Export ban on Blake's vision of 'Blair's Grave'

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Telegraph
(Filed: 31/03/2005)

19 watercolours commissioned for the poet (not the Prime Minister) could stay in Britain - if £8m can be found. Nigel Reynolds reports

Sycophancy, juicy timing or just a coincidence? With the election imminent, Estelle Morris, in one of her last decisions as arts minister, acted yesterday to prevent a valuable collection of watercolours entitled Designs for Blair's Grave from leaving Britain's shores.


Discovering the watercolours was ‘like finding the Dead Sea scrolls’
Unfortunately for fans of corruption theories, her move turns out to be pure coincidence.

The designs have nothing to do with vainglorious New Labour plans to erect a mausoleum for their leader when he goes to the great Despatch Box in the skies.

The 19 watercolours are illustrations by William Blake for an edition of The Grave, an 800-line gloomy meditation on mortality and redemption written in 1743 by the Scottish poet Robert Blair. The paintings - seven are unknown to scholars and the remainder were last seen in public in the 1830s - resurfaced in a Glasgow bookshop four years ago in an inscribed leather case. They were valued at £1 million at first, but their price has now spiralled to £8.8 million and they represent one of the more astonishing art discoveries of the past decade - and a serious loss if they are allowed abroad, say experts.
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