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.
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.
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 cortége, 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.
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.
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 Bürger’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.
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