In 1795, Blake produces The Song of Los , The Book of Ahania , and The Book of Los , executes 12 large color-printed drawings, color prints a few etchings, reprints 8 copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience , reprints most of his illuminated canon to date in a deluxe, large-paper set, and begins the 537 watercolor drawings of Night Thoughts . The first period of illuminated book production, 1789-95, culminates, new experiments in combining printmaking and painting are begun and perfected, and work as designer and painter begins to dominate Blake's energies and time for the next 10 years. In this essay, the second of a two-part study, I focus on the last of Blake's illuminated books from this period, The Song of Los , The Book of Los , and The Book of Ahania , trying to sequence them from a purely materialist perspective–by recreating the large copper sheets from which the individual plates were cut–to see how Blake's creative process, including changes of mind and false starts, unfolded through production and how these particular works and their techniques might relate to one another, to the color-printed drawings, and to the experiments in color printing that lie behind them both.[1]
The Song of Los is generally thought to precede the two other books, which is to say, Blake is thought to have returned to America a Prophecy (1793) and Europe a Prophecy (1794) with "Africa" and "Asia," the two parts of The Song of Los , rather than continuing The First Book of Urizen (1794), because he began the "continental" books before the "Urizen" books. [2] The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania are thought to be last because they are intaglio and short, supposedly representing a decreased focus on illuminated book production. An easy symmetry and progression, from large format to small, relief etching to intaglio–and then no more illuminated books until Milton (c. 1804-11)–helps make this sequence attractive. But when examined in terms of their production, these books reveal a much different sequence, one in which The Song of Los is executed last, the "Urizen" project is completed uninterrupted, and the return to the "continental" project is possibly an afterthought.
I.
Blake's Reconstruction of The Song of Los
The Song of Los, dated 1795 on its title page, is
Blake's most oddly shaped illuminated book, consisting of four full-page
illustrations (including the title page) and four text plates, which are about
4 cm. narrower than the illustrations and 1 to 2 cm. shorter. As I have shown
elsewhere, illuminated plates are never perfectly uniform or square, because
Blake cut most from larger sheets by hand.[3]
But the variance among plates is greatest in The Song of Los–and, as we shall see, is actually much
greater than it first appears. The frontispiece (illus. 1), picturing Urizen
kneeling at an altar under a globe inscribed with strange markings, is the
exact same size as the endplate (illus. 2), picturing Los kneeling above the
sun, hammer in hand. Figures with globes in mirrored position pair the designs
visually and thematically and suggest a new, conflated virtual design (illus.
3). Plates 1 and 8 are the same size because they are executed on the front and
back of the same copper plate. Proving that these plates are recto/verso is not
difficult, but one cannot rely on recorded plate measurements. Bentley records
plate 1 as 23.4 x 17.3 cm. and plate 8 as 23.5 x 17.5 cm. (Blake Books 70); these are indeed the approximate
average measurements of known impressions. But given how plates were cut from
larger sheets, they are not perfectly squared, and thus one needs four
measurements. For example, the copy B impression of plate 1 is 23.6 cm. left
side, 23.6 cm. right, 17.8 cm. top, and 17.5 cm. bottom. Plate 8 has the same
measurements, indicating that the plates may be materially connected,
either recto/verso of the same plate or cut from the same larger sheet of
copper. Absolute proof of plates' being recto/verso comes from their sharing
the same measurements as well as unique shape, which can be demonstrated by
laying one of the images in reverse along two sides of the other image (illus.4).
Blake typically etched both sides of
relief-etched plates: Experience
plates are on the versos of Innocence, Europe
on America, Urizen on Marriage. Thus, discovering that plates 1 and 8
were etched recto/verso was not surprising. Finding plates 2 and 5, the other
two full-page illustrations, apparently not recto/verso, however, was surprising. Plate 2
(illus. 5) is recorded as 24.3 x 17.2 cm. and plate 5 is recorded as 23.2 x
17.5 cm. (Bentley, Blake Books
70). I suspected these measurements were mistaken and recently reexamined five
copies to see if I could determine their correct sizes and shapes. Plate 2 of
copy B is 24.2 cm. left, 24.0 cm. right, 17.4 cm. top, and 17.2 cm. bottom.
Plate 5 (illus. 6) is 17.4 cm. bottom and 17.18 cm. top, but is 9 mm. shorter
in height on both sides. Very interesting: same shape, same widths, but
shorter. The discrepancy is an
illusion, however, caused by the top of plate 5's having been masked 9 mm. upon
printing.[4]
The plates are recto/verso, with the top of plate 5 being the bottom of plate
2. The masking is very difficult to detect, but the plate's embossment is
visible in the verso of the copy C impression, which reveals the plate's true
size. It also reveals a 4-5 mm. dent in the plate's edge, which is visible in
the embossment of the plate 2 impression (under the "b" in "Lambeth" in the
inscription), but made more readily apparent through computer enhancement
(illus. 7). The dent would have been unsightly and distracting had it been
printed as part of the heavily color-printed plate 5. The surface area of the
bottom of plate 2, however, was uninked except for the inscription, and thus
could be printed without showing the dent. Together, this recto/verso pair form
a virtual design in which Urizen is imprisoned behind the leaves of the lilies
holding Titania and Oberon (illus. 8), calling to mind the imprisonment of
another eternal in Urizen
plate 4 (illus. 9) and the body behind the tall grasses in the trial proof for Pity (illus. 10), which I will refer to
throughout this essay as small Pity
and which, as we will see below, was executed before The Song of Los.
Erdman sees a virtual design formed of
plates 6 (illus. 11) and 7 (illus. 12).
He notes that plate 7 "seems to continue the forest of plate 6; the boughs that crowd the left margin–an
unusual effect–can be the ends of those bent down in the right margin of 6" (Illuminated
Blake 180). Envisioning
plate 7 to the right side of plate 6 actually corresponds to Blake's design as
originally executed. These two plates, which form the poem or section entitled
"Asia," are actually the left and right sides of one horizontal design, as are
plates 3 (illus. 13) and 4 (illus. 14),
which form the poem or section entitled
"Africa." The "Africa" design is 21.5 cm. left, 21.5 cm. right, 27.3 cm. top,
27.2 cm. bottom; the "Asia" design is 22.2 cm. left, 22.2 cm. right, 27.2 cm.
top, 27.4 cm. bottom. Instead of being recto/verso, as one would expect, the
text plates are actually only half their original designs; as conceived and
etched, "Africa" and "Asia" are autonomous designs clearly related to one
another visually but not materially. I discovered these interesting material
facts in 1991 and published them two years later (Blake and the Idea of the Book 287), and Detlef Dörrbecker, in his 1995
edition of the poem, was the first to arrange black and white photographs of
the conjunct pages to give an idea of what the original relief-etched plates
looked like (320n29, 345-46). The digital recreations here (illus. 15, 16),
however, are the first reproductions to join the plates seamlessly and present
them color printed in their entirety.[5]
Blake initially divided his text into two
columns, but very unlike the columns in Urizen, these being very loosely placed across
a horizontal–or "landscape"–format, a format used for paintings and prints but
not the text of books. By masking one side of the design, probably with a sheet
of paper, he was able to print each text column separately. Hence, he
transformed a coherent design 27.2 cm. wide into two seemingly independent
designs/pages approximately 13.6 cm. wide, which is nearly 4 cm. narrower than
the four illustration pages. As I said, The Song of Los is Blake's most oddly shaped illuminated
book. He produced it using just four plates, but two are portrait format and
executed recto/verso and two are landscape format and apparently executed using
one side only. Very odd indeed. Why create pages in oblong folio format, with
double columns, so visually different from the pages of America and Europe? Why print the columns of text
separately after composing and etching them as part of the same design?
Given the two distinct sets of plates, The
Song of Los appears to
have emerged from two distinct stages of production, with the text plates
coming first. This sequence seems
the most likely, because if Blake had the two portrait plates on hand,
intending to use them for the designs of his new book, then he would have
acquired plates for texts to match. If, along with the portrait plates, he also
had the 27.2 cm. plates on hand, then he probably would have cut them
approximately 17.5 cm. wide and etched both sides to create four text plates to
match the width of his illustrations, thereby producing a book of eight pages much
nearer in size and shape to America
and Europe. It seems
reasonable to assume, then, that the two portrait plates were not yet on hand,
that the two 27.2 cm. wide plates were acquired first, and that the text plates
preceded the illustrations. (As we
shall see, the shared width of these plates is not a coincidence; at least four other
plates from 1795 share the exact measurement of 27.2 cm., including the sheets
that yielded the plates for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania.) Moreover, from this perspective, Blake
appears to have set out to fuse poetry, painting, and printmaking in ways even
more radical than the illuminated books. "Africa" and "Asia," as originally
executed, function autonomously as painted poems or written paintings, with
text superimposed on a landscape design. Each design could have been matted,
framed, viewed, and read like a separate color print or painting. They do not,
however, function as book pages.
Blake created relief etching as a way to
work as a printmaker with the tools of the poet and painter, that is to say,
with pens, brushes, liquid ink, and colors, rather than the burins and needles
conventionally required of metal. Blake worked on rather than in the metal surface, as though it were
paper, with tools that enabled him to work outside the conventions and codes of
printmaking and indulge his love of drawing and writing. His new medium encouraged
the autographic gesture, the calligraphic hand of the poet with the line and
brushwork of the painter. As he says in his prospectus (1793), his is a "method
of Printing which combines the Painter and the Poet," but he notes also that it
is a "method of Printing both Letter-press and Engraving" (Erdman, Complete
Poetry 692), by which he
means printing text and illustration in the service of book production. Between
1789 and 1794, Blake printed illuminated plates as book pages; in his later
style, beginning with the color-printed designs of 1794, he printed the plates
more like miniature paintings. In the early style, he wiped the plate's borders
of ink to conceal the rectangular shape that signals copper plate, press, and
machine, printed on both sides of the leaf to create facing pages, and washed
the illustration lightly but left the text unwashed. The visual result, as
Robert Essick has noted, is a "printed manuscript" (Blake 170). In the later style, Blake printed
plate borders, printed on one side of the leaf only, and washed the entire
design, often further emphasizing the now overt rectangular shape with frame
lines drawn around the plate. Whether he printed them as poems or elaborately
colored them as miniatures, Blake designed illuminated plates with reference to
the codex form and in portrait format.
Blake did not, however, design "Africa"
and "Asia" as book pages; he transformed them into book pages through a trick
of printing. Horizontal formats were commonly used for print series,
particularly aquatints of picturesque views, but also for works like George
Cumberland's Thoughts on Outline,
eight of whose illustrations Blake engraved in late 1795 and 1796. But, as
mentioned, horizontal formats were not used for texts of books, nor does any
book in oblong folio before 1795 with pages in double columns come readily to
mind (I have asked a number of librarians of special collections about such a
possible model and hope a reader of this essay may know of one that might have
influenced Blake). Even stitched together to form a long open diptych (illus.
17), the two designs seem less like facing pages in a book than a long panel,
pair of broadsides, or a horizontal scroll. Perhaps Blake used a non-Western
book format to evoke Africa and Asia. For example, the Chinese horizontal
scroll, usually on silk or paper, fuses calligraphy and painted image. It reads
right to left, starting with the title panel, which names the work, and has a
colophon panel, at the end of the scroll or juxtaposed over the image, which contains the poem or notes pertaining to the work. Blake titles his poems
"Africa" and "Asia" and thus does not need a title page, which is a book
convention. If he meant the poems
to be read as parts of one work entitled "The Song of Los," then that too is
effected without a title page. "Africa" begins with "I will sing you a song of
Los, the Eternal Prophet," and "Asia" ends with "The Song of Los is Ended. /
Urizen Wept." Moreover, if treating the poems as autonomous designs or parts of
the same panel or scroll, Blake could have signed and dated the work in pen and
ink on its surface as he did paintings and color-printed drawings (usually with
"WB inv." in monogram, with a date; illus. 18). Thus, these works did not need
a title page for date and author.
Perhaps the two designs were meant to be
joined and printed on one sheet to form a panorama, a format the landscape
painters Paul Sandby and Francis Towne were experimenting with in the 1780s and
1790s, or, as noted, to suggest an ancient scroll, the predecessor of the
printed codex, and thus a fitting medium for the Eternal Prophet. Indeed, "in
the context of Romantic textual ideology," according to Mitchell, "the scroll
is the emblem of ancient revealed wisdom, imagination, and the cultural economy
of hand-crafted, individually expressive artifacts" (65). For Blake, "the scroll represents
writing as prophecy:
it is associated with youthful figures of energy, imagination, and rebellion"
(65). Printed together on one sheet of paper the designs form a long, narrow,
perpetually open composition approximately 22.5 x 54.5 cm., which is half the
size of most of the color-printed drawings; if given a centimeter between and
around the images (illus. 19), the resulting two-part panel would be
approximately half the size of Newton (46 x 60 cm.) or Good and Evil Angels (44.5 x 59.4 cm.), among the largest of
the color-printed drawings. As originally designed, however, the two poems
continuing Blake's continental myth do not resemble the previous installments
in size, shape, number, or structure. America with 18 plates and Europe with 17 plates are matched in size,
shape, and structure: both begin with frontispiece, title page, two-page
preludium (Europe's
plate 3 is a late addition, though one that gave Europe 18 pages), a heading of "A Prophecy,"
and "finis" as the last word. The titles of The Song of Los
sections clearly connect the poems/panels to the earlier works, but the horizontal
format marks a break with them as well. The full visual extent of that break
was not realized; instead, Blake executed four illustration pages exactly the size of America and Europe and printed each of the four text columns
separately. The resulting eight pages of The Song of Los are frontispiece, title page, "Africa,"
full-page design, "Asia," end-piece; headings of "A Prophecy" or endings of
"finis" are not present. As reconstructed, The Song of Los is unevenly shaped and oddly structured,
being two poems in one book to form a quartet of continental works within a trilogy of
artifacts.
Proofs of the text plates in their
original condition, or "first state," are not extant, which may suggest that
Blake abandoned his experiment in rethinking text and image soon after
completing the text plates. This, however, cannot be proven, since other plates
are also without proofs. But it does seem reasonable to suggest that Blake
reconstructed the text plates to salvage an experiment about which he had
changed his mind. We can sequence and speculate upon the stages in the
production of The Song of Los,
but can we sequence those stages within the year's worth of productions and
discover the relation of the books to one another and to the color-printed drawings?
These are the main questions I try to answer in the following five sections.
II. The Large Color Prints
The large color prints are, "as a group,
the first really mature individual works in the visual arts that Blake created.
Moreover they are, as a group, probably the most accomplished, forceful, and
effective of Blake's works in the visual arts" (Butlin, "Physicality" 2).
Technically, they are monotypes, which are in effect printed paintings.
Frederick Tatham described the process to Gilchrist accurately enough, stating
that when Blake
wanted to make his prints in oil … [he]
took a common thick millboard, and drew in some strong ink or colour his design
upon it strong and thick. He then painted upon that in such oil colours and in
such a state of fusion that they would blur well. He painted roughly and
quickly, so that no colour would have time to dry. He then took a print of that
on paper, and this impression he coloured up in water-colours, re-painting his
outline on the millboard when he wanted to take another print. This plan he had
recourse to, because he could vary slightly each impression; and each having a
sort of accidental look, he could branch out so as to make each one different.
The accidental look they had was very enticing.
(Gilchrist 1: 376)
To W. M. Rossetti, Tatham added that the printing was done
in a loose press from an outline sketched
on paste-board; the oil colour was blotted on, which gave the sort of
impression you will get by taking the impression of anything wet. There was a look of accident about this
mode which he afterwards availed of, and tinted so as to bring out and favour what was there rather blurred.
(Rossetti
16-17)
Tatham is mistaken about the medium, which was gum and
glue-based colors and not oil-based inks or colors, as are commonly used today
for monotypes, and Blake would not have had to work too quickly or worry too
much if his colors dried to the touch on the support, because he almost
certainly printed on dampened paper, whose moisture would have reconstituted
the colors.[6]
The colors, though, he applied "strong and thick" to create a unique spongy
opaque paint film, but also to enable a second and sometimes a third impression
to be pulled from the millboard without having to replenish the colors.
Generally speaking, depending on the paper's dampness and thickness and the
amount of printing pressure, the colors are strongest in first impressions and
less intense in subsequent pulls. The presence of lighter outline and colors in
second impressions is proof that outline and colors were both printed together
for the first impressions as well, even for the one color-printed drawing with a
relief-etched outline, as will be demonstrated in illustrations below. Tatham
is correct, then, to assume that Blake "drew … his design … [and] then painted upon
that … [and] then took a print of that on paper," as opposed to printing outline
("design") and colors separately.[7]
He is also correct that Blake "tinted" the impressions "to bring out and favour
what was there rather blurred." As with his color-printed illuminated book
impressions, Blake finished the large color-printed drawings in watercolors and
pen and ink, clarifying forms in the blots and blurs. Translucent and
transparent washes over mottled colors could also transform printed colors,
making more colors appear to have been printed than actually were. Given that
the method is primarily painting on a flat support and pressing that painting
into paper, differences among impressions were inevitable if not also
intentional, hence the oxymoronic term of monoprint, a print that is unique
rather than exactly repeatable.
To use millboard to print colors requires
at least minimal sealing of its porous surface. Blake could have done this with
a coating of glue size or gesso, which is chalk or whiting mixed with size and
painted over panels or canvas to produce a very white ground. Smith, Tatham,
and Linnell mention Blake's using this mixture to prepare his tempera
paintings. According to Smith,
"his ground was a mixture of whiting and carpenter's glue, which he passed over
several times in thin coatings" (Bentley, Blake Records 622). In his manuscript on the life of
Blake, Tatham says "3 or 4 layers of whitening & carpenters Glue" were used
(Bentley, Blake Records
671). Linnell told Gilchrist that it was a "plaster ground (literally glue and
whiting); but he always called it either fresco, gesso, or plaster. And he
certainly laid this ground on too much like plaster on a wall" (1: 368). One can sand gesso smooth or leave the
striations created by brushing it on for a rougher feel for brushes. Colors
printed from such a textured ground will replicate that texture if they are
thin or pressed hard enough, or hide it if they are thick or opaque enough. The
sample of three color strips (illus. 20) demonstrates this: at the top of the image,
the first and second strips (red and yellow ochre) reveal the same striations, indicating that this
texture is from the millboard and not the paint layers; the opacity of the
third strip (green) hides most of that texture. At the bottom of the strips, the gesso was
applied with a stump brush rather than brushed on, and its textures are also
revealed in the printed colors.
The striations in the surfaces of The
Night of Enitharmon's Joy (illus. 21) and Christ Appearing to
the Apostles (illus. 22)
suggest that Blake painted his large color-printed drawings on gessoed grounds.
Butlin notices "a striated" effect in Pity, as well as in impressions of Newton and Nebuchadnezzar (cat. 311, 307, 302), but believes it
may have been "produced by only partial adherence" of paint to paper "as if the
paper were slightly oily"
("Physicality" 17). The
striations, though, appear not to have been created by the paint layer, but by
the textured surface of the millboard, because the same striated patterns are
visible across different printed colors, as is clear in the Metropolitan Museum's
copy of Pity (illus.
23).[8]
Gesso is used in fresco painting, and if Blake "always called" his "plaster
ground" "fresco, gesso, or plaster," as Linnell states, then Blake's writing
"Fresco" on five of his large color prints in an "Indian-type ink" (McManus and Townsend 82) is fitting.[9]
But whether he used glue
size or gesso, or thought of the millboard surface as canvas or panel or
plaster wall, he needed an outline to know what to paint. Chalk or charcoal
serves this purpose in oil painting, but lines made with either medium could be
ruined in color printing and thus make returning to the design years later (as we know Blake did, around 1805) impossible (Butlin, "Newly Discovered Watermark" 101). He
could have perhaps relied on the thin dried colors on the millboard, but it is
more likely that he had an impervious outline to guide his hand. Some X-radiographs
reveal traces of a lead-based paint, which may have been used for outlining,
while others show no traces of lead, supporting the idea that the outline was
executed in an ordinary water-based "Indian ink," which is lead-free and thus
not detectable (McManus and Townsend 87). Indeed, the "Indian ink" used to sign
color prints works for the purpose, because when dry it is not disturbed by the
wet black paint and colors laid over it or by printing (Essick and Viscomi,
"Blake's Method" 62). With a fixed
outline, Blake could, as Tatham says, return to the design "when he wanted to
take another print," presumably years later, by "re-painting his outline on the
millboard," painting in the forms, and printing "that on paper."
What Tatham describes is
planographic printing, that is, printing outline and colors not only together
but also from the same flat
surface, with outlines neither raised–as in woodcuts or relief etching–nor
incised–as in etchings and engravings.[10]
Blake had tried his hand at planographic printing before 1795, possibly as
early as 1789, in a print entitled Charity. Identified as a "planographic transfer print" (Essick, Separate
Plates 10), the image
was first painted on a sheet of paper or millboard and transferred to the paper
while the ink was wet.
Counterproofing (placing face down) newly printed impressions–regardless of matrix–works
the same way, wet ink transferred from a flat surface to paper, reproducing all marks and forms, albeit in reverse. Blake did not, however,
systematically experiment with printing painted images until he color printed the etching Albion
rose, which, as I argue
below, was in 1795 and not 1794, as is supposed (Butlin, "Physicality" 3;
Bindman 476), and which was executed with small Pity (illus. 10), the trial proof for the
large color print. Until then, Blake had color printed only illuminated books
with relief-etched plates. He inked outlines with dabbers and on and in small
areas added colors, probably with stump brushes (brushes with the tips cut off)
or poupées (tightly rolled felt), to small, well-defined forms. This is, as I
have demonstrated elsewhere, a variation on à la poupée printing, in which an intaglio plate is
inked in numerous colors (Blake and the Idea of the Book,
chapter 13). It differs from conventional color printing, however, in that Blake
put colors in spaces meant to be white and negative spaces defining forms,
whereas in conventional color printing colors are applied to the lines of the
design itself and not surfaces or white spaces. Adding colors to shallows and
printing them with inked outline is radical, but, in terms of performance, it
is still more printing than painting. The result is indeed a monotype, in that
the prints are never exactly repeatable, but Blake is still thinking–given the
medium, size, and tools–more like a printmaker coloring plates than a painter
working broadly with brushes on a large, flat surface, blocking out forms by
colors as well as line.
At least one of the 12 large color-printed drawings, however, was not printed planographically. God Judging Adam (illus. 24) has traces of an embossed
outline, indicating that the support was metal, probably copper, and that the
outline was etched in low relief; it also has a platemaker's mark (illus. 25),
indicating that it was printed from the sheet's verso. For the only color-printed
drawing known for sure to have been relief etched to be on a sheet's verso
suggests that Blake was probably unsure of himself, continuing the experiments
started with the small trial proof for Pity, which was also etched in low relief
(see below), and intending to preserve the recto, the side normally used for engravings
and etchings, should the experiment not work out. God Judging Adam is 43.2 x 53.5 cm. Because it is the
only impression certainly to have come from a metal plate–and metal is much
more expensive than millboard–Essick believes it was most likely the first of
the large color-printed drawings executed ("Supplement" 139).[11]
This is probably so, as will be shown below, but its place in the sequence is
suggested by its technical connections to earlier experiments in color printing
and not by its support, for two other designs may also have been printed from
metal. Though printed planographically, Satan Exulting over Eve, at 43.2 x 53.4 cm., and Elohim Creating Adam, at 43.1 x 53.6 cm., are the same size
as God Judging Adam,
raising the possibilities that one of these designs is on its recto and the
other on a copper sheet acquired at the same time.[12] If either Satan or Elohim was printed from a copper matrix, then
Blake not only used metal before millboard, but he also printed
planographically from metal before millboard.
The detail of the horses' heads in the
first impression of God Judging Adam (illus. 26) reveals clearly that Blake applied a black
paint to the low relief outline and shallows simultaneously and then added a
brownish red to the shallows forming the neck and shoulder and a bright red to the manes. These steps in the
painting process are even clearer in the second impression (illus. 27), which
is, as noted, proof that both outline and colors were printed simultaneously
here as well as in the first impression (see note 7). He probably applied the
black with a small dabber, as in the illuminated plates, touching down in the
shallows but not depositing color along the base of the relief lines, which
produces a thin unpainted line on both sides of the outline. A yellow wash
applied over the colors on the second impression is very bright in this line
because it adheres to the untouched white of the paper. This halo-like line is
evidence of a relief outline as well as of outline and colors' having been printed
together, as is demonstrated by an impression printed in one pull from a design
etched in low relief, inked with a dabber in black, and painted in brownish red
(illus. 28a). Had outline and colors been printed separately, the fine white
line could not parallel the outline exactly, even with perfect registration,
because the paper's shape and dampness are slightly altered by its being pulled
through the press, which is particularly noticeable in large sheets. Even when
paint is deposited with a brush along the base of a relief line, paper is
unlikely to pick the color up as it bends over the relief line onto the
shallow, unless the paint is very thick. On plate 7 of The Song of Los copy E, for example, Blake most likely
used a brush to apply color to the tendrils dividing the verses, depositing
paint on both sides of the relief line (illus. 28b), which, when printed,
produced the telltale white lines and two tendril-like lines that printed from
the shallows. Had Blake deposited color on one side of the outline only, the
tendril-like line would appear as the result of a misregistered second pull, an
easy misreading of the material evidence.
As noted, Blake did not need or intend to
print outlines separately, not in illuminated books or color-printed drawings. In
the latter, he only needed fixed
guidelines for painting and for ensuring that the design, however it was
colored in and/or finished, was repeatable. But when and how did Blake realize
that if he "drew . . . his design . . . [and] then painted upon that" he could
take "a print of that on paper," that outline and colors could be on the same
surface and he could paint over the outline with a brush rather than use a
dabber? When did he realize that he was no longer painting a print but printing
a painting? To answer these questions requires knowing where God Judging
Adam fits into this
evolution and how it connects to Albion rose and the small trial proof of Pity, which have a heretofore unknown
connection to Blake's intaglio books of 1795.
III. The
Book of Los, The Book of Ahania
Three color-printed drawings, God, Satan, and Elohim, possibly all from metal and the first
executed, are approximately 43.2 cm. x 53.5 cm. This is a large but apparently
not uncommon sheet size. Blake's engraving of Beggar's Opera Act III (1788) is 40.1 x 54.2 cm.; Job and Ezekiel engravings of 1793 and 1794 are 46 x 54
cm. and 46.4 x 54 cm. respectively; the plates for Stedman's Narrative, 16 executed by Blake between 1792-94,
average 27 x 20 cm., which suggests that they were quarters of a 40 x 54 cm. sheet
of copper.[13] The larger
widths, up to 60 cm. for Newton,
Lamech, House of
Death, and Nebuchadnezzar, are presumably from millboards and
likely come later in the series. Recall that the two The Song of Los text plates share the same width, 27.2
cm., though they vary in height by about 8 mm. If joined at their shared
measurement of 27.2 cm., then they formed a sheet of copper approximately 43.5 x 27.2 cm.
(illus. 29), which is half the size of these large metal sheets. The full sheet
would have been 43.5 x 54.4 cm.
That two plates are 27.2 cm. wide is unlikely to be a coincidence. The
shared measurement strongly suggests that the plates are quarters of a sheet
the size of those used for the first color-printed drawings. But if so, what were
the other two quarters? I initially suspected the quarters were the sheets that
yielded the plates for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania, not because they are also 1795 productions, but because
both sheets are 27.2 cm. wide. The
former sheet was 19.85 cm. left, 19.60 cm. right, 27.2 cm. top, 27.25 cm.
bottom; it yielded plates 3-2/4-5 (illus. 30), with plate 1 etched on the
verso of plate 4. The latter sheet was 19.65 cm. left, 19.75 cm. right, 27.2
cm. top, 27.25 cm. bottom; it yielded plates 4-3/6-5 (illus. 31), with plates
1 and 2 on the versos of plates 6 and 3 respectively.
These plate arrangements are not from Blake
and the Idea of the Book, where
I used just two measurements per plate and thought the sheet was larger and cut
into sixths rather than quarters (414n26); they are from research done soon
afterwards for David Worrall's The Urizen Books. I used four measurements per plate and tracings of their shapes to
reconstruct the sheets, the technique I had used to reconstruct the sheets that
yielded the 27 plates of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.[14]
Worrall agreed with The Book of Ahania arrangement (191) but not with The Book of Los arrangement (223n13), which is
understandable since measurements, even with tracings, can support different
results. With digital imaging, however, and the expert assistance of Todd
Stabley, media consultant for my university, I was able to verify my earlier
findings and to raise the bar for proof. Though it was no easy task, we were
able to put the pieces back together. We verified the recto/verso plates by
superimposing them, as with The Book of Ahania plates 3 and 2 ((illus. 32), to reveal
their matched shapes. We demonstrated, by revolving the plates, how their edges
fit together, as evinced by the inside edges of The Book of Los plates 3 and 4 (illus. 33) paralleling
one another exactly, one curving with the other.
With four plates 27.2 cm. in width (two
for The Song of Los,
one each for The Book of Los
and The Book of Ahania),
it seemed reasonable to assume that they were quarters of a sheet the size
of–and perhaps acquired at the same time as–those used for the first color-printed drawings. The problem here, though, was an approximately 8 mm. difference
in the heights of The Song of Los
plates. If the measurements were correct, then one or both did not fit into the
larger sheet. Moreover, the small, unfinished color print of Pity (illus. 10), recorded as 19.7 x 27.5 cm.
(Butlin, cat. 313), was the same height as The Book of Ahania sheet, though 2 or 3 mm. wider, which I
suspected was mistaken. The similarity of its size to the size of The Book
of Ahania made small Pity seem likely to have been one of the
quarters or, possibly, a quarter that was cut up to provide the plates for The
Book of Ahania.
Superimposing small Pity
over The Book of Ahania
plates revealed no convincing traces of small Pity. The digital reconstruction was
beginning to reveal what combination of quarters was likely and unlikely to
have come from the same sheet, as well as to reveal exactly what works I needed
to reexamine. In the Morgan Library, I reexamined the height of the
text plates in The Song of Los
copy C, along with the size and shape of proofs of The Book of Los plates 4 and 5, and The Book of
Ahania plate 5; in the
Library of Congress, I reexamined The Song of Los copy B and again made tracings of the
plates of the only complete extant copy of The Book of Ahania; most importantly, in the British
Museum, I examined The Song of Los
copies A and D, traced the plates of the only extant copy of The Book of Los, and determined exactly the size of the
small Pity and Albion
rose plates.
This new data enabled me to disprove my
initial hypothesis that The Song of Los plates 3-4 and 6-7 and the plates for The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los were quarters of the same large sheet. It enabled me
also to ascertain that small Pity
was not the exact
size of The Book of Ahania
sheet but that it was one of the quarters. Two measurements for small Pity proved insufficient to see this
connection, but with four it became clear: 19.75 cm. left, 19.5 cm. right, 27.2
cm. top, 27.4 cm. bottom. These are approximately the same measurements as the
color-printed impression of Albion rose, which are 27.2 cm. left, 27.3 cm. right, 19.75 cm. top,
19.95 cm. bottom.[15] Turn small Pity upside down and Albion rose on its left side, place them on top of The
Book of Los and The
Book of Ahania sheets
(illus. 34), and you have the four quarters of a sheet that is 39.35 cm. left,
39.7 cm. right, 54.7 cm. top, 54.5 cm. bottom. Along the middle, vertically and
horizontally, the sheet is 39.4 x 54.4 cm. This sheet was cut exactly in half
and each half was cut in half, hence each of the four quarters has a side 27.2
cm. wide or high.
Why did Blake purchase a 39.4 x 54.4 cm.
sheet of copper? At first, it may seem that he needed copper plates for his two
new poems, The Book of Ahania
and The Book of Los.
The former has 239 lines and the latter has 176 lines, for a total of 415.
Urizen is on 28
plates, 11 of which, including the title, are full-page illustrations, leaving
17 text plates for 517 lines. If Blake intended to etch his new poems in relief
to match the style and structure of Urizen, then he would have needed at least 22 plates for the two
books. Quartering each quarter of the large sheet produces 16 plates (or 32 if
versos are used), slightly smaller than Urizen, whose size was determined by its being
on the verso of Marriage
plates, the size of which was determined by Approach of Doom quartered (see Viscomi, "Evolution"
307).
Deducing motive from end results,
however, clearly does not work here. The sheet does not produce plates exactly
the size of Urizen,
forcing one to ask why not if that was Blake's intent. More troubling is that
Blake appears to have changed his mind after he quartered the sheet. Three of
the quarters he intended to use for etchings or engravings, as indicated by
their rounded corners and beveled sides, features designed to remove sharp
edges that could tear the paper when intaglio plates are printed under the
required pressure. One quarter he intended to use as a relief etching, as
indicated by the absence of these features, which are unnecessary for relief
etchings, because they are printed with less pressure. Given the manner in
which the quarters were prepared–whether by Blake or a platemaker following
Blake's instructions (see note 13)–Blake appears not to have acquired this
copper sheet as a poet needing many small relief-etched plates for an
illuminated book; he appears to have acquired it as a printmaker, with at least
two designs, Albion rose
and small Pity, in
mind, as a creative graphic artist who, to date, had executed many separate
etchings and engravings, including Head of a Damned Soul (c. 1790), The Accusers (1793), Edward and Elenor (1793), Job (1793), and Ezekiel (1794).
What Blake originally intended for the
other two quarters prepared for intaglio designs is not known. It is
interesting to speculate, though, that the designs may have been The Night of
Enitharmon's Joy (24.2 x
27.8 cm.) and Newton
(20.4 x 26.3 cm.), which are the only other drawings extant that fit the
quarters–or could be trimmed to fit–that were also executed, like small Pity, approximately four times their size as
large color-printed drawings. But whatever the original plans were for these
quarters, Blake changed his mind. He quartered the two quarters and used the
resulting plates for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania. This sequence of events is indicated by the fact that each
small plate has just one rounded corner (illus. 35), that of its original
sheet, which, in addition to the plates' uneven and rough inside edges (illus.
33), is why the plates can be reconstructed like pieces of a puzzle back into
their original quarter sheets (illus. 30, 31). The edges are rough because
Blake did not file them at an angle (the bevel), and though he appears to have
pounded down the sharp edges of the new corners, he did not round them. In
other words, Blake did not prepare the small plates for etching.
Was he in such a hurry to print his new
poems and designs that he ignored these crucial steps in preparing plates for
intaglio printing? Or did he know that he would print with less pressure than
normal since he planned to use the surface area for color printing, which he
did with The Book of Ahania plates 1, 2, and 6 (illus. 36), and The
Book of Los plates 1, 2, and 5?[16]
In The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los title plates, Blake etched the letters and inked them
locally, wiping the surface around them clean of ink and painting the image
between the inscription and title, presumably following a lightly scratched
outline. Blake used the same combination of printing from the surface and
incised lines in the endplates to both books. He knew printing from the surface
of an etching would work, since–as I argue below–he had already done so with Albion
rose (illus. 37), and
knew also that he could print surface areas with incised lines because he had
done so in Europe and
Urizen.
Using the small plates for intaglio
etching instead of relief etching enabled Blake to condense his texts,
averaging 59.5 lines per plate for The Book of Ahania and 58.6 for The Book of Los, versus 30.4 for Urizen, and thus use far fewer copper plates.
Using two of the quarters initially prepared for single intaglio designs (as is
indicated by the four original rounded corners per quarter) from this sheet for
illuminated plates appears to have been an afterthought, perhaps reflecting a
decision to enlarge the designs originally intended for the quarters in another
medium. Blake's decision to etch the small plates in intaglio rather than in
relief appears to reflect the influence of another quarter from the sheet, Albion
rose. But before we can examine how those
three quarters as used connect with one another, we need to understand the role
played by small Pity,
the quarter that appears to have been the first executed.
IV. Small Pity
For small Pity to have been printed from a quarter of a
large copper sheet means, of course, that its matrix is copper and not
millboard, but neither is it a "completely bare plate" (Butlin, "Physicality"
4). The evidence that small Pity
is from a metal plate lies also in the faintly embossed lines in the horses'
hind legs, tail, and front leg, and at the head of the supine figure (visible
in the verso), the very slight embossment of the relief plateau. Knowing that
small Pity is from a
copper plate in slight relief and not completely bare helps to explain an
apparent anomaly in the sequencing of the large color prints and to verify
Butlin's initial intuition regarding their evolution.
Butlin initially believed that Pity was Blake's first large color-printed
drawing, because it "developed from the small trial print, the only such try-out
that is known, and this in turn was preceded by two composition sketches … the
first of which is an upright composition, showing that at this stage Blake had
not yet evolved the format for the series of large prints." In these works (sketches, trial proof,
finished impression), "one does seem to see Blake developing a completely new
composition in a relatively short time from upright drawing to large horizontal
color print in a way that suggests a direct evolution rather than the reuse of
earlier material as found in others of the prints, and hence the real point of
origin for the series." And yet, if so, why is small Pity, "the … trial print," followed by God
Judging Adam, the first
color-printed drawing, and not Pity?
This Butlin cannot answer: "Whether this origin, in a totally new design, has
any significance for the meaning of the series as a whole I leave for others to
speculate" ("Physicality" 5).
Treating small Pity as a sketch that immediately preceded
the larger Pity is
logical, especially if you think that it too is from a "bare plate." On the
other hand, placing the trial proof after the first color-printed drawing makes no sense, especially if
it is the "real point of origin for the series," for it then becomes a
"try-out" for Pity
alone and not the "experiment" in color printing "on a larger scale" that
Butlin also assumes (cat. 313). The material evidence, however, indicates that
both the experimental small Pity
and the first color-printed drawing are from copper plates, each etched in very
slight to low relief, the former leading technically and materially to the
latter. Indeed, small Pity
is the "experiment" and "origin" that Butlin assumes. The mystery, however,
lies not in Blake's following small Pity with a "totally new design" (many sketches are not fully
realized until much later), or moving from "bare plate" to relief outline to
bare plates or millboards (that progression is an illusion), but rather in his
following small Pity's
failure at defining form through blocks of color with a return to relief-etched
outline, as used in illuminated books, before figuring out true planographic
printing. As an experiment, small Pity is specifically about working out how best to define forms
in large color prints, which is to say, less about format and composition than
technique and style.
True, small Pity differs in format and design from
everything color printed to that point; it is horizontal and a tryout for
prints four times its size. It borrows from earlier works, though, even while
attempting new things. Small Pity
is divided into top and bottom halves that were inked in different colors
(illus. 10). This in itself was not unusual, since two inks, as in sky and
ground, were commonly used in color printing aquatint landscapes. Moreover, in
1794 Blake had color printed Urizen
in this style, with page designs divided into texts and vignettes and inked in
different colors. For example, he inked the bottom half (text) of plate 19 from
Urizen copy C (illus.
38) in an olive green and the top half (figures) in yellow ochre; one can see
that his dabber inked the figures' outlines and touched down in their shallows,
creating a wide white line along the base of the outline, indicating that he
inked shallows and outlines together and that the relief was slightly higher
here than in God Judging Adam.
He went over the background in an olive green ink or color, defining the yellow
ochre figures as negative spaces, or cavities within the ground. Plate 23
demonstrates more clearly this style of defining form (illus. 39). Again, Blake
inked the plate's top and bottom halves in different colors and went over the
bottom with a darker color to differentiate background and figure, carefully
leaving the white of the paper to form Urizen's robe (it is finished in white
and gray colors in other impressions). Note, from the waist down, Urizen is
a blank triangular shallow defined by its background, by solid blocks or areas
painted in stop-out varnish and etched in relief (illus. 40). Blake had
used this style of defining form in Europe, also of 1794, plates 5, 8, and 14, and very
rudimentarily in America
plate 2.
Small Pity uses this style to define form on a
larger scale. Instead of bold outlines to delineate figures, it uses blocks of
colors, leaving the forms as white or negative space to be finished in pen and
ink and watercolors (illus. 41). In other words, production is divided into two
stages, each stage producing a different visual effect: in the print stage, forms are
blocked out in thick, mottled colors printed from the relief surface; in the finishing stage, forms left unprinted are washed
in and defined in pen and ink. Small Pity fails as a technical experiment because too much is left
unprinted–nearly 50% of the composition–leaving too much for finishing,
resulting in white areas whose flat, thin watercolors contrast poorly with
thick, mottled, alla prima paint surfaces. The combination of watercolors over
or adjacent to thick colors in the smaller illuminated plates works well, but
here, on the larger surface plane, the allocation of the different media to
different areas makes the surface visually incoherent.[17]
In short, small Pity
printed but left uncolored is incomplete in ways that are not true of
illuminated plates, etchings, or color-printed drawings.
Large color-printed drawings require
finishing in pen and ink and watercolors (particularly in second impressions),
often to keep the images from looking like blots and blurs, but it is just
that, finishing; printing and coloring are not separate stages, but are instead
integrated in the initial execution of the design in paint on the plate. Form
is defined through line and colors together on the plate and then clarified,
strengthened, and/or adorned further on the paper. The design on the matrix, in
other words, already closely resembles the painting it will become rather than
the basis for one. Matrix as organically unfolding painting would have
described God Judging Adam
(though of course not if its outline were printed separately from its colors),
and most evidently the millboard designs that followed. As a design, small
Pity could not be
realized or completed without an inordinate amount of additional work that went
far beyond the usual finishing, which is presumably why Blake left it
unfinished, realizing that constructing designs out of printing and painting
produced aesthetically inchoate textures and was not analogous to producing
illuminated prints, where watercolor washes supplemented autonomous designs
instead of completing them. His experiment was moving him in the opposite
direction from the large painterly compositions he was envisioning.[18]
V. Albion rose and the Book[s] of Designs
Butlin believes that Albion rose also influenced the large color-printed
drawings, and again he is right, but not entirely as he supposes. Albion
rose is one of two
etchings and 30 illuminated plates with masked-out texts color printed on
papers of two different sizes for Ozias Humphry. Blake refers to the
impressions only as "a selection from the different Books of such as could be
Printed without the Writing" (Erdman, Complete Poetry 771); we refer to them as the Small
Book of Designs and the Large
Book of Designs.[19]
Albion rose, from the
latter, was color printed from the surface, with its incised lines not printed
but used as guidelines for painting. In the catalogue, Butlin dates copies A of
Small Book and Large
Book 1794 because the
date on Urizen plate
1 in the former was left as printed, "1794." He dates copies B of both Book[s] 1796 because the printed date was
altered in pen to "1796" (cat. 260). Bindman does the same and believes the two
copies of Small Book
represent different projects and motives years apart, with copy A serving as a
"sampler of his best designs" to "demonstrate his colour-printing process," and
copy B possibly "some kind of emblem book [compiled] out of a selection of his
designs" (476). Most of the B impressions, however, are second pulls,
impressions pulled from the plate while ink and colors were still wet, which
means they cannot be years apart. Butlin recognizes this fact in a later
article ("Physicality" 3), but uses the unaltered 1794 date on the Urizen title plate in copy A for both sets of
impressions. Thus, he considers 1794 as the date when "the illustrations
literally broke free" of the accompanying texts. He also notes that Large Book included three subjects "based on independent
engravings; the distinction between books and independent works was beginning
to break down" (3). But a printed date does not date a printing session, as
nearly any reprinted illuminated book demonstrates. The altered date of 1796 is
more trustworthy than the printed "1794" because it bears Blake's autograph
(a similarly penned-in date of "1790" on plate 3 of Marriage copy F proved reliable); even if treated
like the "1795" written on color prints produced c. 1804, it would signify the
conception of the series and not the individual parts. Moreover, a project such
as this one, where a selection of plates was reprinted without text, would have
been an anomaly in 1794, because Blake was just beginning to reprint books and
had not yet color printed from the surface of intaglio plates.
Neither color-printed impression of Albion
rose could have been
printed in 1794, since the plate appears not to have been cut from its sheet
until 1795, along with the plates for small Pity, The Book of Los, and The Book of Ahania.
Both color-printed impressions are in the first state and "were very probably
produced in 1795-1796 when Blake seems to have done most of his work in that
medium" (Essick, Separate Plates
28). No monochrome impression of the first state is extant. On the basis of the
similarity in style to The Accusers
(1793) and The Gates
of Paradise (1793),
Essick dates the first state of Albion rose c. 1793 (Separate Plates 28). This date can now be changed to
1795 and may explain why no monochrome impressions in the first state are
extant: Blake color printed the plate before printing it in intaglio (though he
probably proofed the plate during its progress and the proofs, like most
proofs, are not extant). On the basis of textual and graphic evidence, Essick
dates the second state of the plate (illus. 42a) no earlier than c. 1804 and
possibly later than c. 1818. Albion, mentioned in the inscription, does not
appear as a person in "Blake's poetry until some of the later revisions of The
Four Zoas manuscript,
probably made after 1800, and in Milton, begun about 1803" (Separate Plates 28). Moreover, the inscription has a
left-pointing serif on the letter g, which, according to Erdman's hypothesis,
Blake used consistently between c. 1791 and 1803.[20]
However, visual effects such as the burnished halo behind Albion's head Essick
associates with the influence of Linnell, leading him to suggest a possible
post-1818 date as well (private correspondence).
Yet something is not quite right here.
Because the etched lines are visible in the second, lighter color-printed
impression when examined in strong light, Essick could ascertain that the first
state "lacked the bat-winged moth, worm, and shafts of light radiating from the
figure …. The horizontal hatching lines of the background seem to have extended
much closer to the head and shoulders of the figure …" (Separate Plates 24). He also notes that Blake added a
hill under the figure's right foot without deleting the horizontal background
lines, as he did when he added the moth. While the inscription may be c. 1804
or later, these design changes–halo, shafts of light, and hill–are likely to
have been c. 1795, because they follow the color print's coloring so closely,
as is demonstrated by placing a transparency of the color print over the second
state (illus. 42b). Blake appears to have used the color print as a model for
the changes he made in the plate, but he is unlikely to have waited nine or
more years to make these changes. The copy A impression was in Humphry's possession
by 1796 and the copy B impression appears to have been "one of the prints by
Blake acquired in August 1797 by Dr. James Curry, a friend of Humphrey's"
(Essick, Separate Plates
25; see also Bentley, "Dr. James Curry as a Patron of Blake," Notes and Queries 27 [1980]: 71-73). Also, Blake seems to
have used scrapers and burnishers conventionally, to erase lines and smooth
surfaces so he could etch new forms, like the moth, and not radically, as he
did in the second states of Mirth,
Job, and Ezekiel, where he created dramatic and painterly
visual effects that do indeed appear to reflect the influence of Linnell.[21]
Moreover, the worm, whose significance
may be explained by a passage in Jerusalem 55:36-37 (Essick, Separate Plates 29), is visually similar to the worms in
Gates of Paradise
(1793) plates 1 and 18 and in The Song of Los plate 3. More interestingly, the
bat-winged moth in the second state (illus. 42a) may have been influenced by
the bat-winged moth in The Song of Los plates 3-4 (illus. 43). This image has heretofore
been unrecorded because it appears in the middle of the horizontal plate and was
masked out during printing; it is digitally recreated from traces in the plate
3 impression of copy E and plate 4 of copy B. The first state of Albion rose has always been thought to precede The
Song of Los, but knowing
that both works are from 1795 requires rethinking their sequence. If the second
state of Albion rose
was influenced by The Song of Los's
moth, then the first state of Albion rose was executed before The Song of Los
text plates, which in turn suggests that the plates cut from the same sheet as Albion
rose–including those
for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania–also precede The Song of Los. This sequence for the books agrees with
other, stronger evidence given below.
Blake appears to have color printed Albion
rose before printing it
in intaglio. More importantly, it is the first intaglio plate he color printed.
Misdating Large Book,
with its two etchings, 1794 instead of 1796 has obscured this likelihood and
its significance. Blake color printed only two other etchings, The Accusers and Lucifer and the Pope in Hell, and appears to have done so after Albion
rose. The first state of
the former is dated 5 June 1793; the two color-printed impressions extant are
in the second state (Essick, Separate Plates 31) and were part of the Large Book, which Blake appears to have put
together in 1796 by commission. No monochrome impressions of the second state
are extant, which suggests that the color printing of The Accusers for Large Book may have provided the opportunity to make
changes in the plate. Lucifer
exists in a touched proof, with lots of pencil work in the first state and a
monochrome impression in the second state.[22]
The one color-printed impression is presumably in the second state (the colors
are too thick to see through and the image is pasted down on a thick sheet of
paper). Essick dates the plate c. 1794 because it seems to share themes and
motifs with Europe
(1794), but he also recognizes that it differs stylistically from the other
political prints, Albion rose
and The Accusers, in
that, while executed in their energetic etched style, it makes "more use of
enlarged versions of such conventional patterns as worm lines and cross
hatching, much as in the Night Thoughts plates of 1796-1797" (Separate Plates 43). I agree and think Lucifer is c. 1796 and probably color printed
that year, along with the other works for the Large Book and Small Book, though it was not part of either
series, no doubt excluded for having a horizontal rather than vertical format.
In 1796, Blake appears to have built a
series of color prints around Albion rose, taking stock of his etchings and relief etchings and
transforming 30 of them into miniature paintings to make up the two series for
Humphry. Twenty-two years later, in a 9 June 1818 letter to Dawson Turner, he
remembered the project this way:
Those I Printed for Mr Humphry are a
selection from the different Books of such as could be Printed without the
Writing tho to the Loss of some of the best things[.] For they when Printed
perfect accompany Poetical Personifications & Acts without which Poems they
never could have been Executed[.]
He
then describes the color-printed drawings as:
12 Large Prints Size of Each about 2 feet
by 1 & 1/2 Historical & Poetical Printed in Colours[.] … These last 12
Prints are unaccompanied by any writing[.]
(Erdman,
Complete Poetry 771)
For
Blake, the illuminated plates "Printed without the Writing" and the large color
prints "unaccompanied by any writing" are clearly related projects. They are
also, as Blake tells Turner, "sufficient to have gained me great reputation as
an Artist which was the chief thing Intended." Butlin recognizes that the
projects are connected and has done more to champion their importance to
Blake's reputation as an artist than any other Blake scholar. He has argued, though, that the small
works evolved into the larger works and thus, as noted, considers 1794 as the
start of Blake's illustrations breaking free of text ("Physicality" 3). But,
as shown here, the smaller monotypes are from 1796, not 1794, and found their
precedent and inspiration in the larger monotypes of 1795. And like their
prototypes, the later, smaller impressions were colored "with a degree of
splendour and force, as almost to resemble sketches in oil-colours … all of
which are peculiarly remarkable for their strength and splendour of colouring."
[23]
Indeed, the color-printed drawings, large and small, are to oil sketches what
relief etchings are to drawings. They are prints in which Blake incorporated
the tools and techniques of painting, just as in illuminated prints he used the
tools and processes of drawing and writing. The prints in the Small Book and Large Book are not only "free of text," but they
differ even from the color-printed illuminated plates of 1794 by having been
produced in a more overtly painterly manner, no doubt influenced by the larger
prints of 1795. This painterliness in the small and large monotypes is no mere
illusion, as it would be if the impressions were assembled from separately
printed outline and colors.
Butlin's premise that the large monotypes
of 1795 grew out of smaller works is correct, but his choice of smaller works
is partly mistaken. The candidates
are the illuminated books color printed in 1794, or small Pity and Albion rose of 1795. Blake first prints in colors in
1794, printing the Experience
sections of Songs
copies F, G, H, T, and B, C, D, and E (the two sets in that order); Europe copies B, C, D, E, F, and G; The Book of Urizen copies A, C, D, E, F, and J; and
possibly Visions of the Daughters of Albion copies F and R and The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copies E and F. He color printed The
Book of Los, The Book
of Ahania, and The
Song of Los in 1795. The
last of these, as we shall see, is likely to have been executed concurrently with
or after the large color-printed drawings and under the influence of their format
and technique, whereas the first two books are etchings that appear to have
been executed before the color-printed drawings but after Albion rose, as indicated by Blake's change of mind
regarding the original quarter sheets used to provide their plates. Many
significant differences exist between color printing relief etchings and
intaglio etchings. With the former, Blake is inking plates as prints and adding
colors to inked and uninked areas. He behaved even more radically with the
latter works. Blake is not inking the plate; he is painting it, using etched
lines as guidelines, but he is also free to improvise at will, as he did with
hill and halo in Albion rose.
Nothing like these had ever been produced before and no analogous printing
process exists.
Recognizing Albion rose as a product of 1795 rather than 1794,
as the first color-printed intaglio plate, and as cut from the same sheet as
small Pity helps us
to see it and small Pity
more clearly as experiments in color printing that reveal the technical problem
Blake is attempting to solve. He, as intaglio etcher and relief etcher,
quarters a large sheet of copper and prepares three plates for intaglio and one
for relief. He uses the relief etching to experiment with creating a matrix
capable of being color printed as a relatively large composition. He needs to
scale up in size his earlier experiments; to date, he has color printed from
both the surface and from the surface and shallows simultaneously of relief
etchings. He needs to figure out
how to define forms on larger surfaces in the new marriage of print and
painting that he was then envisioning. Were forms to be blocked out in low flat
relief, as in small Pity,
in relief outline, as in illuminated plates, or in incised outline, as in Albion
rose? Albion rose can be printed without colors or
finishing, but small Pity
cannot; the latter work was designed with color printing in mind while the
former probably was not. As Blake was beginning to experiment with scaling up
his color prints, however, he put Albion rose to double use, testing its suitability
for large printed paintings by painting the design and printing it. The idea to
color print Albion rose
from its surface instead of printing it as an etching may have occurred to
Blake during its execution or after recognizing the failure of small Pity.
The basic principle, one could argue, for
inventing large monotypes is present in color printing relief etchings, but, in
practice, Blake is closer to working up flat areas and defining forms through
colors when color printing intaglio etchings. Does this mean Albion rose was more influential in what followed
than small Pity? Yes
and no. The intaglio etching appears directly to have influenced the choice of
medium and color printing technique of The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los–works one quarter the size of Albion rose–but not the color-printed drawings, which
are four times its size. Interesting, in this regard, is Blake's never having
color printed the intaglio engravings that are the size of the color prints,
like Job and Ezekiel, perhaps finding the dense line systems
unsuited for the open and painterly compositions he was then creating–or
because such surfaces proved more difficult to use than gesso's striated
surfaces. In any event, he apparently decided not to use etched outlines for
his large printed paintings, following small Pity with God Judging Adam. What, then, leads to true planographic
printing, which lies, technically speaking, somewhere between small Pity and Albion rose?
Blake possibly went from small Pity to God Judging Adam and returned to Albion rose to think more on the problem of defining
form. The idea of a non-printable outline–neither in relief nor intaglio–but
paintable along with blocks of colors could have grown out of painting and
printing Albion rose.
Alternatively, it could have grown out of painting over a low relief outline of
God Judging Adam and
realizing that the outline's function could be served planographically, that it
was the painting over the outline rather than printing the outline that
mattered most. Once Blake made that discovery, returning to color print an
intaglio etching or moving to the planographic printing of Elohim or Satan and then to millboards must have come
quickly.
Determining the exact sequence of
development in Blake's monotyping may be impossible, because planographic
printing can evolve out of painting the surface of an etching, using the
incised lines as guidelines, or vice versa. However, the use of one sheet of
copper to produce both small Pity
and Albion rose, two
plates representing different technical solutions to defining forms needed for
printing large monotypes, does help us sequence the illuminated books of 1795.
The size of the sheet may have influenced the size of the subsequent sheets
acquired for the color prints. Recall that Blake described the "Size of Each"
of his "12 Large Prints" at "about 2 feet by 1 & 1/2" (Erdman, Complete
Poetry 771). Since these
works are horizontal, we should record this as 18 x 24 in. This is a rough
approximation, but each work is within one and a quarter inch in height and three inches in
width of this approximation. The smallest, Pity, is 16.75 x 21.25 in. (42.5 x 53.9 cm.), approximately the same size as God Judging
Adam, presumably the first, which is 17 x 21 in.
(43.2 x 53.5 cm.); the largest, House of Death, is 19 x 24 in. (48.5 x 61 cm.); the widest, Nebuchadnezzar,
is 17.5 x 24.4 in. (44.6 x 62 cm.).[24]
At 39.4 x 54.4 cm. (15.5 x 21.4 in.), the copper sheet yielding small Pity, Albion rose, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los fits squarely within the average of the first color-printed
drawings, but is shorter, on average, by 3.5 cm. Assuming the copper sheet used for The Song of Los plates 3-4 and 6-7 was a half sheet, then the full sheet, at 43.5 x 54.4 cm., fits within both height and width of
color-printed drawings. Relative to the copper sheets and millboards used in
1795, it fits the series while the shorter sheet, which yielded works whose printing directly influenced the technique and printing of the large color-printed drawings, does not. Similarly sized sheets for a projected series suggest a similar date of purchase; the shorter sheet
appears not only to have been worked on before those of the series, but also to have been acquired apart from them, which further supports the thesis that The
Book of Los and The Book of Ahania were composed and executed before the
larger relief-etched text plates of The Song of Los, which in turn preceded their
illustrations, plates 1, 2, 5, and 8.
Assuming Blake treated the sheet yielding
The Song of Los
plates 3-4 and 6-7 like the one for The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los, i.e., cutting it in half, then the unused half would also
be approximately 43.5-8 x 27.2-5 cm. Cutting this half to provide the coppers
for The Song of Los
plates 2/5 and 1/8 appears logical, but to have done so would have meant
wasting precious metal, because 24.2 x 17.4 cm. (2/5) and 23.6 x 17.5 cm. (1/8)
do not fit without lots of awkward trimming. Moreover, plates 2/5 and 1/8 do
not fit together; they were not conjoined in a sheet. Thus, while technically
possible, economically it made no sense–and as his recto-verso etching
demonstrates, Blake was very practical in his use of copper. He may have bought just
half the sheet, intending to halve it for The Song of Los text plates, or bought the whole sheet
and used the other half or pieces from it later.[25]
However he used it, plates 2/5 and 1/8 appear certainly not to have been cut
out of it, which supports the evidence below that they were not copper but
millboards.
Plates 1 and 8 were planographically
printed; no relief lines or marks are present in the versos of any impressions
from either plate. No traces of incised lines are seen through the impression
in strong light, as can be seen in the copy B impression of Albion rose. Blake either lightly etched or
scratched the outline in metal, as suggested by Essick (Printmaker 128), or he used millboard, which seems
more likely, given the very wavy cut of the plate along the top edge (illus.
2), something more likely in board than metal. More significant are the
striations in clouds and arms visible in plate 8 of copy B (illus. 44). These
patterns, typical of gessoed millboard, are also in copies E and A and thus are
not repetitions in the paint layer of a first pull within a second.
Plates 2 and 5 are also planographically
printed. In plate 5 (illus. 45), figures, lily petals, and stems are consistent
in each impression and carefully finished in watercolor washes and pen and ink.
The broad green and brown leaves under the lilies, however, differ in number,
form, and placement in each impression, signs of improvisation, of having been
painted broadly and energetically directly on the plate rather than painted
within an outline. Here, Blake paints each design anew, creating prints with
both the miniature's exactness of form and the freedom and boldness of the oil
sketch.
Essick was first to recognize that plate
2 is the only illuminated plate with planographic lettering, though he
acknowledges that the letters may have had "lightly incised" outlines (Printmaker 128). Dörrbecker agrees and adds that
the letters of the inscription may have been relief etched (319n28). Comparing
all six impressions in great detail, however, reveals that the letter forms are
too inconsistent to have been outlined or relief etched. Note, for example, the
letter "N" (illus. 46) in copies A and B (top row) and D and C (bottom row): B
and C differ slightly from one another but are exactly like A and D
respectively, only lighter, because they are second impressions.[26]
Incised lines and relief etching are also ruled out because the matrix is
almost certain to have been millboard, as indicated by the striated texture
under the colors forming the letter "L" in the non-sequential B and C
impressions (illus. 47). The copy C impression is telling in other ways as
well; a second pull, it reveals thin white lines (illus. 48) that at first
appear to be part of an incised outline, thus suggesting a metal plate. Closer
inspection, however, reveals the white lines are the spaces between adjoining
blocks of colors; we see the same effect in the second impression of Pity (illus. 49) and many of the other color-printed drawings.
The accepted sequence of The Song of
Los, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los has Blake returning to the continental myth before
finishing the Urizen cycle. It pictures him creatively experimenting in The
Song of Los with page
format and text design and using small color-printed drawings as book
illustrations, only to return in the intaglio books to the earlier text format
of Urizen. We now can
see that The Song of Los
is last in this sequence and that Blake completed the Urizen poems first and without interruption, with
two much shorter books whose planographically printed images were directly
influenced by the color printing of Albion rose.
The Song of Los
plates 3-4 and 6-7 are horizontal compositions influenced apparently by the
format of Blake's new invention, the large color monotypes. Their double
columns were influenced by Urizen, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los, but differ significantly, being widely
spaced and almost free flowing in a format that combined poetry, printmaking,
and painting in a new and radical way. The Song of Los was Blake's last illuminated text until Milton, and Blake probably began it while
working on the color-printed drawings, conceiving of his new texts as paintings
with–or of–poems, presented as horizontal scrolls, panels, or broadsides.
With The Song of Los as originally conceived, Blake returned
to his continental cycle using the same relief-etched print medium but in a
painting format. For whatever reason, he changed his mind and decided that his
"Africa" and "Asia" needed to be reformatted. He masked one side of the
horizontal plate when printing to transform texts into book pages. He executed
full-page illustrations on millboard after the text plates and designed them to
match in shape and size the plates of America and Europe. In doing so, he appears to have
salvaged an experiment he abandoned by extending what he learned about
planographic printing from millboard into book production. The fact that The
Book of Los and The Book of Ahania are not to Urizen as Experience is to Innocence, but are clearly related parts
differently formatted, may have freed Blake from thinking that "Asia" and
"Africa" had to match America
and Europe exactly.
The non-symmetrical relation within the Urizen cycle may have enabled him to
reconstruct The Song of Los
into a book with two "continents" and fewer than half the number of pages in America or Europe.
Butlin is surely correct that "1795 can be seen as a vital year in
Blake's evolution, that in which his pictorial art finally achieved maturity
with works of the highest quality while, conversely, his production of
illuminated books suffered a hiatus for over ten years …." I hope, however, in
light of new information about how small Pity was designed and executed, when and how Albion
rose was printed, the
size of the copper sheet and manner in which it was cut to yield their plates
and the plates for The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los, how the small intaglio illuminated plates were printed,
how the large color prints evolved and were executed and influenced the Large and Small Book of Designs, and, mostly, how The Song of Los began as texts designed in landscape
format and was recreated as a book by the masking of these plates during
printing and the inclusion of small color-printed drawings, that the last
illuminated books of this period can be thought of as more than "the three
relatively unambitious books of 1795" ("Physicality" 6).
Bentley, G. E., Jr. Blake
Books. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977.
---. Blake Records. 2nd ed. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
Bindman, David. The
Complete Graphic Works of William Blake. London: Thames and Hudson, 1978.
Butlin, Martin. "'Is This a Private War or Can
Anyone Join In?': A Plea for a Broader Look at Blake's Color-Printing
Techniques." Blake/An
Illustrated Quarterly
36.2 (fall 2002): 45-49.
---. "A Newly Discovered
Watermark and a Visionary's Way with His Dates." Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 15.2 (fall 1981): 101-03.
---. The Paintings and
Drawings of William Blake. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1981.
---. "The Physicality of
William Blake: The Large Color Prints of '1795.'" Huntington Library
Quarterly 52
(1989): 1-18.
Dörrbecker, D. W., ed. William Blake: The
Continental Prophecies. Blake's Illuminated Books, vol. 4. Princeton: Princeton
University Press/Blake Trust; London: Tate Gallery/Blake Trust, 1995.
Erdman, David V., ed., with
commentary by Harold Bloom. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Newly rev. ed. New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1988.
---. The Illuminated
Blake. Garden City, NY: Anchor-Doubleday, 1974.
Essick, Robert N. Blake
and the Language of Adam. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
---. "John Linnell,
William Blake, and the Printmaker's Craft." Huntington Library
Quarterly 46
(1983): 18-32. Also published in Essays on the Blake Followers. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1983.
---. The Separate
Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983.
---. "A Supplement to The
Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue." Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 17.4 (spring 1984): 139-44.
---. William Blake,
Printmaker.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980.
Essick, Robert N., and Joseph Viscomi. "Blake's Method of Color Printing: Some Responses and Further
Observations." Blake/An
Illustrated Quarterly
36.2 (fall 2002): 49-64. Online version, with color illustrations, at the journal's website: <http://www.blakequarterly.org/response/text.html>.
---. "An Inquiry into William Blake's
Method of Color Printing." Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 35.3 (winter 2001-02): 74-103. Online
version, with 81 color illustrations, at the journal's website: <http://www.blakequarterly.org/inquiry/index.html>.
Gilchrist, Alexander. Life
of Blake, "Pictor Ignotus." 2 vols. London: Macmillan, 1863.
Hamlyn, Robin. "William Blake
at Work: 'Every thing which is in Harmony.'" Townsend 12-39.
Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. Blake,
Complete Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966.
McManus, Noa Cahaner, and
Joyce H. Townsend. "The Large Colour Prints: Methods and Materials." Townsend 82-99.
Mitchell, W. J. T. "Visible
Language: Blake's Wond'rous Art of Writing." Romanticism and Contemporary
Criticism.
Ed. Morris Eaves and Michael Fischer. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1986. 46-86.
Phillips, Michael. "Color-Printing Songs of
Experience and Blake's
Method of Registration: A Correction." Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 36.2 (fall 2002): 44-45.
---. William Blake: The
Creation of the Songs of Innocence and of Experience from Manuscript to
Illuminated Printing. London: British Library, 2000.
Rossetti, William Michael, comp. Rossetti
Papers 1862 to 1870. London: Sands & Co., 1903.
Townsend, Joyce H., ed.
William Blake: The Painter at Work. London: Tate Publishing; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Viscomi, Joseph. Blake and
the Idea of the Book. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993.
---. "Blake's Virtual Designs and
Reconstruction of The Song of Los."
Romanticism on the Net 41-42 (2006). <http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2006/v/n41-42/013151ar.html>.
---. "The Evolution of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." Huntington Library
Quarterly
58.3-4 (1997): 281-344.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 1.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
2. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 8.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
3. The Song
of Los, virtual design
of plates 1 and 8, based on copy E. These items are reproduced by permission of
the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
4. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 8,
reversed and laid over plate 1, along its top and side edges, to reveal their
shared shapes. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c)
Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive.
Used with permission.
5. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 2.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
6. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 5.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
7. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 2,
bottom edge of verso. Detail: computer enhancement of platemark to show dent in
edge of plate. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c)
Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive.
Used with permission.
8.
The Song
of Los, virtual design
of plates 2 and 5, based on copy A. (c) Copyright the Trustees of the British
Museum.
9. The Book of Urizen copy G, plate 4. Collection of Robert N.
Essick. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive. Used with permission.
10. Small Pity. (c) Copyright the Trustees of the British
Museum.
11. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 6.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
12. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 7.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
13. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 3.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
14. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 4.
Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William
Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
15. The Song
of Los, digitally
recreated design for plates 3-4, based on copy E. These items are reproduced by
permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
16. The Song
of Los, digitally
recreated design for plates 6-7, based on copy E. These items are reproduced by
permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
17. The Song
of Los, digitally
recreated design for plates 3-4 and 6-7 as pages stitched together to form a
diptych, based on copy E. These items are reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
18. Blake's
monogram signature, c. 1795, placed on The Song of Los digital recreation of plates 6-7, based
on copy E.
19. The Song
of Los, digitally
recreated design for plates 3-4 and 6-7, as horizontal scroll or two-part broadside,
based on copy E. These items are reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
20. Paint
printed from a gessoed millboard, detail.
21. The
Night of Enitharmon's Joy,
detail. This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
22. Christ
Appearing to the Apostles,
detail. Yale Center for British Art, Yale Art Gallery Collection.
23. Pity, detail. Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. Robert W. Goelet, 1958 (58.603). Photograph (c) copyright 1979, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
24. God
Judging Adam. © Copyright Tate, London 2006.
25. God
Judging Adam, detail of
platemaker's mark. © Copyright Tate, London 2006.
26. God
Judging Adam, detail of
horses' heads. © Copyright Tate, London 2006.
27. God
Judging Adam, detail of
horses' heads. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1916 (16.38).
Photograph (c) copyright 2000, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
28a. Design etched in low relief, inked with
dabber in black and gone over in brownish-red color, printed in one pull
producing thin white line at base of relief lines, detail.
28b. The
Song of Los copy E,
plate 7, detail. This item is reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
29. The Song of Los plates 3-4 and 6-7 as half sheet, based
on copy E. These items are reproduced by permission of the Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
30. The Book
of Los plates 2, 3, 4,
and 5 as quarters of a copper sheet, based on copy A. (c) Copyright the Trustees
of the British Museum.
31. The Book
of Ahania plates 3, 4,
5, and 6 as quarters of a copper sheet, based on copy A. Lessing J. Rosenwald
Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake
Archive. Used with permission.
32. The Book
of Ahania copy A,
plates 3 and 2, detail, superimposed to reveal their shared shapes. Lessing J.
Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake
Archive. Used with permission.
33. The Book
of Los copy A, plates 3
and 4, detail of edges fitting together within the sheet of copper. Lessing J.
Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive. Used with permission.
34. The Book
of Ahania, The Book of Los, small Pity, and Albion rose digitally reconstructed as quarters into
a sheet of copper.
35. The Book
of Ahania copy A, plate
4. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
36. The Book
of Ahania copy A, plate
6. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive. Used with
permission.
37. Albion
rose, from The Large
Book of Designs copy A.
(c) Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum.
38. The Book
of Urizen copy C, plate
19. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
39. The Book
of Urizen copy C, plate
23. Yale Center for
British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
40. The Book
of Urizen copy C, plate
23, digitally enhanced to appear as a relief-etched copper plate and to
emphasize relief areas and cavities. Yale Center for
British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
41. Small
Pity, digitally enhanced
to appear as a shallowly etched relief copper plate and to emphasize relief areas
and cavities. © Copyright the Trustees of the British
Museum.
42a. Albion rose, second state. (c) Copyright the Trustees
of the British Museum.
42b. Albion rose, transparency of color print laid over second state of the plate to show alignment of colors with changes made in the second state.
43. The Song of Los, butterfly in recreated design for
plates 3-4, detail, based on copies E and B.
44. The Song
of Los copy B, plate 8,
detail. Lessing J.
Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake
Archive. Used with permission.
45. The Song
of Los copy A, plate 5.
(c) Copyright the Trustees of the British Museum. The Song of Los copy B, plate 5. Lessing J. Rosenwald
Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake
Archive. Used with permission.
46. The Song
of Los copies A, B / D,
C, plate 2, detail of the letter "N" from title. (c) Copyright the Trustees of the British
Museum. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive. Used
with permission. Morgan Library and Museum, New York. PML 77236.
47. The Song
of Los copies B and C,
plate 2, detail of letter "L" from title. Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection,
Library of Congress. (c) Copyright 2005, William Blake Archive. Used with permission. Morgan
Library and Museum, New York. PML 77236.
48. The Song
of Los copy C, plate 2,
detail. Morgan Library and Museum, New York. PML 77236.
49. Pity, detail. Metropolitan Museum of Art, gift of Mrs. Robert W. Goelet, 1958 (58.603). Photograph (c) copyright 1979, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
I would like to thank Robert Essick for reading an early draft of this essay and Todd Stabley, multimedia consultant, formerly of the Center for Instructional Technology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for his assistance in digitally recreating Blake’s copper sheets and virtual designs.
[*] This essay appeared in print in Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 41.2 (fall 2007): 52-83. The online version has six more illustrations, all illustrations in color, and a slightly longer first section.
[1]
[2] Europe and Urizen are both dated 1794 by Blake, but the order in which he produced them is not immediately clear. Keynes sequences the books America, Urizen, Europe, The Song of Los, The Book of Ahania, and The Book of Los (222-48). By placing Urizen between America and Europe, he implies that the continental cycle was Blake's most recent project when working on The Song of Los and that he postponed work on the subsequent books of Urizen. Erdman and other editors are less clear about the sequence of the 1794 and 1795 books; they group the related books together, even though that means placing Urizen after The Song of Los so it can be read with The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los and The Song of Los can be read with America and Europe. In the Blake Archive, we place Europe before Urizen, assuming a chronological contiguity with America because the works are physically, visually, and thematically alike, but also because the Urizen plates were executed in terms of color printing, the printing technique Blake had begun using in 1794, and the Europe plates were not (see Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, chapter 29).
[3] See Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, chapter 5, and "Evolution" 306-07.
[4] This is not the first time Blake masked top or bottom of a design. He had masked the bottom of America plate 4 in its first printings of 1793 so that the last five lines did not print (Bentley, Blake Books 87).
[5] Why not etch both sides of plates 3-4 and 6-7, or cut the plates in half instead of masking? Putting the two text plates on separate plates freed the versos for Pity-size color prints. Masking instead of cutting the plates kept the versos intact should Blake ever want to use them for designs.
[6] Blake used damp paper to print both intaglio plates–which is standard practice–as well as his relief etchings (Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book 99-100). The facsimile of Albion rose and the color prints (illus. 18, 19, 21) in Essick and Viscomi, "Blake's Method," were printed on damp paper after the colors had dried. McManus and Townsend come to the same conclusion: "The paper was not prepared with any priming, but would have been wetted to make it more receptive to printing" (83; see also Ormsby and Townsend 44). For analyses of Blake's colors in the large color prints, see McManus and Townsend 86-99, and Townsend 186.
[7]
To print outline and colors separately calls for printing the plate twice. For Blake, this would have required printing the outline onto a sheet of paper, somehow fastening the paper in place on the press bed, marking the position of the plate, removing the plate to apply its colors, returning the plate exactly to its position (a hair-width variance at top or sides will reveal itself), and dropping the paper over the plate exactly where it was. Because the shape of the dampened paper is slightly altered by its first pass through the press, perfect (i.e., undetectable) registration is near impossible under the best of conditions. Evidence of a plate's having been printed twice by hand is nearly always visible if you know where to look; the absence of such evidence signifies single-pull printing and is not evidence of Blake's genius for hiding his hand in color printing. If outline and colors of lighter second impressions were printed separately, then both first and second impressions underwent a procedure that doubled the likelihood of misregistration. The first impression, instead of being fastened to the press, is removed so a second impression can be printed, thus the sheet of paper as well as the plate with colors must be aligned exactly, top and sides, to their marked positions, greatly increasing the chances of misalignment. No one explicitly argues for this mechanical and labor-intensive procedure for second impressions, which is wise, since no second impression among the large color-printed drawings or the Large and Small Book of Designs (see section V of this essay) shows any misalignment of color and outline. Yet such a procedure is implied because it is the inevitable and logical result of printing outline and colors separately. Hence, the premise of two pulls collapses when tested this far in practice, which in turn supports the one-pull hypothesis for both second and first impressions.
[8] The large digital images of the color-printed drawings in the William Blake Archive have enabled us to examine details heretofore impossible to see in print reproductions and not always visible in the originals to the naked eye.
[9] According to J. T. Smith, "Blake's modes of preparing his ground, and laying them over his panels for painting, mixing his colours, and manner of working, were those which he considered to have been practised by the earliest fresco-painters …" (Bentley, Blake Records 622). Apparently, this was, to Blake, true of both the color-printed drawings as well as the temperas. For an insightful examination of the meaning Blake attached to the word "fresco" in theory and practice, see Hamlyn 20-27, 30-33.
[10] Printing exactly repeatable images planographically is, of course, lithography, invented accidentally in 1798 by Alois Senefelder and initially called "polyautography" to suggest the autographic gestures of writing, drawing, and sketching. Senefelder intended initially to etch designs in low relief on metal or limestone and only accidentally discovered that designs drawn on soft limestone in a greasy ink absorb the printing ink while all untouched areas repel ink if first covered with a thin film of water. The basis of lithography, in other words, is the separation of water and oil. For more on Senefelder and lithography's similarities to Blake's relief etching, see Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book 24-25, 171-72; for information on Blake's lithograph, Enoch, see Essick, Separate Plates 55-59.
[11] Today, an 18 x 24 in. sheet of copper
(16 gauge) for etching costs almost $100; millboard nearly twice that size is
less than $5.
[12] These measurements are from Butlin's catalogue raisonné; I did not have the opportunity to measure each side of the impressions, which I assume would vary slightly.
[13] Eleven of the 16 plates are between 27.2 and 27.5 cm. in height, 3 are between 26.5 and 26.9 cm., and 2 are between 25.7 and 26.4 cm. Widths range only between 19.6 and 20.5 cm. I am indebted to Robert Essick for measuring his uncut copy of Blake's engravings for Stedman. In most copies, the prints were trimmed to the design and thus shorn of their platemarks. If the Stedman plates, which were commissioned by the publisher Joseph Johnson, were quarters, then the platemaker from whom Blake bought the plates was most likely responsible for quartering the sheets, presumably according to either Johnson's or Blake's instructions, and may also have been responsible for preparing them for intaglio etching by beveling the sides and rounding the corners. According to Mei-Ying Sung, most of the Book of Job plates were cut by the platemaker, but crossing marks on the versos make it possible to reassemble them into their original sheets ("Technical and Material Studies of William Blake's Engraved Illustrations of the Book of Job [1826]," Nottingham Trent University PhD, 2005, appendix 1). In some cases, in other words, Blake's plates can be reconstructed into their original sheets whether Blake cut the sheets or had them cut for him.
[14]
[15] Essick records the plate size as 27.2 x 19.9 cm. ( Separate Plates 24); Butlin records the Huntington impression as 27.2 x 19.9 cm. and the British Museum impression as 27.5 x 20.2 cm. (cat. 284, 262.1).
[16]
[17] Perhaps Blake's painting the horse's rump sky blue was sign enough that the forms were poorly defined. He could have fixed the mistake by going over the blue in darker colors, but he chose to leave the impression unfinished, probably because even dark washes over a relatively large space would have appeared flat next to the thick, mottled paint printed from the plate.
[18] In the Tate's version of Lamech and His Two Wives , "virtually the whole image has been printed, with no reserves of paper left for finishing in watercolour." This "seems to be a considerably more developed form of the technique" than used in Naomi Entreating Ruth and Orpah, "which argues that this print [Lamech] was made late in the series" (McManus and Townsend 96). In Naomi, God Judging Adam, and other prints, Blake left the figures or parts of them unprinted/unpainted to use the white of the paper, often in conjunction with white pigments, for highlights and contrast, but these are small areas relative to the composition and do not produce visually discordant surface textures.
[19] The Small Book consisted of 23 impressions pulled from Urizen, Marriage, Thel, and Visions, on Whatman 1794 paper 26 x 19 cm.; the Large Book consisted of plates from Urizen, Visions, separate relief plates of America plate d and Joseph of Arimathea Preaching, and two etchings, Albion rose and The Accusers, on Whatman 1794 paper cut to 34.5 x 24.5 cm. Humphry, a renowned miniaturist, appears to have already owned color-printed Songs copy H and Europe copy D as well as monochrome America copy H, which may explain why plates from these books were not in the Book[s] of Designs, despite the obvious suitability of America and Europe designs for such a project. For more information about the Book[s] of Designs and their connection to the large color-printed drawings, see Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book 302-04.
[20] See David V. Erdman, "Dating Blake's Script: The 'g' Hypothesis," Blake 3.1 (1969): 8-13. The inscription reads: "Albion rose from where he labourd at the Mill with Slaves / Giving himself for the Nations he danc'd the dance of Eternal Death." Essick notes that the imagery in the inscription echoes that used in a letter to William Hayley, 23 October 1804, in which he likens himself to "a slave bound in a mill among beasts and devils" who has been "again enlightened with the light [he] enjoyed in [his] youth" ( Separate Plates 28). The inscription reveals Blake returning to an earlier image and reinterpreting it (or remembering it as an idealized self-portrait), as he did with Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion (1773, c. 1810-20), The Accusers (1793, c. 1805-10), and Mirth (c. 1816-20, 1820-27).
[21] For Blake's radical use of burnishers to create stark contrasts of blacks and whites and its association with Linnell, see Essick, Printmaker, chapters 13 and 16, and Essick, "John Linnell." The technique's use in Albion rose, however, seems more practical than painterly, and the resulting play of light less dramatic than in those others revised late in life.
[22] The recently rediscovered proof is in the Essick Collection; it was unknown at the time Essick wrote his Separate Plates catalogue, which lists only one state for the plate (41-42).
[23] Richard Thomson's description of the Large Book for J. T. Smith's Nollekens and His Times, as quoted in Bentley, Blake Records 621.
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