WOODLAND ENCOUNTER

Harry Ransom Center

The University of Texas at Austin

Woodland Encounter

Since I am always searching for things I have not seen before, I come across unexpected things in unexpected places. Such is this image from the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center. Images of the drawings of Blake are less available on the internet than are images from the Illuminated Books, Watercolors or Temperas. Perhaps this is because they are more likely to be held by individual collectors than by universities or museums. 

A watercolor wash drawing such as this, has a sense of immediacy not felt in a more finished painting or engraving. It seems to come to us directly from Blake's vision through his pencil and brush. The name that is attached to this picture, Woodland Encounter, did not likely come from Blake, but it suggests the significant features of the drawing. It takes place in the woods where confrontations with the other begin. We see the male as active offering direction, the female as receptive signaling acceptance. There is a prayerful attitude in the countenance of both figures as if they may be joined in spirit. 

If we look at this image from a psychological perspective, we can see an acknowledgment of the contrary states within the individual. We can see the figures as aspects on the psyche instead of a picture of a man and a woman. Blake sought to unite the contrary states. He did not see the marriage of heaven and hell as a failure but as a successful reconciliation of divisions which result from the inability to accept what is unlike one's self-image. To the extent we can accept that law (or wrath) and grace (or pity) are both necessary components of our own nature, we can begin to acknowledge that in society there will be expressions of law and grace constantly resurfacing in apparent opposition to each other.  Blake never tired of presenting the contraries in new guises. In the passage from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake tells us that contraries: "Attraction and Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to Human existence." Not necessary in the sense of being permanent but in the sense of being essential, as is time itself, if there is to be "progress" or movement toward wholeness.
 
Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 3, (E 34)   

 " As a new heaven is begun, and it is now thirty-three years
since its advent: the Eternal Hell revives. And lo! Swedenborg is
the Angel sitting at the tomb; his writings are the linen clothes
folded up. Now is the dominion of Edom, & the return of Adam into
Paradise; see Isaiah XXXIV & XXXV Chap:
  Without Contraries is no progression.  Attraction and
Repulsion, Reason and Energy, Love and Hate, are necessary to
Human existence.
  From these contraries spring what the religious call Good &
Evil. Good is the passive that obeys Reason[.] Evil is the active
springing from Energy.
  Good is Heaven. Evil is Hell."

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Isaiah 34
[12] They shall call the nobles thereof to the kingdom, but none shall be there, and all her princes shall be nothing.
[13] And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
[14] The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.
[15] There shall the great owl make her nest, and lay, and hatch, and gather under her shadow: there shall the vultures also be gathered, every one with her mate.
[16] Seek ye out of the book of the LORD, and read: no one of these shall fail, none shall want her mate: for my mouth it hath commanded, and his spirit it hath gathered them.
[17] And he hath cast the lot for them, and his hand hath divided it unto them by line: they shall possess it for ever, from generation to generation shall they dwell therein.

Isaiah 35
[1] The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.
[2] It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing: the glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they shall see the glory of the LORD, and the excellency of our God.
[3] Strengthen ye the weak hands, and confirm the feeble knees.
[4] Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you.
[5] Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.
[6] Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.
[7] And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
[8] And an highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it; but it shall be for those: the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.
[9] No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast shall go up thereon, it shall not be found there; but the redeemed shall walk there:
[10] And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

. 

TO OUR READERS

Updated from post of Feb 2010.

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Larry first started this blog in 2006 and I joined in 2009. We agreed on the name William Blake: Religion and Psychology but It took me a while to catch on to 'ramhornd.' William Blake we both understood to be a topic worth studying and one which would provide a large body of material for study. The perspective of religion was most natural for Larry and of psychology for me, although we never divided them into two contrary categories.

To help Blake students get started we posted this introduction to our blog:
An anonymous reader has asked that we provide more information in our posts. So I will try to explain what we are attempting to do in our Blake blog.

First we want to focus our attention on William Blake and his writing.

We are not experts but students of Blake. We follow our own interests. We are interested in sharing what we have learned of Blake and would would like to tailor our posts to the interests of the reader. We hope readers will let us know what interests them about Blake.

There have been posts which attempt to introduce the reader to studying Blake especially using the resources on the internet. To access the text of Blake's poetry and prose go to sidebar, in Links to Online Blake, choose Download PDF of Complete Blake. Another access the texts is through the Blake Contents. To explore the Illuminated Books and much more choose The Blake Archive. A link to Larry's online book which includes a primer is also a useful tool. (These files can be electronically searched for specific topics.) Within the posts we often provide links to external files which expand the study to wider sources.

None of Blake's work is simple to understand. Beginners can start with Songs of Innocence and Experience. Marriage of Heaven and Hell grabs the attention of many with its irony. The major prophecies can be approached a little at a time rather than entire. If you are visually oriented, the visual images can be used as an avenue to draw you into reading the poetry.

Blake's body of work is large and complex. On our blog we have not attempted a systematic study. We are giving clues to solving the mystery. Analysts of Blake's work often tell us that Blake expected the reader to go beyond what was stated in the text - to perceive the underlying meaning. We hope our readers will sift through the blog posts looking for cracks or doors or highways through which they may enter Blake's mind and heart and imagination.

Reading Blake may expand your mind, nourish your spirit, or enrich your imagination; don't expect it to put money in your pocket, expand your social circle or impress your professors.

Here are some earlier posts which may help the neophyte.
 
Bible 

New York Public Library
Milton
Plate 46

 
Perception
Vision
Emphasis
Help
Fourfold
Idealism
Reader
Plates
4Z's





I can't end without a quote from Blake as well as the picture:
Liberty or Stems of Vegetation.



Jerusalem, Plate 60, (E 209)
"within the Furnaces the Divine Vision appeard
On Albions hills: often walking from the Furnaces in clouds
And flames among the Druid Temples & the Starry Wheels
Gatherd Jerusalems Children in his arms & bore them like
A Shepherd in the night of Albion which overspread all the Earth
I gave thee liberty and life O lovely Jerusalem
And thou hast bound me down upon the Stems of Vegetation"

MANCHESTER ETCHING WORKSHOP

Blake Quarterly
Manchester Etching Workshop
Songs of Innocence and of Experience

British Museum
Songs of Innocence and of Experience
Copy B 

It seems that there is some degree of chance involved if one is open to attempting to do something original. Paul Richie learned through a chance conversation with the curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum that the electrotypes for Blake's Songs of Innocence and of Experience might be made available to him in order to make a facsimile. In an abandoned warehouse, the Manchester Etching Workshop was set up in 1978 to make facsimiles of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Copy B in the British Museum was used to determine the hand coloring in watercolor which should be followed. There are 16 pages in a set to match the number of electotypes in the V&A collection.

The process used by Manchester Etching Workshop followed Blake's methods instead of turning to more resent technology. The V&A electrotypes were made from the set used in Alexander Gilchrist’s Life of Blake, 1863 and 1880. The V&A electrotypes had been made from Blake's original copper plates which had later been destroyed. The same meticulous attention which went into making prints as close as possible to monochrome prints made by Blake, went into the coloring of the images according to the way Blake had colored Copy B.

One copy of the Manchester Etching Workshop facsimile was given to the British Museum by Ritchie. The total number of copies made were 40 colored copies and 35 monochrome. Ritchie was particularly qualified to oversee the printing since he was educated as an artist and a printmaker. Ritchie like Blake although willing to make prints of another artist's work, preferred to be a printmaker of his own work and he returned to Scotland to open his own studio and gallery.

---

Descriptive Catalogue, (E 547)  
"NUMBER IX.
Satan calling up his Legions, from Milton's Paradise Lost; a
composition for a more perfect Picture, afterward executed for a 
Lady of high rank. An experiment Picture.

THIS Picture was likewise painted at intervals, for experiment on
colours, without any oily vehicle; it may be worthy of attention,
not only on account of its composition, but of the great labour
which has been bestowed on it, that is, three or four times as
much as would have finished a more perfect Picture; the labor
has destroyed the lineaments, it was with difficulty brought back
again to a certain effect, which it had at first, when all the
lineaments were perfect.
  These Pictures, among numerous others painted for
experiment, were the result of temptations and
perturbations, labouring to destroy Imaginative power, by means
of that infernal machine, called Chiaro Oscuro, in the hands of
Venetian and Flemish Demons; whose enmity to the Painter himself,
and to all Artists who study in the Florentine and Roman
Schools, may be removed by an exhibition and exposure of their
vile tricks.  They cause that every thing in art shall become a
Machine.  They cause that the execution shall be all blocked up
with brown shadows.  They put the original Artist in fear and
doubt of his own original conception.  The spirit of Titian was
particularly active, in raising doubts concerning the possibility
of executing without a model, and when once he had raised the
doubt, it became easy for him to snatch away the vision time
after time, for when the Artist took his pencil, to execute his
ideas, his power of imagination weakened so much, and darkened,
that memory of nature and of Pictures of the various
Schools possessed his mind, instead of appropriate execution,
resulting from the inventions; like walking in another man's
style, or speaking or looking in another man's style and manner,
unappropriate and repugnant to your own individual character;
tormenting the true Artist, till he leaves the Florentine, and
adopts the Venetian practice, or does as Mr. B. has done, has the
courage to suffer poverty and disgrace, till he ultimately
conquers."
 

Songs of Experience, Plate 48, (E 28)
"INFANT SORROW                                  

My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my fathers hands:
Striving against my swadling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mothers breast."

---

Although I have not learned the the prices at which the Manchester Etching Workshops facsimiles were originally offered, I find that prices of used copies at Abe Books and at Archives Fine Books ranged from 14 to 20 thousand dollars.

Images from the Abe Books website:

Title Page Songs of Innocence

Title Page Songs of Experience

Embossed Title 

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HURD'S FACSIMILIES

Alamy
Commercial print
Hurd Facsimile

British Museum
Songs of  Experience
Frontispiece, Copy T

British Library
Facsimile by Samuel Hurd
Songs of Experience
Frontispiece

 
Robert Essick, in an article in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly quotes from the publishers description of Samuel Hurd's facsimiles of Songs of Innocence and Of Experience:

"Mr. Hurd promised to colour 100 copies, but the work proved to be so much more arduous than he had anticipated or could endure, that he felt compelled to call a permanent halt when, after a struggle lasting eight and a half years, he had finished, to his own satisfaction and ours, 51 copies."

One on the copies is now in the British Library which had it digitized and makes it available to the public on their website. There is some irony in viewing a book on a computer screen in the 21st that was made with technology available in the early 20th century, in order that readers might have access to a book that originated in the late 18th century. 

Although Blake could not have any inkling of the means through which his books would be transmitted to viewers in the 21st century, he knew that means for passing knowledge from one generation to future generations was constantly being revised, reinvented and re-implemented.

Robert Essick in his article in Blake: an Illustrated Quarterly indicates that Samuel Hurd's facsimiles were published by the Liverpool book dealer Henry Young and Sons in 1923. Copy T in the British Museum seems to have been the template from which the prints were made and colored, although the appearance could not be mistaken for the original.

To my surprise the entire book made by Hurd can be viewed on the website of the British Library which also makes available a large portion of the manuscript of the Four Zoas. Although there are organized efforts to disseminate the vast body of work which Blake created, it seems that there also have always been isolated individuals working as Blake did, using what tools and resources are available as a starting point for allowing the imagination to soar.     

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 15, (E 40)
                            "A Memorable Fancy
   I was in a Printing house in Hell & saw the method in which
knowledge is transmitted from generation to generation.
   In the first chamber was a Dragon-Man, clearing away the
rubbish from a caves mouth; within, a number of Dragons were
hollowing the  cave, 
   In the second chamber was a Viper folding round the rock & the 
cave, and others adorning it with gold silver and precious
stones.
   In the third chamber was an Eagle with wings and feathers of
air, 
he caused the inside of the cave to be infinite, around were
numbers  of Eagle like men, who built palaces in the immense
cliffs.
   In the fourth chamber were Lions of flaming fire raging around
&  melting the metals into living fluids.
   In the fifth chamber were Unnam'd forms, which cast the metals 
into the expanse.
   There they were reciev'd by Men who occupied the sixth
chamber,  and took the forms of books & were arranged in
libraries.

Letters, To George Cumberland. (E 700)
"Lambeth 23 Decembr 1796 a Merry Christmas
Dear Cumberland
     I have lately had some pricks of conscience on account of
not acknowledging your friendship to me 
immediately on the reciet of your. beautiful book.  I have
likewise had by me all the summer 6 Plates which you desired me
to get made for you. they have laid on my shelf. without speaking
to tell me whose they were or that they were there at
all & it was some time (when I found them) before I could divine
whence they came or whither they were bound or whether they were
to lie there to eternity.  I have now sent them to you to be
transmuted, thou real Alchymist!
     Go on   Go on.   such works as yours Nature & Providence the
Eternal Parents demand from their children how few produce them
in such perfection   how Nature smiles on them. how Providence
rewards them.   How all your Brethren say, The sound of his harp
& his flute heard from his secret forest chears us to the labours
of life. & we plow & reap forgetting our labour      
     Let us see you sometimes as well as sometimes hear from you 
& let us often See your Works
     Compliments to Mr Cumberland & Family
Yours in head & heart
WILL BLAKE"

Letters, To Thomas Butts, (E 723)
 "I am now engaged in Engraving 6 small plates for a New
Edition of Mr Hayleys Triumphs of Temper. from drawings by Maria
Flaxman sister to my friend the Sculptor and it seems that other
things will follow in course if I do but Copy these well. but
Patience! if Great things do not turn out it is because
such things depend on the Spiritual & not on the
Natural World & if it was fit for me I doubt not that I should be
Employd in Greater things & when it is proper my Talents shall be
properly exercised in Public. as I hope they are now in private.
for till then.  I leave no stone unturnd & no path unexplord that
tends to improvement in my beloved Arts.  One thing of real
consequence I have accomplishd by coming into the country. which
is to me consolation enough, namely.  I have recollected all my
scatterd thoughts on Art & resumed my primitive & original ways
of Execution in both painting & Engraving. which in the confusion
of London I had very much lost & obliterated from my mind.  But
whatever becomes of my labours I would rather that they should be
preservd in your Green House (not as you mistakenly call it dung
hill). than in the cold
gallery of fashion.--The Sun may yet shine & then they will be
brought into open air."

Blake's Printing House

Printing House of the Mind

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MUIR'S FACSILIMES

In the same way that Sampson in 1905 was only interested in studying the poems produced by Blake, William Muir in 1884 was only interested in making available the images which Blake produced. Although Muir had not originally been a printer he set out to "make available colored facsimiles of Blake’s works in Illuminated Printing." To create the outlines he make lithographs which could be hand colored by himself and a close knit group of colorists relying on Blake's coloring of a single copy.
 
Over a period of 50 years Muir produced copies of 13 of Blake's Illuminated Books limiting the number of copies for each to 50 or less. The project depended on the bookseller Quaritch to distribute the books in a way that was profitable to both the producer and the seller.

Muir made both uncolored and colored copies using books in the British Museum, the Fitzwilliam and in Quaritch's collection to obtain patterns for printing and coloring each book.

The Muir facsimiles, as antiquarian books, are on the market today and a sample page can be viewed at the website of John Windle Antiquarian Bookseller, San Francisco, California, USA.

 
The title page of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell was advertised at Biblio.com .

Windle Antiquarian Bookseller     Facsimile of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
   Title Page, Copy A

Compare the facsimile to the Blake plate of the same copy in the Blake Archive. Copy A is known as the Beckford copy; the original is in the collection of the Houghton Library of Harvard University.

The Blake Archive gives this Copy Information for Copy A of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell:  
"Acquired at an unknown time by William Beckford; sold from his library, Sotheby's, 29 Nov. 1883, lot 764, bound with The Book of Thel copy A and The Book of Urizen copy F (£121 to the dealer Bernard Quaritch); the three works still bound together offered by Quaritch, "Rough List" 67 of Jan. 1884, item 80 (£150), and "Rough List" 73 of Nov. 1885, item 51 (£150); acquired no later than 1891 by Edward W. Hooper, who probably disbound the volume (see the Note on Binding, above); copy A of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell acquired by Hooper's daughter, Mrs. Bancel Lafarge, possibly by inheritance in 1921; bequeathed by Lafarge in May 1948 to the Houghton Library, Harvard University."

Keri Davies made this statement on his blog in 2014:
 
"Most copies of Muir's facsimile of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell are colured in emulation of copy A (the Beckford copy), only a very small number being coloured from the Fitzwilliam Museum copy (H)." [Copy I] 

____________________

Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers  
Facsimile of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell 
Title Page, Copy I

The Blake Archive Copy Information for Copy I in the Fitzwilliam Museum states: "Copy I is the last copy of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake printed, only a few months before his death."

A Muir facsimile with different coloring from Copy A was offered for sale by Bonhams Fine Art Auctioneers. Their description of the work follows:

"BLAKE (WILLIAM)
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, NUMBER 2 OF 50 COPIES, numbered and signed by Muir on final leaf, 27 hand-coloured plates, 6 uncoloured leaves, modern morocco, gilt lettered on upper cover, 4to (290 x 225mm.), Edmonton, [William Muir], 1885

Footnotes

"In 1884, William Muir set to work to make available colored facsimiles of Blake's works in Illuminated Printing. Working by methods similar to Blake's, he made lithographs (not copperplate relief etchings) of the outlines which he and his assistants printed and then colored by hand" (G.E. Bentley, "Blake... Had No Quaritch. The Sale of William Muir's Blake Facsimiles", article in Blake, Vol. 27, 1993).

On the preface leaf of this copy the note stating that copies are facsimiled from a copy in the possession of Quaritch is struck through, and replaced with a manuscript note that it is copied from the "Fitzwilliam Museum Cambridge Copy". In the Quaritch sale catalogue of Muir's facsimiles it was noted that "only a very small number being coloured from the Fitzwilliam copy".

________________

G. E. Bentley, Jr. in his article on Muir Facsimiles in Blake: An Illustrated Qrarterly wrote:  

"In 1884, William Muir set to work to make available colored facsimiles of Blake’s works in Illuminated Printing. Working by methods similar to Blake’s, he made lithographs (not copperplate relief etchings) of the outlines which he and his assistants printed and then colored by hand. Usually, of course, Muir used one original as the model for all copies of a facsimile title, rather than making each copy deliberately different as Blake generally did. Altogether he reproduced 13 works in Illuminated Printing, generally in editions not exceeding 50 copies, and a few in more than one edition. His editions were larger than Blake’s, though not much larger, and, until the Blake Trust began publishing Blake facsimiles in 1951, Muir’s facsimiles were often the only color reproductions available. His color facsimiles of Milton (1886) and The Song of Los (1890) were the only ones for almost a century (1967 and 1975)."

_____________

THE MARRIAGE of HEAVEN and HELL, PLATE 2, (E 33)

             "The Argument.
Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep

Once meek, and in a perilous path,
The just man kept his course along 
The vale of death.
Roses are planted where thorns grow.
And on the barren heath
Sing the honey bees

Then the perilous path was planted:
And a river, and a spring
On every cliff and tomb;
And on the bleached bones
Red clay brought forth.

Till the villain left the paths of ease,
To walk in perilous paths, and drive
The just man into barren climes.

Now the sneaking serpent walks
In mild humility.
And the just man rages in the wilds
Where lions roam.

Rintrah roars & shakes his fires in the burdend air;
Hungry clouds swag on the deep."

____________

Look through the book (Copy D) The Marriage of Heaven and Hell on the Library of Congress website.

 

 

POETICAL WORKS

From The Poetical Works of William Blake
Facsimile of Rossetti MS., p. 52 

 
John Sampson's 1905 book The Poetical Works of William Blake was aimed as he stated at presenting "a new and verbatim text from the manuscript engraved and letterpress originals." The only two illustrations in the book are of pages from Blake's notebook or as it is called the Rossetti Manuscript. Sampson choose to include in his book only work which Blake wrote in the traditional form of poetry. He published Blake's juvenile poems found in Poetical Sketches, poems embedded in manuscripts and letters, the Songs, and the sections in the prophetic books which he identified as poetic. 

Sampson provided information on Frederick Tahtam which he realized was incomplete. Tatham's memoir which Sampson referred to is available through wikisource.

Writing about the production of the Illuminated Books, Sampson made this statement:

"It is more reasonable to conclude that Blake brought out his books himself by his own process, because no publisher or printer could have produced for him the new kind of illustrated work which he had in his mind. The method then in vogue admitted of artistic embellishments only in the shape of steel or wood engravings, stiffly surrounding or clumsily placed in juxtaposition to the type of the text, while that of Blake interwove text, design, and colouring into one harmonious whole with the happiest and most exquisite effect." (Page XV)

Prospectus, 1793, (E 692) 

"Even Milton and Shakespeare could not publish their own works.
     This difficulty has been obviated by the Author of the
following productions now presented to the Public; who has
invented a method of Printing both Letter-press and Engraving in
a style more ornamental, uniform, and grand, than any before
discovered, while it produces works at less than one fourth of
the expense.
     If a method of Printing which combines the Painter and the
Poet is a phenomenon worthy of public attention, provided that it
exceeds in elegance all former methods, the Author is sure of his
reward.
     Mr. Blake's powers of invention very early engaged the
attention of many persons of eminence and fortune; by whose means
he has been regularly enabled to bring before the Public works
(he is not afraid to say) of equal magnitude and consequence with
the productions of any age or country: among which are two large
highly finished engravings (and two more are nearly ready) which
will commence a Series of subjects from the Bible, and another
from the History of England.
     The following are the Subjects of the several Works now
published and on Sale at Mr. Blake's, No. 13, Hercules Buildings,
Lambeth.

     1.  Job, a Historical Engraving.  Size 1 ft.7 1/2 in. by 1
ft. 2 in.: price 12s.
     2.  Edward and Elinor, a Historical Engraving.  Size 1 ft. 6
1/2 in. by 1 ft.: price 10s. 6d.
     3.  America, a Prophecy, in Illuminated Printing.  Folio,
with 18 designs: price 10s. 6d.
     4.  Visions of the Daughters of Albion, in Illuminated
Printing.  Folio, with 8 designs, price 7s. 6d.
     5.  The Book of Thel, a Poem in Illuminated Printing. 
Quarto, with 6 designs, price 3s.
     6.  The Marriage of Heaven  and Hell, in Illuminated
Printing.  Quarto, with 14 designs, price 7s.
6d.
     7.  Songs of Innocence, in Illuminated Printing.  Octavo,
with 25 designs, price 5s.
     8.  Songs of Experience, in Illuminated Printing.  Octavo,
with 25 designs, price 5s.
     9.  The History of England, a small book of Engravings. 
Price 3s.
     10. The Gates of Paradise, a small book of Engravings. 
Price 3s.

     The Illuminated Books are Printed in Colours, and on the
most beautiful wove paper that
could be procured,
     No Subscriptions for the numerous great works now in hand
are asked, for none are wanted; but the Author will produce his
works, and offer them to sale at a fair price."

SWINBURNE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the widowed Anne Gilchrist was left with the task of completing the biography on which her young husband had worked for years, aid came to her from various directions. Among those who provided assistance were Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Michael Rossetti and Algenon Charles Swinburne. The finished product, Life of William Blake, Pictor Ignotus, left Swinburne with the desire to add his own perspective on Blake's character, life and work. Swinburne began with a review to supplement the portrait of Blake which the Gilchrist book provided but found he wanted to do more. Swinburne wrote that, "first slight study became little by little an elaborate essay." In his book William Blake: A Critical Essay (1868), which be dedicated to his friend William Michael Rossetti, Swinburne tended to shape Blake's character into one more resembling his own, at the same time praising and honoring Blake extravagantly. Swinburne included passages from Blake's work which he edited to make them more attractive to his Victorian audience. At the same time he expressed his admiration for Blake the iconoclast, finding in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell the characteristics he most wanted to promote.

Swinburne included illustrations reproduced from Blake's printed plates. Swinburne stated:
"[In justice to the fac-similist who has so faithfully copied the following designs from Blake’s works, the publisher would state they were made under somewhat difficult circumstances, the British Museum authorities not permitting tracing from the copies in their possession. In every case the exact peculiarities of the originals have been preserved. The colouring has been done by hand from the designs, tinted by the artist, and the three illustrations from “Jerusalem” have been reduced from the original in folio to octavo. The paper on which the fac-similes are given has been expressly made to resemble that used by Blake.]"

The Royal Academy website, commenting on the illustrations in William Blake: A critical Essay, gives this information:
"The frontispiece shows a plate from 'Jerusalem'; the added engraved title-plate incorporates motifs from three Blake poems. The remaining seven plates show plates from 'The Book Of Thel' (facing p.200), 'The Marriage Of Heaven And Hell' (facing pp. 204, 208, 224), 'Milton' (facing p.258) and 'Jerusalem' (facing pp. 276, 282)."

Image from Swinburne
Milton 
Plate 8

The timid Palamabron, the reticent Rintrah, and the impassioned Satan

____________

The coloring of the images in the Gutenberg digital book seems to deviate considerably from Blake's coloring of the plates. 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 7, (E 350

"Proverbs of Hell.              
In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.

Drive your cart and your plow over the bones of the dead.
The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.

Prudence is a rich ugly old maid courted by Incapacity.
He who desires but acts not, breeds pestilence.                 

The cut worm forgives the plow.

Dip him in the river who loves water.

A fool sees not the same tree that a wise man sees.
He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

Eternity is in love with the productions of time.             
The busy bee has no time for sorrow.
The hours of folly are measur'd by the clock, but of wisdom: no
     clock can measure.

All wholsom food is caught without a net or a trap.
Bring out number weight & measure in a year of dearth.
No bird soars too high. if he soars with his own wings.       

A dead body. revenges not injuries.

The most sublime act is to set another before you.

If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise
Folly is the cloke of knavery.

Shame is Prides cloke." 

Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate 14, (E 39) 

 "The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire
at the  end of six thousand years is true. as I have heard from
Hell.
   For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to 
leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole 
creation will be consumed, and appear infinite. and holy whereas
it now  appears finite & corrupt.
   This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.
   But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his
soul, is to  be expunged; this I shall do, by printing in the
infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and
medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the
infinite which was hid.
   If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would
appear  to man as it is: infinite.
   For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro'
narrow chinks of his cavern."

_____________________

In a thesis by Mary McHale Riley is this statement from The Swinburne Letters, edited by Cecil Y Lang :

"He [Swinburne] asks Seymour Kirkup in a letter circa July 1864: Did you ever read his great prose-poem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell? For profound humour and subtle imagination, not less than for lyrical splendour and fervour of thought, it seems to me the greatest work of its century. We all envy you the privilege of having known a man so great in so many ways." 

BEGINNINGS

British Museum
The Approach of Doom
Unique impression from Relief Etching
1787 or 1788

Blake was trained as an engraver. He used the tools of his trade to make intaglio engravings suitable for making prints of the of work of recognized artists. But to copy the work of other artists was not his aspiration. The way that he freed himself from the role of a craftsman, was by developing his own way of creating art. Apparently the print named The Approach of Doom represented one of his initial experiments with relief etching which opened his way to continued creativity. Although The Approach of Doom did not contain text it was soon followed by experiments in combining text with images. Blake did not dive right into creating Illuminated Books, he proceeded step by step along a path which would give expression to his latent talents.

Next Blake produced two little books of aphorisms, using the relief etching technique and containing both text and images. The Wikipedia entry for There is No Natural Religion notes that Peter Ackroyd pointed our that, "his newly invented form now changed the nature of his expression. It had enlarged his range; with relief etching, the words inscribed like those of God upon the tables of law, Blake could acquire a new role." 

Wikipedia Commons
There is No Natural Religion
1788

Joseph Viscomi in an article published on Branch Collective website wrote:

"For the rest of his life, Blake practiced a “re-creational” aesthetic, in which returning to one of his own plates, intaglio or relief etching, provided opportunities for new invention, either in reworking the plate and/or the manner in which it was printed or subsequently hand colored. As a printmaker, he had severed himself from convention, as he was about to do with poetry and would also do as a painter with the 1795 monoprints and subsequent “fresco” paintings. 1788 was a turning point for Blake, from professional line engraver with only two original prints to his name (plate 5 in the Royal Universal Family Bible, 1782 and the frontispiece to Thomas Commin’s An Elegy, 1786), both conventionally designed and executed, to avant-garde graphic artist. From hereon, he began thinking differently, more expansively, about printmaking, poetry, and painting, and he began his life-long willingness to experiment with forms, styles, and materials regardless of media. Blake could work autographically with pen, brush, and ink directly on a plate as poet and painter to create printable illustrated manuscripts corresponding to no models or mock-ups. He could work without models and without the expectation of exact repeatable images and thus he could improvise and recreate upon reprinting. His new medium contributed far more to his creative work and idea of himself as artist than the creation of any variant of stereotyping could have done. The technical problem he solved was how to reproduce autographic marks and not how to print letters from plates. Once he realized he could use his new printmaking method as painter and poet, he began to think up book projects for it, and thus to think also as publisher. He began to think in terms no poet or artist did before him. He began creating untranslatable pictorial poetry." 

_____________

Descriptive Catalog, (E 527) 

 "The execution of my Designs, being all in Water-colours,
(that is in Fresco) are regularly refused to be exhibited by the
Royal Academy, and the British Institution has, 
this year, followed its example, and has effectually excluded me 
by this Resolution; I therefore invite those Noblemen and 
Gentlemen, who are its Subscribers, to inspect what they have 
excluded: and those who have been told that my Works are
but an unscientific and irregular Eccentricity, a Madman's
Scrawls, I demand of them to do me the justice to examine before
they decide.
  There cannot be more than two or three great Painters or
Poets in any Age or Country; and these, in a corrupt state of
Society, are easily excluded, but not so easily obstructed.  They
have excluded Watercolours; it is therefore become necessary
that I should exhibit to the Public, in an Exhibition of my own,
my Designs, Painted in Watercolours.  If Italy is enriched and
made great by RAPHAEL, if MICHAEL ANGELO is its supreme glory, if
Art is the glory of a Nation, if Genius and Inspiration are the
great Origin and Bond of Society, the distinction my Works have
obtained from those who best understand such things, calls for my
Exhibition as the greatest of Duties to my Country. 

May 15. 1809
                                             WILLIAM BLAKE"

---

Dino Franco Felluga
"I started BRANCH because I felt there was a real need for a free, expansive, searchable, reliable, peer-reviewed, easy-to-use resource for the study of nineteenth-century history and culture, one that went significantly beyond what one can find at Wikipedia."

GILCHRIST & ELECTROTYPE

Image from electrotype
Songs of Experience
London

 This image is from a screen print of a page in Gilchrist's Life of William Blake:

Alexander Gilchrist was a young man trained in the law when he became interested in studying and writing about William Blake. Gilchrist at the age of 32 had already been working on a life of Blake for six years. Born in the year following Blake's death, Gilchrist lived when memories of Blake were available among those with whom he had been acquainted. In a systematic way Gilchrist pursued the task of gathering all the first hand information which was available.

Alexander Gilchrist died in 1860, at the age of 33 from scarlet fever, leaving his biography unfinished. Three years later his wife Anne, with the help of others such Dante Gabriel Rossetti, published the book Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus. Volume II includes 15 plates from Songs of Innocence and of Experience, and 22 plates from the Illustrations of the Book of Job.

Karen Mulhallen wrote in Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G.E. Bentley Jr about the way in which Blake's images were put into Gilchrist's Life of Blake:

"Alexander Gilchrist had electrotypes made from Blake's original Copper plates which were subsequently lost."

Printing through the use of electrotype plates was a technology which had been invented sometime around 1838. It was a way of replacing the process of hand engraving of additional plates for printing with a process which was more automated and more accurate.

Electrotyping is a process through which an accurate copy of an original copper plate can be duplicated. A mold of the original plate is made using a pliable material such as wax or latex. The surface of the mold is then coated with a thin layer of fine graphite powder of paint to make it capable of conducting electricity. By attaching wires to the coated mold and to an electric current, then immersing it in an electrolyte, copper ions from the electrolyte are deposited on the mold, duplicating in copper the original plate.

Through using this process, the images which were recorded in Blake's relief engravings on copper were printed in the Gilchrist book.

Blake's original copper plates for the Illustration to the Book of Job are preserved in the British Museum because they remained in the possession of John Linnell and his descendants until they were given to the British Museum in 1919. The Blake plates from which the 15 images for the Songs of Innocence and of Experience which appeared in Gilchrist's Life, and from which the electrotypes were made, were later lost or destroyed. The electrotype plates used to produce the images in Gilchrist's Life in 1863, were destroyed by the publisher Macmillan in 1960's. Before that, however, another set of electrotypes had been made for Geoffrey Keynes. Keynes donated his set to the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1955.

The Gilchrist Life of William Blake: Pictor Ignotus is available through the Internet Archive. The images from Illustrations for the Book of Job and from Songs of Innocence and of Experience are found after Page 358 of Volume II.

Public Address, (E 571) 

"I account it a Public Duty respectfully to address myself to
The Chalcographic Society & to Express to them my opinion the
result of the incessant Practise & Experience of Many Years That
Engraving as an Art is Lost in
England owing to an artfully propagated opinion that Drawing
spoils an Engraver  I request the
Society to inspect my Print of which Drawing is the Foundation &
indeed the Superstructure   it is Drawing on Copper as Painting
ought to be Drawing on Canvas or any other & nothing Else 

I request likewise that the Society
will compare the Prints of Bartollouzzi Woolett Strange &c with
the old English Portraits that is Compare the Modern Art with
the Art as it Existed Previous to the Enterance of Vandyke &
Rubens into this Country
 & I am sure the Result  will be that
the Society must be of my Opinion that Engraving by Losing
Drawing has Lost all Character & all Expression without which
Art is Lost."