ENGRAVINGS AND DRAWINGS IN THE PRINT ROOM
I am afraid that the first view of Blake's engraving of "The Canterbury
Pilgrimage" will prejudice the spectator unfavourably towards our artist,
even if the work by him already seen has made its fascination felt.
Especially will this prejudice be heightened if the engraving from
Stothard's picture of the same subject be set against Blake's and compared
with it, for Blake's astonishes and repels on first sight, while
Stothard's pleases at once.
In Stothard's composition the variety of the company, and especially of
the horses they ride, is charming. Very different are the grim ranks of
Blake's procession, the ten horses therein exhibiting only three positions
among them, and those positions being all traditionally faithful to the
hobby-horse type. Stothard's motley throng are gracefully habited, and
appear dainty and spruce in spite of the dust of the highway as they amble
along. His lighting of the picture, the firm and effective modelling of
the horses and their riders, the wide range of tones amounting almost to
colour itself, give a satisfying richness which we fail to find in Blake's
picture.
The whole composition is harmonious, and for those who desire nothing
further of art than that it shall cater for the eye without much or
intimate reference to the mind, then Stothard's graceful performance is
indeed pre-eminent.
Turning to Blake's picture, we find he has catered for the mind, but,
having done that, he has denied us the one thing of which Stothard is so
prodigal--beauty. In his restless search beneath the surface with which
beauty obviously is concerned, for the things of the spirit and the
intelligence underlying the appearance, Blake has here lost sight of art's
first principle, beauty in the whole, as the result of the parts. The
composition in its entirety is not beautiful. It has no harmony. It is an
accretion of separate parts, made out without reference to the picture's
final unity. These parts, although some are beautiful in themselves, are
not intimately related to each other, and contribute so little towards a
general predominant scheme that the effect of discord is produced, and the
multitudinous meanings and intentions with which each figure is fraught
over-weight the composition and confuse the beholder; the simple reason of
all this being, that the first obligation of the painter, his sense of
harmony and balance, has been ruthlessly violated. Perhaps Blake's sense
of style--about which I imagine he never reasoned, it being innate and
intuitive--deserted him on this one occasion, because anger was making
havoc in his heart and blinding his eyes. The conditions under which he
worked, it will be remembered, must have been destructive to all
concentration and artistic isolation of mood. Still, as I have said,
though sadly wanting as a whole, there is beauty of an intricate and
curious sort in the details.
Look on the wide expanse of swelling downs over-arched by the tragic
splendour of an evening sky. Here the thought, as ever with Blake, is
lifted up above the accidents, into the eternal and the infinite. But
Stothard's gentle hills and bowery trees shut out such vistas, and he
concerns himself scarcely at all about the sky, which is merely the
background on which to throw up the graceful heads of his graceful
unintelligent folk.
The characteristic group of children with their mother and grandfather,
which Blake has set beside the gateway of the Tabard Inn, has great beauty
as a single motive. No labour has been spared to make all faithful to the
Chaucerian conception: the curious semi-Gothic gateway, the crowding
pigeons, the barbaric splendours of the wife of Bath, the mediaeval figure
of the knight, whose face reminds one somewhat of the supposed portrait of
Cimabue in the Chapel of the Spaniards in Santa Maria Novella; all have
been wrought with painful care. The work is an illustration of Blake's
principle enunciated in his notes on Reynolds' "Discourses" and elsewhere
that "Real effect is making out of parts, and it is nothing else but
that."
Perhaps the strangest trait the engraving exhibits in comparison with
Stothard's is that it looks so antique. It might have been executed a
hundred years earlier than the other picture, so wilfully grotesque and
archaic is it. Yes, _wilfully_ is the word, for Blake _wished_ to make his
procession as stiff and quaint and rich as the stately Chaucerian language
that first painted the scene, forgetting perhaps that the two arts of
poetry and painting achieve the same end through widely different
conditions, and according to processes contiguous, but
non-interchangeable. The want of ease, of careless and familiar naturalism
in the engraving, may recall to those who look for it the splendid and
ceremonious language of the old story-teller. The description written by
Blake of his own design (it will be found in Gilchrist) shows how he loved
and understood Chaucer, and, we may add, how very loosely the poem was
grasped, and with what want of truth to the original it was represented by
his rival. Lamb said of the engraving itself that it was "a work of
wonderful power and spirit, hard and dry, yet with grace," and the
Descriptive Catalogue--a copy of which was given him by Crabb
Robinson--pleased him greatly; the part devoted to an analysis of the
characters in the "Canterbury Pilgrimage" he found to be "the finest
criticism of Chaucer's poem he had ever read."
Savagely powerful as it is, the engraving is merely an interesting and not
a vital utterance of Blake. The tempera picture from which it was engraved
was bought by Mr. Butts, but has been lost sight of now for many years.
Stothard's oil painting of the same subject is in the National Gallery.
Turning to the other original single engravings of Blake in the Print
Room, we find several of interest. There is that early one, designed and
engraved in 1780, which has been called "Glad Day," and is the expression
of a mood oftener felt in Blake's early manhood than in the ensuing years
of chafing complexity and multitudinous emotions. I have wondered whether
it be not the pictorial embodiment of the vision which he saw of the
"Spiritual Sun on Primrose Hill," described by him to Crabb Robinson.
Among the original engravings here may be seen the broadsheet of "Little
Tom the Sailor," executed by Blake for Hayley while at Felpham in 1800,
for a charitable purpose.
Hayley's verses and Blake's designs were bitten in with stopping-out
varnish on the pewter plate of the original from which the prints are
taken.
In the designs setting out the misfortunes of a poor widow and the heroism
of her little son he has given us one theme of natural scenery--a winding
path, a little wood surmounted by bare folded downs--testifying to the
invasion which the obvious beauty of Felpham had made on his artistic
consciousness; while the other illustration represents the tragic moment
when little Tom on the wreck is about to be drowned; over the trough of
deep sea the spiritual form of his father appears ready to receive and
embrace his soul. Mrs. Blake's hand unfortunately has coloured the Print
Room copy.
And now let us turn to the pen-and-ink etchings to Dante, designed and
executed for Mr. Linnell between the years 1824 and 1827, the year of
Blake's death.
There are seven of them, wrought by the pen, which had become so
deliberate, careful and delicate in execution during these last years of
his life.
Let us linger over two of them for a moment.
Among the many pictures of Paolo and Francesca that exist, was there ever
seen anything like this of Blake's imagining?
You may prefer others--Ary Scheffer's, Dante Rossetti's, or Mr. G. F.
Watts'--you may object that this one has not grappled with the passionate
love-motive of the story, that it has omitted the note of yearning, of
beloved pain, with which Dante's conception is fraught. The austerity of a
mind which theorized much on the subject of love--the love of man and
woman--but knew actually very little of its vehemence, its trouble, and
its languorous sweetness, forbade Blake to focus in the figures of Paolo
and Francesca the ideal tragedy of those "whom love bereav'd of life."
The scene as a whole--that second circle of the Inferno, in which
The stormy blast of hell
With restless fury drives the spirits on,
Whirl'd round and dashed amain
With sore annoy--
was what arrested his imagination. Here, in his rendering of the subject,
the blast has torn upward in a visible ribbon-like vortex from the surface
of the waters, bearing within it, as images in a crystal, the
innumerable figures of the world's great lovers. From a spit of land,
Paolo and Francesca, fluttering "light before the wind," appear in a
single tongue of flame, and Dante lies stretched upon the ground--"through
compassion fainting." Virgil is seen irradiated by the effulgent light
which trembles around the disc wherein the immortal kiss--that which
Rostand calls "_l'instant d'infini_"--is poetically represented.
[Illustration: THE CIRCLE OF THE LUSTFUL
Fine Indian ink pen drawing, in the Print Room, 1825-6. Francesca da
Rimini, Canto V. of the "Inferno"]
As usual, the force, the unusualness of the conception, rather than its
ideal beauty are the points we notice first. But closer study attests to
its beauty too. Mere literary interest would give the picture no real
claim to artistic regard. But Blake felt the drawing of each bounding line
as a thing of beauty in itself, having an aesthetic element of its own,
apart from its representative or symbolic use. In that coil of entangled
fates, what manifold themes of pure sensuous beauty are to be found! For
instance--just at the leap and bend of the circle--appears a woman with
arms extended in the fluent wind, like a bird in flight, and a man's
embrace encircles her neck--a man whose face she kisses rapturously.
Leaping, floating, falling, the multitudinous figures are borne onward by
the resistless force of that terrible blast; and, however foreign or
antipathetic this embodiment of Dante's vision may seem to us, we are
bound to admit that its imaginative scope is of a temper characteristic
not only of Blake, but of the Florentine himself. An aspect of Dante's
conception is developed and emphasized here in a manner which has not been
attempted in any other picture of the subject.
The other pen-and-ink drawing from the "Inferno" represents Dante and
Virgil in the Circle of the Traitors, with the head of Bocca degli Abati
breaking through the lake of ice at the foot of Dante. Blake has given
strangely passionless faces to his Dante and Virgil, but the pure simple
lines of their figures are severely congruous with the scene, and the
iceberg, formed of shadowy frozen figures to the right, is powerfully
suggested by a few lines of sufficient economy. The picture is another of
those unique embodiments from which, once seen and dwelt on, the modern
imagination can never release itself. Gustave Dore's sensational rendering
of the same scene seems to me to acknowledge an inspiration at this
source.
The other five designs to Dante merit a description and attention which
space does not allow us to give them here. They are of great power, but
whether the unflinching realization of the terrible imaginings of Dante is
permissible in pictorial art--where the visual representation attacks the
emotions and intellect with a poignancy that words, however forcible, can
never attain--is a question the discussion of which may provide food for
argument to critics of the school of Lessing. For my own part, I incline
to the opinion that they overstep the bounds of terror authorized in art,
and approach the confines of the horrible in the treatment of the main
motive of each design--"Admirably horrid," Mr. W. M. Rossetti pronounces
them. The unwavering truth to Dante's detailed descriptions is beyond
question, however.
The inmost sanctuary of an artist's mind is far more accessible through
his pencil sketches than through his final consummated pictures and
designs. There is something so intimate, so personal in these
manifestations of himself, that in regarding them I have something of the
feeling of one who listens unseen to a man thinking aloud. Nothing
convinces one of the labour, the thought, the balancing, the rejections,
the careful choice, that go to make up a picture like the study of the
sketches made for it.
The peculiarity of Blake's pencil sketches is their vehemence, and the
absence in them of all hesitation. He seems from the first moment of
conception to know exactly what he means to do, and rough, almost
hieroglyphic, as the first shadow of his idea may appear at first sight,
we have only to compare it with the design or picture which eventually
resulted from it, to see that all the rapid "short-hand" lines of the
sketch, block out accurately the disposition of the main parts of the
design, the final attitude of the figures therein, without as a rule any
real variation from the first idea having taken place in the working out.
This testifies more than anything else to the distinctness of the vision
seen by Blake, and his eager passionate discernment of it. Among such
sketches of clearly apprehended vision is that for "The Soul exploring the
recesses of the Grave," the final design of which we are already very
familiar with. It is executed with a broad-ended chalk pencil, in quick
unhesitating lines. There is not a single touch that cannot be traced,
that is not an essential development, in the finished picture, so that we
know Blake saw it all from the first, complete then in his mind's eye as
on the day when he finished the detailed drawing for the engraver.
Another sketch of the same order is one which, although it does not belong
to any public collection, is so important as to excuse a reference to it
here. Through the great kindness of Mr. Frederick Shields, to whom it
belongs, I am enabled to reproduce it. The two motives of the picture in
Blair's "Grave," called "Death's Door," had been favourite ones with
Blake, and used by him separately in "The Gates of Paradise," "The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell," and "America," before he combined them so
felicitously in the noble design which ranks among his best works. The
sketch by Blake belonging to Mr. Shields would seem to represent the
moment when he first realized the power and significance and beauty to be
obtained by their incorporation in one design. Of this conception it must
be admitted that it grew in Blake's mind after the first flashing vision
of it, and was not from the beginning discernible in all the splendour to
which it was eventually developed.
Here is another beautiful and careful sketch of a female figure diving
through the air. The force of her perpendicular flight, the attitude of
one leg (the left, not the right, however) recall the "Reunion of the Soul
and the Body," but this figure is undraped, and the arms are extended
downwards, and indeed the differences are so numerous that it cannot be
regarded as a sketch for that picture. In all probability it is a
preliminary study for one of the numerous figures in the "Last Judgment"
which he executed for the Countess of Egremont in 1807.
Looking at the terse expressive little drawing, we are reminded of Blake's
"golden rule of art"--"that the more distinct, sharp, and wiry the
boundary line, the more perfect the work of art." Ah! but how he played
with his line! "Wiry" at least it never was, say what Blake would! He
never "painted" it, but felt his way along with sympathetic accuracy. And
with what infinite inflexions of tenderness and strength did his pencil
impress itself on the paper, indicating by that rare quality of touch more
than form and modelling--almost, one had said--the very nature of the
flesh of the figures he drew.
Speaking of Blake's drawings, the manner in which he drew the muscular
form of the male leg is very noticeable and strangely characteristic of
him. Another line he felt very tenderly was the curved sweep of a woman's
back from shoulder to indented waist, and downwards to delicate ankles and
heels.
[Illustration: UNDATED PENCIL SKETCH FOR "DEATH'S DOOR"
Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Frederic J. Shields]
Let us linger a minute over another of what I may call Blake's shorthand
sketches in the Print Room collection. It is undoubtedly the first idea
for the picture entitled "The Spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan,
in whose wreathings are enfolded the nations of the earth." The finished
picture appeared in Blake's own exhibition in 1809; it is now in the
possession of T. W. Jackson, Esq., of Worcester College, Oxford.
In the sketch, "Nelson" is drawn symbolically as a young sea-god, nude and
commanding. He stands firmly on a coil of Leviathan's body, which rearing
and circling surrounds him like a frame. We can just distinguish the human
forms caught in the serpent's toils, and its great mouth is in the act of
devouring a man. The mouth is bridled, and the reins held by Nelson's
hand. The symbolism is easy enough to understand and requires no
explanation.
A carefully shaded and conscientious drawing of a naked man with arms
upraised testifies to the fact that Blake _did_ work from the model
sometimes. But how cold such work appears--valuable and necessary as it
is--compared with the passionate half-defined sketches, the mood of which
transfers to us something of the high pleasure that Blake himself felt in
making these burning transcripts from his imagination or visions.
I had much ado to make out the subject of the pen-and-wash sketch of a
woman and man with a group of people on their knees in a cornfield. In the
distance a thunder-cloud emits a lightning flash. Mr. Shields tells me
that he and Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent an evening trying to decipher a
larger and more definite sketch of the same idea, and finally decided that
it was an illustration of the following verses (1 Sam. xii. 16-19): "Now
therefore stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before
your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord and
he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your
wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in
asking you a king. So Samuel called unto the Lord, and the Lord sent
thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and
Samuel."
Among the many other sketches which space does not permit me to comment
on, are two very beautiful studies in red chalk, showing Blake to be a
master of line indeed. Of his engravings after designs by Stothard,
Romney, Flaxman, Hogarth, examples of which the Print Room possesses, it
is not necessary to speak, for this book is not concerned with engraving
or any other technical branch of art. Its purpose is merely to examine
into, and if possible lay bare, the nature of the artistic impulse that
makes the work of Blake--as we may all know it in our public
collections--so rare and so precious a thing. But though we shall not
concern ourselves with these engravings, as they contribute nothing to our
purpose, it is interesting to look at the numerous copies which our artist
made from prints of Michael Angelo's frescoes on the roof of the Sistine,
from drawings after the antique, and from Cumberland's "Designs for
Engravings." These latter are pen drawings of Greek figures--similar to
those represented on old black and yellow vases--and display the Greek
ideal of form, so beautiful yet so passionless and un-individual, when
compared with the figures of the great Florentine, in which the soul with
all its struggles is apparent. Copying such diverse work
faithfully--"for," wrote Blake, "servile copying is the great merit of
copying"--must have made him think, compare, choose. Goethe says that his
study of the ancient classic literature convinced him "that a vast
abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them,--that
we must accomplish something, nay, fail in something, before we can
learn our own capacities and those of others." And this was much more the
case with Blake and his art than might be supposed. It was not ignorance
of other ideals, of other methods of thought and work, that caused him to
take the artistic path he did; it was definite choice, the ratification of
his innate, strongly individualistic tendencies, resulting from comparing
them with the characteristic principles of art exhibited in other ages,
other masters. Blake in fact copied a good deal; he himself writes in his
notes on Reynolds, "the difference between a bad artist and a good one is:
the bad artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one really does copy a
great deal."
[Illustration: HEAD OF AN OLD MAN
Pencil, pen, and wash drawing. Undated]
Turning to his water-colour sketches in the Print Room, I consider the
finest to be a very portrait-like head of an old man. It was evidently put
in in pencil and pale washes of colour, and afterwards strengthened,
rather daringly, with pen-and-ink outlines. The face with its deep eyes
and noble contours is that of a seer, awestruck before his vision. It is
in such work as this--swift, strong and delicate--that we see Blake at his
best. In finished work--such little as he has left us--some heat, some
fire seems to have escaped, but in sketches such as this the inspiration
is contained in all its strongly-spiced vitality; that which is left
undone, assisting that which is done, in producing an impression of energy
and imaginative development. A pale-tinted, very careful and elaborate
drawing of the Whore of Babylon, as Blake imagined her, next claims our
attention. It was etched and reproduced by William Bell Scott. Never did
Blake represent so voluptuous, so sensual a face, as this of the Whore of
Babylon, which in spite of its beauty is of the same type as that of the
Wife of Bath in his "Canterbury Pilgrimage." In its expression it has no
fellow, save perhaps the face of Leda in Michael Angelo's small statuette
in the Bargello. The woman is seated on a seven-headed semi-human
monster, and she holds in her hand a cup out of which smoke issues and
condenses in the forms of floating men and women of incomparable grace.
These swim around her head in a long ribbon-like streamer, and as the
little figures reach the ground they are devoured by the seven heads. They
symbolize the pleasures, ambitions, lusts of this world.
Another beautiful water-colour, in faint and tender colour, is perhaps the
very vignette for Blair's "Grave," which Blake sent to Cromek with his
verses of dedication to the Queen, and which was returned on his hands
with such a cruel and insulting letter. Part of this design has been
etched and reproduced by William Bell Scott. A mother and her young
family, from whose ankles the chains of mortality have just been severed,
ascend upward with looks of solemn exaltation on their rapt faces. They
form a noble group. Above, on the left, is an angel with a sword and key
who has presumably just set them free; he is Death, I suppose--a young and
beautiful Death; while to the right is another Apollo-like being, who
holds a pair of scales and represents St. Michael. In the most ancient
Italian pictures the Archangel is often pictured as weighing the souls of
the newly dead.
A large and very important water-colour drawing is called the "Lazar
House," from Milton. It is one of Blake's terrible works, and has a
tendency to haunt the memory unpleasantly. It is very powerful.
[Illustration: THE WHORE OF BABYLON
Water colour drawing, 1809]
A great blind, bearded figure, with outstretched arms--Death in another
aspect--is suspended in air over a scene of painfulness and intense
horror, such as few artists would dare to represent. The victims of plague
are writhing in death-agonies on the floor, while a figure to the right,
with sinister face and nervous hand clutching a bolt (or is it a knife?),
fills the spectator with insane shudderings and alarm. He eyes the
sufferers with gloating satisfaction, and the fact that he is coloured
green as verdigris from head to foot does not detract from his horrible
fascinations. I can never get over the feeling that pictures such as these
caused Blake profound pain, that indeed he sought relief from their
dominion over his mental life by turning the vision that haunted him into
a definite artistic image, thus by the act of projection getting rid of
the disquieting, the torturing inward tyrant. For with him, as I have
striven to show, all thought came with the definiteness of vision; so that
he could not read Milton's or Dante's descriptions without seeing the
thing described, immediately start into visible being before him.
A finished and elaborate water-colour of a female recumbent figure on a
tomb, with a foreground starred with brilliant flowers, is called "Letho
Similis," but in no respect is it like Blake's work, and there seems no
reason whatever to consider it as having been done by his hand, except
that it has passed as his for a long time. So acute a critic as Mr. W. M.
Rossetti casts doubt on the authorship of the work in his descriptive
catalogue.
On the whole I think the review of Blake's pencil sketches and drawings
impress one as powerfully as any of the work of his which we have
previously seen, and mainly for the reason that it is in these that we can
most clearly trace his thoughts in process of evolution.
And now all that remains for us to do is to visit the National Gallery,
and there in the little octagonal room behind the Turner Gallery seek out
those few precious works which are the representatives of his genius to
the public at large. Whether that public often penetrates here, or, being
here, lingers even momently before the few strange little pictures by
Blake which it contains, may be questioned.
That they are not popular, and that the little room is never crowded,
needs no demonstration. Blake's greatness is not of the kind that can ever
compete successfully with the claims of such masters as his
contemporaries--Stothard, Romney, Gainsborough and Reynolds--whose
brilliant and alluring work adorns the galleries through which one must
pass to reach the little octagonal room where his few pictures, modestly
retired behind the door, await such as will patiently seek them out.
First let us look at the water-colour numbered 43, entitled "David
delivered out of Deep Waters." It has qualities of handling akin to the
"River of Life," belonging to Captain Butts, and the conception is
specially Blakean. David, with his arms bound round with cords, floats
symbolically on dark waters. Above, seven cherubim, with wings interlacing
like the shields of a phalanx, swoop down in rhythmic ranks, with Christ
in their centre. The remarkable thing about these cherubim is that two
have the faces of children, two those of old white-bearded men, two those
of mature manhood, while the centre one alone, immediately below Christ,
has the face of a beautiful youth.
The figure and attitude of the Saviour have a noble grace, but the face is
weak and ineffectual, as is usual with Blake when treating the divine
lineaments.
The effect of the picture--with those strong, ordered wings in ranks,
recalling the banners borne in some rich church procession--is one of
curious symmetry, of almost heraldic composition. A delicate and remote
strangeness of imagination makes itself felt in every line, every tint;
and the range of tone is noticeably peculiar, the deepest and highest
parts of the scale being used with great effect, while no recourse has
been had to the intermediate gamut, so that there is no full body of
colour present at all. The nearest approach to it is the quivering pale
golden light that is diffused around the figure of Christ.
[Illustration: DAVID, DELIVERED OUT OF MANY WATERS
Water-colour. In National Gallery, undated]
No. 1164, "The Procession from Calvary," is a tempera picture reminiscent
in quality of colour of the _quattrocento_ Italian masters. Stiff,
composed and straight is the body of Jesus laid on the bier. Three pairs
of bearers support the holy burden on their shoulders. The Virgin alone,
and two other women side by side, follow the _cortege_, while in the
distance Calvary, with its three crosses, may be seen; and Jerusalem is
represented by a group of buildings defiantly Gothic in character. The
bearers and the women moving across the foreground so majestically, so
quietly, might be the somewhat stiff rendering of an idea, inspired by the
procession in a basrelief on some old Greek or Roman sarcophagus, such as
Mantegna or Andrea del Castagno worked out on canvas.
Then there is a highly-finished water-colour of an allegory--numbered
44--to be studied. It is soon evident to the spectator that the elaborate
composition owns as central motive the Atonement, with all the symbolic
correspondences which in the scriptures predicted it. At the highest point
of the picture is a medallion wherein the Almighty is represented. Dull
flames flicker and smoke around, while on them is inscribed in very small
writing the significant words "God out of Christ is a consuming fire."
This, as we know, was a much-insisted-on doctrine of Blake's, for he seems
to have denied at times the responsible fatherhood of God; and never did
he share the respectable conception of Him, prevalent at that day even
more than in this, which Tennyson so aptly defined as "an immeasurable
clergyman."
Below the medallion are little scenes displaying the Death of Abel, the
Flood, the Sacrifice of Isaac, the Transfiguration, and, finally, the
symbolic Vision of the Holy Grail. All these separate but related motives
are woven together, with subsidiary scenes to right and left, into one
intricate and most beautiful scheme.
The low tones of the composition, the dim, delicate tinting, bring the
varied and multitudinous parts into a harmony of effect that is very
delightful, while the spiritual and intellectual material with which it is
characteristically builded up, send our thoughts voyaging out like birds
over the sea of religious mysticism.
I have left the most important picture to be dealt with last. The tempera
picture, numbered 1110, was painted as the companion to "Nelson and
Leviathan"--a sketch for which is in the British Museum, it will be
remembered--and was shown for the first time at Blake's own exhibition in
1809. In his Descriptive Catalogue the title ran as follows: "The
spiritual form of Pitt guiding Behemoth; he is that Angel, who, pleased to
perform the Almighty's orders, rides on the whirlwind directing the storms
of war; he is ordering the Reaper to reap the vine of the earth, and the
Ploughman to plough up the cities and towers."
At first sight the figure of a beautiful young man is the one thing that
stands out clearly from the dim splendour and bewildering detail of the
picture. This noble form, instinct with power and authority, represents
the spiritual body of Pitt. A gleaming halo surrounds his head, and the
background is massed with seething indistinct figures.
Here and there strange glancing lights and phosphorescent stars emit a
milky radiance, but it is some few minutes before the eye can distinguish
the head and back of Leviathan. On either side of the great halo appears a
man's form; one holds the crescent moon by way of sickle, the other
presses heavily upon a harrow. They are the Reaper, Death, and the
Ploughman Equality. All is steeped in gloomy twilight touched here and
there with subdued yet brilliant light, as of moonlight on water. Strange
little figures seem to gather form out of the brownish mist before one's
very eyes, and there is something of a miraculous charm on this
cosmos--the fruit of the travail of Blake's intellect.
[Illustration: THE SPIRITUAL FORM OF PITT GUIDING BEHEMOTH
Tempera. 1809 or earlier. In the National Gallery]
Of serenity, of clarity, there is none; but Blake's virtue, his quality
with its necessary attendant defects, dominates this work and makes it
precious in the sense of a unique record of a unique conception. Therefore
it is fittingly placed as a representative of Blake's genius in our
National Palace of Art.
What the place assigned to Blake by future generations will be is not for
me to predict. That he has been gravely misapprehended and foolishly
neglected until the last few years is common knowledge, but even to-day
the ranks of his true lovers are scattered and few, though there are some
people who affirm that an exaggerated distinction, an inflated value,
attaches to his name at present, as a result of the swing of time's
pendulum. Such people, however, are not among those who under any
circumstances would be likely to admire Blake or appreciate his unique
point of view.
This little book has had for its object, not the imparting of any new
facts about him, nor the technical discussion of his works, but the
reverent and sympathetic meditation on our own National Blake treasures,
with a view to understanding the great spirit who projected them. I have
attempted to point out their essential beauties and value, not from the
vantage-ground of the connoisseur, but from the point of view of the
sympathetic observer. I have sought to explain, to justify, the affinity
felt for them by those to whom the doctrine of "Art for art's sake" is not
an all-satisfying thesis, who would fain find in plastic art a language
expressive of spiritual intuitions and revelation. Blake's mission
undoubtedly was to discover in his representations of visible phenomena
the spiritual cause, or correspondence, of which it appeared to him to be
merely a type. How far his ideas are consistent with the conditions and
scope of an art which must necessarily concern itself with surfaces and
appearances, it is hard to say. His view of art's function was largely,
but not wholly true, yet in its special application was profoundly noble
and salutary. Exaggerated, perhaps, in his recoil from the materialism and
preoccupation with physical and natural beauties as ends in themselves
which characterized the art of his day, he set to work to liberate one
hitherto unsuspected aspect of art's functions, at the expense of
belittling the recognized and practised articles of belief recited in her
honour by the masters of his time.
The innerness of art; that is what he was concerned about. Impetuously,
passionately he stormed along the rugged track he had set himself to
explore, ignoring much of beauty and truth to either side of him, because
his eyes were so steadfastly fixed on his goal. To-day we acclaim him as
the heroic and devoted priest of a new and yet old altar to Art, the flame
of which has been kept burning since his time by Dante Gabriel Rossetti
and the Pre-Raphaelites, and Mr. G. F. Watts.
INDEX
Academy, Royal, Blake attends the schools of, 6, 50.
Academy, Royal, Exhibits at, 8, 14, 43.
Academy, Royal, A grant from, 50.
_Accusers, The Three_, 121.
_Ahania, The Book of_, 23, 120.
_America_, 23;
described, 107;
a cancel-sheet for, 121.
_Ancient of Days, The_, 56, 112.
Apprenticeship to Basire, 5, 20.
_Atonement, The_, 191.
_Ballads on Animals_, illustrations to Hayley's, 31, 137.
_Bard, The_, 164.
Basire, Blake apprenticed to, 5;
his influence, 150.
_Bathsheba at the Bath_, 167.
Blake, Robert, 4, 15, 133;
his death, 15.
Blake, William, birth, 3;
family history, 4;
birthplace, 3;
his brothers and sister, 4;
marriage, 9;
suggested as tutor to the royal family, 22;
his last sketch, 56;
death, 56;
lived at Green Street, 11;
Broad Street, 14;
Poland Street, 15;
Lambeth, 21;
Felpham, 24;
South Molton Street, 29;
Temple, 50;
his hatred of oppression, 16;
visions of his brother, 17;
his kind-heartedness, 22;
trial for sedition, 29;
influence over younger men, 47, 52;
his circle of friends, 48, 52, 54;
his surroundings in later years, 50;
his appearance, 51, 54;
German eulogy, 54;
learns Italian, 54;
his poverty, 82;
his exhibition, 40;
criticisms on painting and poetry, 40;
his artistic affinities, 41;
his aim in art, 7;
his literary affinities, 37;
views on contemporary artists, 20, 46;
justifies his mode of representation, 165;
his inability to depict Christ, 145, 190;
his intuitive system of belief, 61;
his detachment from his age, 61;
his view of humanity, 65, 66.
Bouchier, Catherine, married to Blake, 9;
her character, 10;
her death, 56;
her assistance in printing, 83.
Calvert, Edward, friendship with Blake, 52.
_Canterbury Pilgrims, The_ (Blake's), designed, 37;
completed, 38;
exhibited, 40.
_See_ Stothard, Thomas.
_Canterbury Pilgrims, The_ (Engraving), issued, 44;
discussed, 176.
Coleridge, S. T., meeting with Blake, 47.
Cowper, engravings for Hayley's Life of, 31.
Cromek, R. H., his relations with Blake, 35-37, 39.
Dante, illustrations to the _Divina Commedia_ of, 54;
discussed, 180.
_David delivered out of Deep Waters_, 190.
_Death of Earl Godwin_, 8.
_Death's Door_, development of the design of, 91, 96.
_Descriptive Catalogue_ of Blake's exhibition, 40, 77, 82, 165, 172,
178, 192.
_Designs, The Large Book of_, 120.
_Designs, The Small Book of_, 120.
Education, Blake's early, 4.
Ellis and Yeats, Commentary on Blake, 1, 3, 16, 22, 30, 49, 57, 60, 71.
_Elohim Creating Adam, The_, 171.
_Europe_, 23;
described, 110.
Exhibitions of Blake's works, (1809), 40;
(1904), 159.
Felpham, residence at, 24, 179;
early enjoyment of, 25;
subsequent unhappiness at, 27.
Flaxman, J., introduction to, 8;
aid from, 12, 23;
correspondence with, 25.
_Flight into Egypt, The_, 167.
_French Revolution, The_, 17.
Fresco, Blake's use of the term, 38.
Fuseli, Blake's friendship with, 8, 17, 50;
his appreciation of Blake, 11, 38, 50.
_Gates of Paradise, The_, 23;
described, 93.
_Ghost of Abel, The_, 17.
_Ghost of a Flea_, 49.
Gilchrist's _Life of Blake_, 1, 9, 32, 50, 51, 55.
_Glad Day_, 179.
Gothic influences, 5, 151.
_Grave, The_, Blake's illustrations to Blair's: sold to Cromek, 35;
published, 39;
discussed, 140;
described, 143;
Blake's introductory verses, 141.
Hayley, Blake's introduction to, 23;
life at Felpham, 24-31;
illustrations to his _Ballads_, 31;
to his life of Cowper, 31;
letters to, 32.
_Hecate_, 168.
Humphrey, Ozias, Blake's relations with, 38.
Hunt, Leigh, inept criticisms by, 42.
_Ideas of Good and Evil_, 30.
Irish ancestry suggested for Blake, 3.
_Jerusalem_, 31, 34;
discussed, 123;
described, 127.
_Job, The Book of_, drawings for, 54;
discussed, 148;
described, 151;
sold, 148.
_Joseph of Arimathea_, 6.
_Judgment of Paris, The_, 172.
Lamb, Charles, appreciative criticisms by, 99, 179.
_Lamech and his Two Wives_, 168, 169.
_Laocoon_, 50.
_Last Judgment, The_, 38.
_Lazar House, The_, 188.
Le Brun, Blake's early aversion to her work, 6.
_Lenore_, illustrations to Buerger's, 137.
Linnell, John, Blake's friendship with, 47, 54, 150;
and the Book of Job, 149.
_Little Tom the Sailor_, 179.
_Los, The Book of_, 23;
described, 122.
_Los, The Song of_, 23;
described, 121.
Madness, his alleged, 73.
Malkin's _Memorials_ of his child, illustrated by Blake, 38.
_Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The_, 17;
discussed, 90;
quoted, 101.
Mathew, the Rev. Henry, an early friend, 11-14.
Michael Angelo, his influence on Blake, 4, 6, 78, 141, 171, 187.
_Milton_, 31;
discussed, 130;
described, 133.
MS. Notebook, Blake's, references to, 6, 11, 26, 30, 38, 45, 46, 81, 82.
Mystical views, Blake's, are misunderstood, 72-79;
explained by Smetham, 75.
Mythological characters, Blake's, 71, 105, 112, 117.
National Gallery, works by Blake in the, 189.
_Nativity, The_, 161, 162.
_Nebuchadnezzar_, 22.
_Nelson, The Spiritual Form of, etc._, 185.
_Night Thoughts_, designs for Young's, 23;
described, 137.
_Oberon, Titania, and Puck_, 169.
Paine, Tom, Blake's acquaintance with, 17.
Pars' drawing-classes, Blake attends, 4.
_Pitt guiding Behemoth, The Spiritual Form of_, 192.
Poetic Genius, his theory of the, 67, 68.
_Poetical Sketches_, 12.
Prices now brought by Blake's work, 100, 107, 110, 113, 121, 130, 148.
Prices received by Blake, 21, 35, 38, 100, 149.
Processes employed by Blake, 38, 82, 91, 150, 166, 168, 179, 186, 187.
_Procession from Calvary_, 191.
Raphael, early love for, 6.
Religious views, 57-71, 102.
Religious views, Swedenborg, 57, 58;
pantheism, 62;
Blake's beliefs, 62;
the necessity of contraries, 65;
"art in religion," 67.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, his advice to Blake, 19.
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, Blake's MS. notes on Reynolds' Discourses, 6, 19,
79.
_River of Life, The_, 163, 169.
Robinson, Henry Crabb, his relations with Blake, 2, 40, 45, 47, 51, 54,
63, 73.
Rossetti, D. G., appreciations of Blake, 12, 40, 185.
Rossetti, D. G., owns Blake's MS. Notebook, 30.
Rubens, early comments on, 6.
Rylands, proposal to apprentice Blake to, 4.
_Satan Watching Adam and Eve_, 161.
_Satan, Sin, and Death_, 172.
_Satan Triumphing over Eve_, 171.
_Satan's Three Accusers_, 121.
Schiavonetti, Lewis, engraves the drawings for the _Grave_, 36, 140, 145.
Shakespeare, designs to illustrate, 37.
Shields, Mr. Frederick J., 52, 138, 183, 185.
"Single Vision" of Bacon and Newton, 92.
_Songs of Experience_, 97;
described, 98.
_Songs of Innocence_, 16;
described, 83.
Stothard, Thomas Blake's introduction to, 8;
quarrel with, 37, 40, 42, 43.
Stothard, his _Canterbury Pilgrims_, 37;
exhibited, 38;
described, 176.
Swedenborg, his influence, 38, 57.
Swinburne, Mr. A. C., criticisms by, 11, 45, 62, 95, 104, 105, 115.
_Tales for Children_, 91.
Tathams, Blake's friendship with the, 52, 56, 113.
Technique, his deficiency in, 78.
_Thel, The Book of_, 17;
described, 87.
_There is no Natural Religion_, 115.
_Three Maries with the Angel at the Sepulchre_, 161.
_Tiriel_, 89.
_Urizen, The Book of_, 23;
described, 116.
_Vegetative Life_, what Blake meant by the, 2, 64, 127.
_Virgil's Pastorals_, woodcuts for, 49;
described, 146.
_Vision of Queen Katherine_, 173.
_Visionary Heads_, drawn by Blake, 48.
_Visions of the Daughters of Albion_, 23;
described, 104.
Visions of Blake; in childhood, 2;
in later years, 17.
Water-colour sketches, 187, 188.
Westminster Abbey, drawings in, 5.
_Whore of Babylon, The_, 187.
_Wise and Foolish Virgins, The_, 169.
Wollstonecraft, Mary, acquaintance with, 17;
designs for her Tales, 91.
Women, his views on the position of, 70.
CHISWICK PRESS: PRINTED BY CHARLES WHITTINGHAM AND CO.
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE, LONDON.