The series of twenty-one watercolor illustrations for the Book of Job are one of Blake's supreme achievements. Here, God reenacts the creation of the world, while Job and his wife kneel below. The scene follows the moment in which Job challenged God to appear and explain why he deserved the succession of evils that devastated him. "Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind . . . Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? . . . When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"
One of twenty-one original drawings executed for Thomas Butts, ca. 1805-10, illustrating the Book of Job. This sheet is no. 14 in the series.
Butts, Thomas, 1759-1846, former owner.
Houghton, Richard Monckton Milnes, Baron, 1809-1885, former owner.
Crewe, Robert Offley Ashburton Crewe-Milnes, Marquis of, 1858-1945, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
In August Company : The Collections of the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1993, p. 296, repr.
From Leonardo to Pollock: Master drawings from the Morgan Library. New York: Morgan Library, 2006, cat. no. 61, p. 130-131.