Hiding of Moses, from "Remember Me!, or a Pocket Companion"

Hiding of Moses, from "Remember Me!, or a Pocket Companion" by William Blake, executed in 1825, is a powerful example of the artist's late-career illustrative style rendered through the medium of engraving. This piece served as an illustration for a small, commercially produced annual keepsake book, contrasting its modest format with the monumental religious themes it addresses. Blake, a master printmaker, utilized the precise lines of the engraving technique to evoke a sense of spiritual drama and desolate geography crucial to the Biblical narrative.

The composition centers on the crucial moment of the Biblical story of Moses being concealed from Egyptian authorities, though Blake presents the scene with his characteristic intensity and symbolic density. The setting is unequivocally Egyptian; the background is dominated by the colossal symbols of ancient civilization: the Great Pyramids and the enigmatic Sphinx, establishing the geographical context along the Nile. In the foreground, the figures are dramatically posed, including the anxious men tasked with the infant’s concealment and the presence of Female Nudes, which in Blake’s iconography often function as allegorical representations of spiritual or natural forces connected to the divine providence protecting the child Moses.

As one of the later prints produced by the artist, the work showcases Blake's continued focus on complex, symbolic narratives in the final years of his life. Because many works from this prolific period have entered the public domain, high-quality reproductions of Blake's intricate prints are widely accessible to researchers and collectors. The original engraving, Hiding of Moses, is housed in the comprehensive collection of European prints and illustrated books at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it is preserved as an important piece of Blake’s late oeuvre and a unique fusion of literary illustration and visionary art.