statements convey his enthusiasm and his assessment at that time. The colour reproduction lets us follow the composition’s warm and cool relationships, but cannot establish the original’s present condition. ^[1]

Private collections and an export application

In his review of the year 2000, Essick recorded the watercolour’s former presence in the W. Graham Robertson and George Goyder collections and its ownership by a British private collector since 1962. An export application subsequently raised hopes that it might enter public ownership. ^[1]

The work attracted particular attention when a London dealer sought permission to export it for sale in the United States. Essick recorded that an export licence was refused on 10 October 2000, allowing a British purchaser an opportunity to match the stated price of £650,000. The period was three months, with the possibility of a further three-month extension. His account expresses the hope that a British institution would acquire the watercolour, preserve it and occasionally place it on public view. ^[1]

Public access was already an issue. Essick relayed a newspaper report by Dalya Alberge that Tate Britain had tried unsuccessfully to borrow the watercolour for its 2000–01 Blake exhibition. The unsuccessful loan request gives the export discussion a practical consequence: ownership could determine whether visitors had an opportunity to encounter the picture itself. ^[1]

In his following annual review, published in spring 2002, Essick reported the outcome. No British buyer with the necessary funds had come forward. The dealer reapplied at a significantly increased stated price, a licence was granted, and the watercolour went to the United States in summer 2001. Essick presumed that an American dealer or private collector possessed it. His wording preserved the uncertainty. That historical report supplies no secure identification of its current owner or location. ^[13]

Another vocabulary of divine presence

A brief comparison with Elohim Creating Adam makes the central gesture more distinctive. There, a huge figure bends over an extended human body in close physical contact. In God Judging Adam, an outstretched arm directs authority towards a bowed man. Here, both palms open towards the viewer, and the surrounding figures gather around a seated presence. Contact, command and blessing acquire different bodily forms.

The open hands remain the strongest invitation to return to this watercolour. They stand at the point where its still centre meets its expanding surroundings. The disputed title changes the moment we imagine, but it does not exhaust what the image offers: an aged face looking steadily out, youthful heads turned through a succession of angles, and curves that gather the whole company into a single luminous shape. ^[1]