A pen and ink and grey wash drawing of a King with bound wrists, with creatures of Hell below. Inscribed below: Hell beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming – Isaiah.

Blake entered the drawing schools at the Royal Academy in 1779, having completed an apprenticeship with the engraver James Basire, and was living at the family home above their haberdashery shop on 28 Broad Street. He set up as an independent publisher with fellow Royal Academy student James Parker at 27 Broad Street in 1784-5, but also began to make ambitious historical watercolours, drawing on the examples of James Barry, Henri Fuseli, and John Hamilton Mortimer. This drawing dates from this period, when Blake had published a slim volume of writings, the Poetical Sketches, and was making watercolours loosely based on historical or literary themes as well as a series of twelve drawings based on Blake's own poem about a blind king, Tiriel. The subject of this drawing is taken from Isaiah XIV.9 ('Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations').