ST MATTHEW

Cleveland Art Museum

St Matthew and the Angel

Although there is no account in the Bible of the writer of the Gospel of Matthew having received his book by dictation from an angel, artists found this an attractive subject for a painting. When Blake was engaged by Thomas Butts to paint a series of pictures based on the Bible he included his own version of the event perhaps because he was familiar with paintings of the subject by accomplished artists.

A distinctive characteristic of Blake's image is that St Matthew is reading from the completed document rather than writing it from the angel's dictation. The angel simply holds the open scroll with Hebrew characters before Matthew who reacts with astonishment. Blake himself knew how it felt receive dictation from a spiritual source. Such a Spiritual Act had happened to him when he wrote "without Premeditation & even against my Will."


Cleveland Art Museum description of picture:
"The energy and awe with which the evangelist Saint Matthew responds to the angel presenting the divinely inspired text echoes William Blake’s attitude toward artistic inspiration. From childhood Blake experienced visions that are reflected in the otherworldliness of his work. While Blake was not embraced by the fine art establishment, a small group of patrons believed in his genius and commissioned works in which his unusual visions had free rein."

From article in Cleveland Art Museum's Magazine:
"Saint Matthew was painted for Thomas Butts, for whom Blake made at least 53 paintings of biblical themes between 1799 and 1803. Butts let Blake choose the subject: characteristically, in this case, a departure from traditional depictions of the angel dictating the gospel to Saint Matthew. Instead, Blake’s angel presents the completed text––a scroll with blood-red Hebrewesque letters––to the bewildered evangelist."

Letters, (E 728)
[To] Mr Butts, Grt Marlborough Street
Felpham April 25: 1803

"But none can know the Spiritual Acts of my three years Slumber on the banks of the Ocean unless he has seen them in the Spirit or unless he should read My long Poem descriptive of those Acts for I have in these three years composed an immense number of verses on One Grand Theme Similar to Homers Iliad or Miltons Paradise Lost the Person & Machinery intirely new to the Inhabitants of Earth (some of the Persons Excepted) I have written this Poem from immediate Dictation twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even against my Will. the Time it has taken in writing was thus renderd Non Existent. & an immense Poem Exists which seems to be the Labour of a long Life all producd without Labour or Study. I mention this to shew you what I think the Grand Reason of my being brought down here"