The highlight of the 1902–3 rare-book auction season in England was a series of watercolors and proof engravings by the visionary English artist and poet William Blake. With Bernard Alfred Quaritch (son of the renowned London bookseller Bernard Quaritch) acting as his agent at Sotheby’s, Morgan purchased the collection for what the New York Times called the “sensational” sum of £5,712. One contemporary commentator noted the irony of the “phenomenally high prices” realized at the sale, given “Blake’s indifference to what the majority of us regard as the tangibilities of life.”
View the Morgan’s collection of Blake drawings
William Blake (1757–1827)
Job’s Sons and Daughter Overwhelmed by Satan, ca. 1805–10
Pen and black and gray ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over traces of graphite
The Morgan Library & Museum, purchased by J. Pierpont Morgan, 1903; 2001.65</job’s>