A watercolour depicting the Virgin Mary ascending from a large tomb towards Infant Christ, with kneeling disciples to the left and right of the tomb and putti above. Signed and dated "W.B. inv. 1806".

This is one of a series of biblical works executed by Blake in the years around the turn of the nineteenth century for the civil servant Thomas Butts, a long-term friend and significant patron. A letter written by Blake dated 1799 relates that he was painting "Fifty small Pictures" of Biblical subjects, a series which the artist executed in a form of tempera (though he himself called the technique "fresco") and which was clearly typological in nature. From 1800 Butts appears to have commissioned Blake to continue executing illustrations of Old and New Testament texts but in watercolour, of which 'The Assumption' is one. It demonstrates the emphatic use of pen outline and (though the watercolour has faded somewhat) pale but luminous palette common to the later watercolours in this series (see, for example, 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

See Mary Lynn Johnson, 'The Death and Assumption of Blake's Mary' in "Re-envisioning Blake" (2012) for a formal commentary on the work and an exploration of its relationship with Blake's 'Death of the Virgin' from the same series.