WBA publication

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of electronic editions of Blake’s illustrations to Robert John Thornton’s edition of The Pastorals of Virgil (1821) and a selection of his preliminary drawings for his Virgil wood engravings. The texts and images in both groups are fully searchable and are supported by our Inote and ImageSizer applications.

When planning a third edition of his successful school text of Virgil’s Pastorals, Robert John Thornton employed Blake to contribute some of the new designs for the two-volume work. His assignment was to illustrate Ambrose Philips’ English “imitation” of Virgil’s first eclogue. Blake produced four small designs as relief etchings on a single copperplate, but these were rejected by Thornton. There may have been several reasons, including the unconventional style of etching, the semi-nudity of some of the figures, and the difficulties letterpress printers would have encountered with such an unusual matrix. Apparently Blake was asked to prepare wood engravings, a medium in which he had never before worked, instead of relief etchings. He executed a series of at least twenty-one pen, pencil, and wash preliminary drawings; these were probably approved by Thornton. The wood engravings that Blake produced from them, however, were far less conventional. Thornton was again taken aback by Blake’s bold transgression of contemporary styles and sensibilities. Several influential artists, including John Linnell and Sir Thomas Lawrence, commended Blake’s work; their opinions convinced Thornton to print them in his 1821 edition. Three designs were engraved by a journeyman for the sake of comparison with Blake’s own productions in wood, and Thornton added a statement below Blake’s first design implying his hesitations about Blake’s artistry. Pre-publication proofs of Blake’s wood engravings show that each group of four were cut on a single block; these were cut apart, slightly reduced in size on all four sides, and printed with brief letterpress captions. This format, as published in Thornton’s Virgil, is preserved in our reproductions.

In addition to his original wood engravings, Blake contributed six copperplate intaglio engravings picturing famous classical figures. He also executed a reduced drawing, perhaps directly on the woodblock, based on a painting by Nicolas Poussin. This was cut in the block by John Byfield. All these materials are included in our reproductions of Thornton’s Virgil. In addition, the relief etching of four designs, the woodblock of Blake’s first wood engraving, and the pre-publication proofs of two groups of designs (I and II) before they were separated are available under Related Works in the Archive on the Show Me menu for objects 5-7.

Twenty of Blake’s preliminary drawings for his wood engravings, all executed in monochrome wash, were sold at auction from the Linnell collection in 1918. These are now widely dispersed; seven are untraced and one drawing in the group was not engraved. We are now publishing a selection of seven of these drawings and plan to add more as they become available.

Although small in size and almost rejected by the man who commissioned them, Blake’s Virgil wood engravings have been among his most influential works. The young artists who gathered around Blake in his final years, including Samuel Palmer, George Richmond, and Edward Calvert, were deeply inspired by the Virgil engravings. Palmer called them “visions of little dells, and nooks, and corners of Paradise”—an encomium that ignores the darker implications of some designs. Several twentieth-century British artists, including Graham Sutherland, were also influenced by Blake’s wood engravings.

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the University of Rochester, the continuing support of the Library of Congress, and the cooperation of the international array of libraries and museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors

Ashley Reed, project manager, William Shaw, technical editor

The William Blake Archive

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of an electronic edition of nineteen of Blake’s tempera paintings illustrating the Bible.  They are presented in a new category, “Illustrations to the Bible (c. 1799-1803)”—see Paintings, under Drawings and Paintings, in the table of contents for Works in the Archive.  The designs are arranged according to the passages illustrated and are presented in our Preview mode, one that provides all the features of the Archive except Image Search and Inote (which provides detailed descriptions of Blake’s images).

The Bible had an enormous influence on Blake’s work as both artist and poet.  Among his many and complex responses to that text is a group of paintings he created for his patron Thomas Butts, beginning in 1799.  Most were executed in that year and the next, but at least three were probably completed while Blake was in Felpham, 1802 and 1803.  Fifty-three of these “cabinet paintings” (as small works of this type were called in Blake’s time) have been recorded.  Only thirty are now traceable, seven based on the Old Testament and the remainder on the New.

This group of nineteen paintings is the second installment in our publication of a large selection of Blake’s drawings and paintings illustrating the Bible.  The first installment, a group of twenty water colors with subjects based on the Old Testament, was published in March of this year.

The medium of these paintings, now generally called “tempera,” is water-based with a glue and/or gum binder.  Blake was probably trying to create jewel-like paintings; in his Descriptive Catalogue of 1809, he compared them to “enamels” and “precious stones.”  He never used the word “tempera” but called his medium “fresco”—a term that recalls Renaissance wall paintings—and claimed that he had invented the new genre of “portable Fresco,” an alternative to paintings in oil.  Most were executed on canvas, but three are on copper and one (The Agony in the Garden) is on tinned iron.

Unfortunately, Blake’s medium was inherently unstable.  The pigment layers expanded and contracted at different rates. Almost all his temperas of 1799-1803 show considerable surface cracking and other defects; many have been repaired at least once.  Some, such as The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, have been over-painted in ways that misrepresent Blake’s original work.

The biblical temperas of 1799-1803 can be divided into two groups according to size.  Most are approximately 27 x 38 cm., but five of the extant paintings measure about 32.5 x 49.5 cm.  The works in the larger size illustrate the life of Christ and may form their own series.

The Fitzwilliam Museum has requested some assistance with The Christ Child Asleep on a Cross, recently presented to the museum by the heirs of George Goyder.  The provenance of this tempera painting includes its recovery from a “bombed house in 1940” by the dealer James Rimell of London in 1940 (Butlin 410).  The Fitzwilliam Museum would appreciate any information about the owner or owners of the painting prior to its acquisition by Rimell.

Please contact the Department of Paintings, Drawings and Prints:  fitzmuseum-pdp@lists.cam.ac.uk

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the University of Rochester, the continuing support of the Library of Congress, and the cooperation of the international array of libraries and museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors

Ashley Reed, project manager

William Shaw, technical editor

The William Blake Archive

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of the electronic edition of An Island in the Moon (Fitzwilliam Museum), an incomplete manuscript written in pen and ink in Blake’s hand. It notably contains the earliest extant drafts of “Nurse’s Song,” “HOLY THURSDAY,” and “The Little Boy Lost,” which make their first published appearance in his Songs of Innocence (1789).

Topical allusions and the history of Blake’s associations with the London social circle of the Rev. A. S. Mathew and his wife Harriet in the 1780s suggest a period of composition c. 1784-85. Before the manuscript was given to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1905, two or more leaves may have been removed. The contents of a final page of lettering and rough sketches (object 18), apparently unrelated to the text of Island, may reflect Robert Blake’s attempts to draw subjects that had been set as exercises for him by older brother William (see Editors’ Notes for object 18).

In An Island in the Moon Blake, writing in his mid to late twenties, demonstrates a born satirist’s instincts for the ridiculous with a boisterous sendup of middle class London social and intellectual life distilled into eleven brief chapters of “Great confusion & disorder” (object 10). The use of dialogue interspersed with song lyrics links the narrative to both contemporary theatrical forms and broader eighteenth-century satirical traditions. Blake’s experiences in the Mathew circle may be the main inspiration for these mocking reflections, which feature impertinent, passionate, confrontational characters, some if not all derived from Blake’s contemporaries, probably including Blake himself and his younger brother Robert as Quid and Suction. Although Blake left it orphaned, untitled, and unfinished in a heavily revised manuscript, Island is in some sense a primary literary experiment for him, setting the undertone of much to follow.

In 2006 the University of Rochester Department of English agreed to sponsor an Archive team that would specialize in text editing.  The team’s electronic edition of Island, its first major project, has fully searchable texts and images supported by our Inote and ImageSizer applications.  Several new features make their debut in Island.  Zoomed images of more complex textual cruxes strengthen the explanatory power of Editors’ Notes.  A sophisticated XML tagset has been tailored to the needs of Blake’s manuscripts and to the fundamental principles of the Archive.  The tagset plus a straightforward and legible color coding system (using XSLT and CSS) make it possible to display most of Blake’s manuscript alterations and eliminate the clutter of conventional textual signs and symbols. A simple key to the color coding is available from every page of the transcriptions and notes.

With the publication of An Island in the Moon, the Archive now contains fully searchable and scalable electronic editions of several manuscripts in the context of full bibliographic information about each work, careful diplomatic transcriptions of all texts, detailed descriptions of all images, and extensive bibliographies. In addition to manuscripts, the Archive contains 77 copies of Blake’s twenty illuminated works along with many important series of engravings, sketches, and water color drawings, including illustrations to Thomas Gray’s Poems, water color and engraved illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, the large color printed drawings of 1795 and c. 1805, the Linnell and Butts sets of the Book of Job water colors and the sketchbook containing drawings for Blake’s engraved illustrations to the Book of Job, the water color illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave, and all nine of Blake’s water color series illustrating the poetry of John Milton.

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the University of Rochester, the continuing support of the Library of Congress, and the cooperation of the international array of libraries and museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, editors

Ashley Reed, project manager

William Shaw, technical editor

The William Blake Archive

The William Blake Archive is pleased to announce the publication of electronic editions of Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion Copies E and I, in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery and Yale Center for British Art, respectively. They join Copies a, A, B, C, J (1793), F (c. 1794), G (1795), and O and P (c. 1818), previously published in the Archive.

Visions, Copy E object 1

Visions, extant in seventeen complete copies, consists of eleven relief-etched plates executed and first printed in 1793. Copies E and I were produced in Blake’s first printing session. Probably to lend variety to his stock of copies on hand, Blake used three ink colors in this first printing: yellow ochre (as in Copy A), raw sienna (Copies B, C, and E), and green (Copies I and J). Like all early copies of Visions, Copies E and I have the frontispiece printed on one side of a leaf, but all other plates are printed on both sides of five leaves.

Like all the illuminated books in the Archive, the texts and images of Visions Copies E and I are fully searchable and are supported by our Inote and ImageSizer applications. With the Archive’s Compare feature, users can easily juxtapose multiple impressions of any plate across the different copies of this or any of the other illuminated books. New protocols for transcription, which produce improved accuracy and fuller documentation in editors’ notes, have been applied to all copies of Visions in the Archive.

With the publication of  Visions Copies E and I, the Archive now contains fully searchable and scalable electronic editions of 75 copies of Blake’s nineteen illuminated works in the context of full bibliographic information about each work, careful diplomatic transcriptions of all texts, detailed descriptions of all images, and extensive bibliographies. In addition to illuminated books, the Archive contains many important manuscripts and series of engravings, sketches, and water color drawings, including illustrations to Thomas Gray’s Poems, water color and engraved illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, the large color printed drawings of 1795 and c. 1805, the Linnell and Butts sets of the Book of Job water colors and the
sketchbook containing drawings for the engraved illustrations to the Book of Job, the water color illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave, and all nine of Blake’s water color series illustrating the poetry of John Milton.

As always, the William Blake Archive is a free site, imposing no access restrictions and charging no subscription fees. The site is made possible by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the continuing support of the Library of Congress, and the cooperation of the international array of libraries and museums that have generously given us permission to reproduce works from their collections in the Archive.

Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi, Editors

Ashley Reed, Project Manager

William Shaw, Technical Editor

The William Blake Archive