The Visionary Art of William Blake: Christianity, Romanticism and the Pictorial Imagination 9781350989375, 9781838609665

Citation preview

Naomi Billingsley is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute in the University of Manchester. The holder of a PhD in Religious Studies from the same university, she was previously Bishop Otter Scholar for Theology and the Arts in the Diocese of Chichester, and remains a visiting fellow at the Centre for the Arts and the Sacred at King’s College London. She contributed a chapter to the volume Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion (edited by Ben Quash, Aaron Rosen and Chloe¨ Reddaway), which was published by I.B.Tauris in 2017.

‘This welcome and necessary book seeks to expound how Blake expressed his theology of art in his depictions of Christ. It captures so much of what is essential and distinctive about Blake’s artistic endeavour. By pointing to “Blake’s intensely audience-centred approach to art” – in which it is the perception of the viewer, as well as the possibility of their apocalyptic transformation, that matters – Naomi Billingsley offers us a compelling explanation of the intention of Blake’s images.’ Christopher Rowland, Dean Ireland’s Professor Emeritus of the Exegesis of Holy Scripture, University of Oxford, and author of Blake and the Bible ‘This pioneering study is not just a tightly controlled, jargon-free and well-illustrated exercise in visual Christology. It also makes a compelling case for our own purportedly “post-Christian” century to re-engage with Blake’s art less as the work of a gifted, if maverick, pantheist and more as that of someone for whom, as Naomi Billingsley persuasively argues, “Christianity is art and Jesus Christ was an artist, who is both the model and the source of artistic activity”.’ Graham Howes, Emeritus Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, Trustee of the Art and Christianity Enquiry (ACE), London, and author of The Art of the Sacred: An Introduction to the Aesthetics of Art and Belief

THE VISIONARY ART OF WILLIAM BLAKE Christianity, Romanticism and the Pictorial Imagination

NAOMI BILLINGSLEY

Published in 2018 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2018 Naomi Billingsley The right of Naomi Billingsley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. Library of Modern Religion 57 ISBN: 978 1 78453 983 2 eISBN: 978 1 78672 389 5 ePDF: 978 1 78673 389 4 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Stone Serif by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

In memory of Hannah Loughran

Contents

List of Illustrations Abbreviations Notes on Quotations Preface

ix xvii xix xxi

Introduction Blakeanisms Blake’s Theory of Art and Romantic Aesthetics

1 5 8

Religious Art in Blake’s Time Blake’s Work as an Artist Five Themes in Blake’s Religious Aesthetic

15 19 22

Regeneration: Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts (1795 – 7) Blake’s Night Thoughts

27 30

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts Conclusion

35 59

Inspiration: Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas (1799 – 1800) The Butts Biblical Temperas The Nativity Narratives in Blake’s Oeuvre

61 63 66

The Infancy of Christ in the Biblical Temperas Conclusion

68 86

1.

2.

The Visionary Art of William Blake

viii 3.

Facilitator: Ministry as Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours (1800 – 6) The Butts Biblical Watercolours Conclusion

4.

5.

89 92 131

Eternal: Christ as Universal Human Form Divine (Works of 1805– c.1811) Christ in Cosmic History in Paradise Lost Emblems of Judgement Icons of Divine Humanity

133 135 146 157

An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man Conclusion

160 164

Iconoclasm: Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation in Late Works (1804– 27) The Crucifixion in Art The Crucifixion in Blake’s Oeuvre

167 169 171

Jerusalem 76 and Michael Foretells the Crucifixion Envisioning the Crucifixion in Bunyan and Dante Conclusion

174 183 187

Conclusion

191

Notes Bibliography Index

196 226 239

List of Illustrations

LIST OF COLOUR PLATES By William Blake, unless otherwise stated. Plate 1 ‘Europe’ Plate i: Frontispiece, ‘The Ancient of Days’ (1794/1827?). 23.2 £ 17.0 cm. Relief etching with bodycolour and gold on paper. Image courtesy of the Whitworth q The University of Manchester. Plate 2 Night Thoughts, frontispiece to second volume (c.1795 – 7). 33.4 £ 26.2 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. Plate 3 Night Thoughts, Night VI, page 42 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. Plate 4 Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection (c.1795). 40.6 £ 49.9 cm. Print, ink, watercolour and varnish on paper. q Tate, London 2017. Plate 5 The Nativity (c.1799 – 1800). 27.3 £ 38.3 cm. Tempera on copper. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs William Thomas Tonner, 1964-110-1. Plate 6 The Angel Appearing to Zacharias (1799 – 1800). 26.7 £ 38.1 cm. Tempera, glue, pen and ink on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

x

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Plate 7 The Flight into Egypt (1799). 27.2 £ 38.3 cm. Tempera, pen and ink on canvas. Collection of Robert N. Essick: Copyright q 2017 William Blake Archive. Used with permission. Plate 8 The Baptism of Christ (c.1803). 31.3 £ 34.4 cm. Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour on paper. Ashmolean Museum, WA1962.17.57. Image q Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford. Plate 9 The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (c.1825). 42.2 £ 35.2 cm. Watercolour with pen and ink on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Plate 10 Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain (c.1803 – 5). 36.6 £ 33.1 cm. Watercolour on paper. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Bequest of Charles J. Rosenbloom, 74.7.34. Plate 11 The Raising of Lazarus (c.1805). 40.7 £ 29.6 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink on paper. Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections. Plate 12 Christ Accepting the Office of Redeemer (illustration to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’) (1808). 49.6 £ 39.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, museum purchase with funds donated by contribution, 90.94. Pen and watercolour on paper. Photograph q 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Plate 13 The Archangel Michael Foretelling the Crucifixion, illustration for Paradise Lost (begun 1822). 50.2 £ 38.5 cm. Indian ink, grey wash and watercolour on paper. q The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Plate 14 The Day of Judgment, from The Grave (1805). 27.0 £ 22.2 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over pencil on paper. Private collector, courtesy of Sotheby’s. Plate 15 A Vision of the Last Judgement (1806). 49.5 £ 39.0 cm. Pen and watercolour over pencil on paper. q CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections. Plate 16 Christ Blessing (c.1810). 76.5 £ 63.5 cm. Tempera on canvas. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.180. Photo: Imaging Department q President and Fellows of Harvard College.

List of Illustrations

xi

Plate 17 An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man (1811?). 151.8 £ 120.9 cm. Tempera on canvas. q The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Plate 18 Jerusalem 76 (1804 – 20). 22.5 £ 16.2 cm. Relief etching, with pen and black ink, watercolour and gold on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. Plate 19 William Blake and Catherine Blake(?), Christian Before the Cross, illustration to Pilgrim’s Progress (1824–7). 17.7 £ 12.5 cm. Pencil, pen and watercolour on paper. Private collector; image courtesy of Sotheby’s. Plate 20 Dante Adoring Christ, illustration to The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Paradiso XIV, 97 – 111) (1824 – 7). 52.7 £ 37.2 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over black chalk, with touches of gum. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne. LIST OF BLACK AND WHITE FIGURES By William Blake, unless otherwise stated. Figure 1 Night Thoughts, Frontispiece, ‘The Christian Triumph’ (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

36

Figure 2 Night Thoughts, page 64 ‘The Christian Triumph’ (1797). 42.3 £ 32.0 cm. Engraving, finished in watercolour. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

37

Figure 3 Night Thoughts, General title page (to Volume II) (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

38

Figure 4 Night Thoughts, Night IX, page 117 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

39

Figure 5 Night Thoughts, Night IX, page 119 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

40

xii

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Figure 6 All Religions Are One, ‘Principle 7th’ (c.1788/c.1795). 5.5 £ 3.5 cm. Relief etching. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

41

Figure 7 Christ Appearing to His Disciples After the Resurrection (c.1795). 43.2 £ 57.5 cm. Colour print (monotype), hand-coloured with watercolour and tempera. National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection.

44

Figure 8 Night Thoughts, page 90 ‘Healing Affliction’ (1797). 42.3 £ 32.0 cm. Engraving, finished in watercolour. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

47

Figure 9 Benjamin Smith, after Richard Westall, ‘Paradise Lost B. 3’ (1795). Engraving. Before page 85 in: The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a Life of the Author, by William Hayley (1794 – 7), Volume 2/3. 44.0 x 34.0 cm. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

49

Figure 10 All Religions Are One, ‘The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness’ (c.1788/c.1795). 4.6 £ 3.7 cm. Relief etching. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

70

Figure 11 William Bromley, after Richard Westall, The Adoration of the Shepherds (1793). 30.1 £ 24.0 cm. Etching and engraving. For Luke 11:15 – 17 in The Holy Bible (1800), Volume 6/7. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

72

Figure 12 The Descent of Peace, illustration 1 to Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (c.1814 – 16). 15.9 £ 12.6 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

74

Figure 13 The Adoration of the Kings (1799). 25.7 £ 37.0 cm. Tempera on canvas. Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton and Hove.

79

Figure 14 The Circumcision (c.1799 –1800). 25.7 £ 36.4 cm. Tempera on canvas. q The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

80

List of Illustrations

xiii

Figure 15 Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Riding a Lamb with St John (1800). 27.3 £ 38.7 cm. Pen and tempera on canvas. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

81

Figure 16 Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (1800). 31.1 £ 47.9 cm. Tempera and pen on copper. q CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections.

82

Figure 17 The Repose of the Holy Family in Egypt (1806). 35.1 £ 37.0 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink, and graphite on paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

84

Figure 18 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 –1851), Holy Family (exhibited 1803). 102.2 £ 141.6 cm. Oil on canvas. q Tate, London 2017.

85

Figure 19 Christ Blessing the Little Children (1799). 26.0 £ 37.5 cm. Tempera on canvas. q Tate, London 2017.

90

Figure 20 The Third Temptation (c.1803 – 5). 41.6 £ 33.4 cm. Pen and ink, pencil and wash on paper. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

97

Figure 21 The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (c.1805). 36.0 £ 33.2 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink, and graphite on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

99

Figure 22 Christ Baptizing (1805). 31.8 £ 38.3 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over graphite on paper. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mgrs. William Thomas Tonner, 1964-110-2.

103

Figure 23 Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood (c.1803 – 5). 32.3 £ 29.8 cm. Watercolour. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

105

Figure 24 Night Thoughts, Night IX, page 3 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

109

xiv

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Figure 25 Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, The Raising of Lazarus (c.1630 – 2). 96.36 £ 81.28 cm. Oil on wood. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

112

Figure 26 The Transfiguration (c.1800). 37.7 £ 32.4 cm. Watercolour on paper. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

114

Figure 27 Sir Thomas Lawrence, after Raphael, Drawing after ‘The Transfiguration’ (1782). 117.5 £ 73.7 cm. Pastel on paper, mounted on linen. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

115

Figure 28 John Flaxman, The Transfiguration, from Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Baptistery Doors, Florence, from Flaxman’s Italian Sketchbook (1787). 21.9 £ 15.2 cm. Graphite, pen and ink and grey wash on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

117

Figure 29 The Woman Taken in Adultery (John VIII, 8– 9) (c.1805). 35.6 £ 36.8 cm. Pen and watercolour over graphite on paper. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, museum purchase with funds donated by contribution, 90.110. Photograph q 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

119

Figure 30 Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (c.1803 – 5). 35.7 £ 31.8 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink, and graphite on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

123

Figure 31 Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (c.1803 – 5). 34.8 £ 33.2 cm. Watercolour. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

124

Figure 32 Mary Magdalene Washing Christ’s Feet (c.1805). 34.9 £ 34.6 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over graphite on paper. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mgrs. William Thomas Tonner, 1964-110-10.

125

Figure 33 The Hymn of Christ and the Apostles (c.1805). 37.7 £ 32.2 cm. Pen and watercolour over pencil on paper. Collection of Robert N. Essick: Copyright q 2017 William Blake Archive. Used with permission. 126

List of Illustrations

xv

Figure 34 By the Waters of Babylon (1806). 40.3 £ 37.7 cm. Watercolour, ink and graphite on paper. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.404. Photo: Imaging Department. q President and Fellows of Harvard College.

130

Figure 35 The Rout of the Rebel Angels, illustration 7 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 28.8 £ 20.8 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

139

¨ ller after Francis Hayman, Paradise Lost, Figure 36 J.S. Mu frontispiece to Book 4 (1757). 21.0 x 13.0 cm. Engraving. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

141

Figure 37 The Creation of Eve, illustration 8 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 25.3 £ 20.8 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

142

Figure 38 The Judgment of Adam and Eve, illustration 10 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 25.0 £ 20.2 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

145

Figure 39 Michael Foretells the Crucifixion, illustration 11 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 25.2 £ 20.3 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

146

Figure 40 The Last Judgement (1808). 50.3 £ 40.0 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink and pencil on paper. q National Trust Images / John Hammond.

148

Figure 41 The Fall of Man (1807). 49.5 £ 39.4 cm. Pen and watercolour on thin card. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

155

xvi

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Figure 42 The Virgin and Child in Egypt (1810). 76.5 £ 63.5 cm. Tempera on canvas. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

158

Figure 43 William Blake?, Portrait of William Blake (c.1802 – 4). 24.3 £ 20.1 cm. Pencil and wash on paper. Collection of Robert N. Essick: Copyright q 2017 William Blake Archive. Used with permission.

160

Figure 44 Anon., published by Carington Bowles, The Crucifixion (c.1766 – 84). 35.5 £ 25.3 cm. Hand-coloured mezzotint and etching. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

172

Figure 45 Anon., The Tree of Life (c.1770). 32.3 £ 24.8 cm. Engraving. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

181

Abbreviations

TITLES OF BLAKE’S WRITTEN WORKS (WITH DATES) America DC EG Europe Experience

America, A Prophecy A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures The Everlasting Gospel Europe, A Prophecy Songs of Experience

Innocence Jerusalem

Songs of Innocence Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

MHH Milton Reynolds Songs

Milton, A Poem Annotations to Reynolds’ Discourses on Art Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Urizen VLJ

The First Book of Urizen A Vision of the Last Judgment

1793 1809 c.1894 1794 1794 1799 1804 – c.1820 1790 1804 – c.1811 c.1798 – 1809 1799/1794 1794 1810

OTHER ABBREVIATIONS B

Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (New Haven, 1981). Vol. 1/2: Text. Numbering denotes catalogue numbers. Most works are also illustrated by Butlin (with the exception of major series, such as Night Thoughts (see below)); I give details of alternative places of

xviii

The Visionary Art of William Blake reproduction where relevant (including for a few paintings and drawings that have come to light since Butlin compiled his catalogue raisonne´).

BR

E

G.E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Blake Records (New Haven, 2nd edn. 2004). Numbering denotes page numbers. Blake Records is a compilation of contemporaneous written material relating to Blake; as relevant, I also give details of documents cited. William Blake; David V. Erdman (ed.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (New York, 1988). Numbering denotes page numbers. Erdman’s full text is also available online, via the Blake Archive (http://erdman. blakearchive.org accessed 06/10/2017).

NT

PL

Blake’s watercolour designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, in the format NT [Night number].[page number]. The watercolours are reproduced in the editions by Hamlyn and Grant et al. and can be consulted in person and online at the British Museum. John Milton, Paradise Lost. Roman numerals denote book number, followed by Arabic numerals denoting line number. I quote from the edition by Carey and Fowler; numerous print and online editions are available.

Notes on Quotations

Quotations from Blake’s writings are taken from Erdman’s edition. Accordingly (where applicable), I give the plate and line numbers for text quotations as in Erdman, and retain Blake’s idiosyncrasies in spelling, punctuation and capitalisation. Where I discuss designs from Blake’s illuminated books, I refer to plate numbers as in the William Blake Trust/Princeton reproductions (the most readily available printed reproductions of Blake’s illuminated works). Owing to Blake’s variant arrangements of plates in his illuminated works, the numbering in these editions sometimes differs from the plate numbering of Erdman’s text, and that of other reproductions (including some of the copies of the illuminated books in the Blake Archive: http://blakearchive.org (accessed 06/10/2017)). Quotations from the Bible are taken from the King James Version, the translation used by Blake. Quotations from Edward Young’s Night Thoughts are taken from the letterpress extra-illustrated by Blake’s watercolours (a composite of the first and second edition of the nine Nights of the poem published between 1742 and 1745). They are reproduced in the editions by Hamlyn and by Grant et al., and can be consulted (in person and online) at the British Museum.

Preface

The ideas presented in this book began life as my doctoral research on Blake’s visual Christology, which I completed at the University of Manchester. That research has been substantially re-written for this book, principally during my time as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the John Rylands Research Institute, also at the University of Manchester. Blake referred to Manchester as a place ‘in tortures of Doubt and Despair’ (Jerusalem 21:36, E166). Although this description does not reflect the city that I know, it is a phrase that has resonated at various moments in the research and re/writing process. For the most part though, spending several years reading and writing about Blake has been immensely enjoyable. Many people have helped me in various ways during the project, not least to get me through the more torturous moments. I am indebted to my two PhD supervisors, Jeremy Gregory and Colin Trodd. They both not only gave me valuable feedback on numerous iterations of the material that formed my PhD thesis, but have also encouraged me to pursue other activities that have helped me to develop as a researcher. My PhD research also benefited from the input of my academic advisor, David Morris, who provided helpful comments on my work. My external examiner, Martin Myrone, asked astute questions that have helped me to develop the material further. For funding my doctoral research I am grateful to the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the University of Manchester, and

xxii

The Visionary Art of William Blake

to the Yale Center for British Art for a visiting scholar award to consult their wonderful collections of work by Blake and his contemporaries. Thanks to the many scholars who have taken the time to answer my questions and/or discuss aspects of my project, whether in discussions at conferences and seminars, or over email. My work has also benefited from various intellectual communities at the University of Manchester, including the Graduate School for Arts, Languages and Cultures; and the President’s Doctoral Scholars. The John Rylands Library provided valuable opportunities to work with its Blake holdings during my doctorate, particularly alongside the exhibition ‘Burning Bright: William Blake and the Art of the Book’ in 2013; thanks to Stella Halkyard and Julianne Simpson for supporting this work. My time at the Yale Center for British Art also fostered intellectual opportunities with Center staff, other visiting scholars, and Yale’s Material and Visual Cultures of Religions group. I am grateful to the following individuals, and institutions and their staff, for providing me with access to and/or information about material in their collections: The Art Institute Chicago; The Ashmolean Museum; The Beinecke; The Bodleian; Bristol and Region Archaeological Services; Bristol Museum and Art Gallery; The British Library; The Brotherton Library; Chetham’s Library; Robert N. Essick; The Fitzwilliam Museum; Glasgow Life; The Harry Ransom Center; Harvard Art Museums; The Houghton Library; Lakeland Arts; The Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection at the Library of Congress; The Lewis Walpole Library; The Library of Worcester College, Oxford; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Manchester Art Gallery; Manchester Metropolitan University Library; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The Morgan Library and Museum; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; The National Art Library; The National Gallery of Art; The National Gallery Library and Archive; National Galleries Scotland; The National Museum of Wales; The National Trust; The New Art Gallery, Walsall; Sir Alan Parker; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; Princeton University Art Museum; The Royal Academy Library and Archive; The Tate, and The Tate Reading Room and Archive; University of Kent Special Collections; University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives; The V&A Prints and Drawings Study Room,

Preface

xxiii

and the V&A Archive; Westminster City Archives; The Whitworth; and The Yale Center for British Art. Special thanks to the reading room team at the John Rylands Library, not least for their patience and persistence in tracking down elusive items. Thanks too to those institutions and individuals that have made images available free of charge for the illustrations: Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove; Harvard Art Museums; The Huntington Library and Art Collections; The John Rylands Library, University of Manchester; The Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The Metropolitan Museum of Art; The National Gallery of Art; The National Gallery of Victoria; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; Sotheby’s; The Victoria and Albert Museum; The Whitworth, University of Manchester; The Yale Center for British Art. I am grateful to the Marc Fitch Fund for a generous grant to support costs associated with reproducing other images. Thanks also to the University of Manchester for making a contribution to image costs. Alex Wright at I.B.Tauris has patiently guided me through the process of preparing the manuscript for publication. Thanks too to Sara Magness and her colleagues in the production team. Some of the material in Chapter 3 appeared in an essay in Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion, edited by Ben Quash, Aaron Rosen and Chloe¨ Reddaway for I.B.Tauris (2017). I am grateful to be able to revisit this material in a wider context here. Any errors that have not been thrown off are my own ‘False Art’ (VLJ, E562). ‘Delight[ing] [. . .] in good Company’ (E698) with friends, near and far, has helped to keep the moments of doubt and despair at bay while working on this project. Special thanks to my PhD peers at Manchester for friendship, good humour and reading exchanges; to friends and family further afield who hosted me during research and conference trips; to my colleagues at the John Rylands Research Institute for their friendship and advice while I was working on the book manuscript; and to my family for their unwavering love and support. This book is dedicated to the memory of a dear friend – one more star in the sky.

As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various) So all Religions & as all similars have one source. The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius All Religions are One (c.1788, E2) I know of no other Christianity and of no other Gospel than the liberty both of body & mind to exercise the Divine Arts of Imagination. Jerusalem (1804–c.1820, E231) The Eternal Body of Man is The IMAGINATION . God himself that is ‫[ שי]ו[ע‬Yeshua] JESUS we are his The Divine Body Members It manifests itself in his Works of Art (In Eternity All is Vision) Christianity is Art Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists Their Works were destroyd by the Seven Angels of the Seven Churches in Asia. Laocoo¨n (c.1826– 7, E273–4)

Introduction

William Blake believed that Christianity is art and that Jesus Christ was an artist, who is both the model and the source of artistic activity. These ideas are central to his artistic and religious vision, and are expressed in various forms throughout his career: from the early account of the Poetic Genius in All Religions are One, to the late aphorisms of the Laocoo¨n plate. This book examines why Blake identified Christ as artist and Christianity as art. My central argument is that Blake expresses this theory – or theology – of art through his visual representations of Christ. Blake did not mean that Jesus produced works of fine art, nor that one must do so in order to be Christian; rather, Christ’s identity is Imagination, and as such all his acts and all activity in him are art. Thus, I examine Blake’s depictions of Jesus’ life and ministry, and show that Blake represents these themes as analogous to the work of the artist because Jesus changes the way that we perceive the world. As Morris Eaves highlights at the end of Blake’s Theory of Art, for Blake, Jesus’ art was his public ministry – his parables and miracles were acts of self-expression, which sought to create a new social order. So too Blake seeks, through his art, to engender a community of Imagination.1 This community is the Divine Body, which is Jesus, who is Imagination – as expressed in the Laocoo¨n aphorism quoted above. Thus, Blake’s depictions of Christ are also representations of artistic activity; they include not only images of Jesus’ public ministry, but also of his birth, death and resurrection, as an apocalyptic agent, and in extra-biblical roles.

2

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Whilst Blake’s vision of Christ as the supreme type of the artist was by no means a static concept, it emerged in his works as early as All Religions are One and can be found in works from throughout his career. This book interrogates how Blake envisaged the life of Christ as manifesting the principles of art through case studies that examine five major themes in Blake’s depictions of Christ in key pictorial projects in his oeuvre. There are good grounds for examining Blake’s images as evidence of his religious and aesthetic theories: he himself used one of the few descriptions of his own designs that he is known to have written, A Vision of the Last Judgment (1810, E554 – 66), to give an account of his theory of art and religious ideas (I discuss several passages from this text at various points in this book, and examine the design to which it relates in Chapter 4). But Blake was not a systematic thinker; even Henry Crabb Robinson, who conversed with Blake about matters of art and religion late in Blake’s life, stated that it was ‘hard [. . .] to fix Blakes position in relation to Christianity’ (BR 696); I therefore characterise Blake’s theories in terms of themes and trends rather than coherence and schema. The five qualities manifested in the life of Christ as presented in Blake’s pictorial works which correspond to Blake’s theory of art that I discuss are: art as regeneration, art as inspiration, art as facilitator, art as eternal, and art as iconoclastic. These qualities can be found in varying degrees in Blake’s depictions of different moments of the life of Christ in works throughout Blake’s career. However, each is more prominent in relation to specific subjects from the life of Christ. The main chapters of this book address these five qualities in turn, in each case focusing on one or more key pictorial projects by Blake, addressed in chronological order (i.e. the order in which he produced them; there is some overlap between the periods of the works discussed in Chapters 4 and 5), and relating to different moments in the life of Christ. The analysis is developed through a series of detailed readings of depictions of Christ from throughout Blake’s career, representing key moments in the life of Christ. Some of these works have been relatively neglected in Blake scholarship (including some of the designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, discussed in Chapter 1, and for the Bible, explored in Chapters 2 and 3); other works discussed here are better known, but are examined

Introduction

3

here in new contexts (such as the Paradise Lost designs, discussed in Chapters 4 and 5; and Jerusalem 76, discussed in Chapter 5). I situate each case study in relation to contemporaneous religious writings and/or artistic representations of similar subjects, and thereby present an historically grounded account of Blake’s art. Thus, in addition to making an overall theoretical argument about Blake’s religiousartistic theories, I also propose new readings of specific works, and identify previously overlooked probable textual and pictorial sources for a number of designs. Few artists and writers have been written about as extensively as Blake, and yet there remain aspects of his work that have not been investigated. This book sits at the intersection of three strands of Blake Studies, which examine his religious thought, his aesthetic theories, and his pictorial works and methods. There has been a resurgence in studies of Blake’s religious ideas over the past decade from a variety of methodological perspectives: from Keri Davies’ and Marsha Keith Schuchard’s important findings about Blake’s mother’s connections with the Moravian Church through archival research, to Christopher Rowland’s analysis of Blake’s biblical exegesis, to Susanne Sklar’s exploration of Blake’s illuminated poem Jerusalem as ‘visionary theatre’, to investigations of Methodist resonances in Blake’s works by Jennifer Jesse and Michael Farrell.2 Studies of Blake’s religious ideas have tended to focus on Blake’s literary and composite works. For instance, Rowland’s Blake and the Bible does have a short chapter that discusses a handful of Blake’s pictorial works, but far more space is devoted to discussing Blake’s writings, and composite works such as the Job engravings. Less has been written recently about Blake’s aesthetic theories; the writings of Northrop Frye, Harold Boom, W.J.T. Mitchell, Morris Eaves and John Barrell in the late twentieth century remain the most valuable work on this topic.3 These scholars also tend to focus on Blake’s written and composite works, rather than on his paintings and drawings. I discuss further how the ideas presented in this book relate to this body of scholarship later in this Introduction. Finally, although Blake’s visual works have received less attention than his written works in Blake Studies in general, there are strong traditions of both art historical and literary scholarship that have

4

The Visionary Art of William Blake

established that Blake’s pictorial works are as much expressions of his personal belief system as his written works. The art historical tradition (especially the work of Anthony Blunt, David Bindman and Martin Myrone)4 emphasises the importance of placing Blake’s work in the art world of his time for understanding his work, while literary scholars focus on Blake’s engagements with his textual sources (Pamela Dunbar, Bette Charlene Werner and J.M.Q. Davies on Blake’s Milton designs; John E. Grant on Blake’s Night Thoughts designs, and Christopher Heppner on a broader range of works).5 While literary scholars have usually studied individual series of designs, art historians have tended either to survey Blake’s oeuvre or – especially in exhibition catalogues – to focus on other specific themes in Blake’s works, such as slavery, the Gothic, and Blake’s printing practices – but not, to date, his religious and aesthetic theories, nor the figure of Christ.6 Although analyses of specific images or series have shown that Blake used images to express his religious and artistic ideas, this work has been undertaken in a piecemeal way. Moreover, exegesis of Blake’s pictorial works and explication of his religious and aesthetic theories are rarely brought together. This book addresses these lacunae, offering the first full-length study of Blake’s religious and aesthetic theories as expressed in his pictorial works, and more specifically, as in the figure of Christ. It draws on the methods of the several strands of Blake Studies just mentioned: using historically grounded readings of Blake’s pictorial works to give an account of his religious and aesthetic theories. Before embarking on my analyses of Blake’s pictorial works, I will set out the theoretical frameworks of the study. First, I outline my definitions of several key Blakeanisms (i.e. terms and symbols) that I use throughout the book. Second, I situate the analysis in relation to theories of Romantic aesthetics, and particularly how Blake’s theory of art has been modelled in that context. Third, I give a brief account of religious art in Britain in Blake’s time, followed by an overview of Blake’s own work as a visual artist. Finally, I briefly introduce the five themes which are the foci of the case studies that form the main chapters of these book, and through which, I argue, Blake’s Christ is to be read as the archetypal artist.

Introduction

5

BLAKEANISMS

Jesus/Christ In A Blake Dictionary, S. Foster Damon claims that ‘Christ was a term that Blake used only five times in his poetry, outside The Everlasting Gospel, as he preferred the personal name “Jesus”.’7 A search of David Erdman’s complete Blake text via the Blake Archive in fact yields nine hits for ‘Christ’ within Damon’s rather narrow parameters, and 77 across Blake’s complete writings. There are almost twice as many (144) hits for ‘Jesus’.8 Thus, there is truth in Damon’s claim, but Blake also has numerous other names for Jesus: the Divine Body, the Human Form Divine, Divine Humanity, Imagination, the Poetic Genius, the Divine Image, the Divine Vision, God himself. These names have different, but sometimes overlapping resonances, reflecting Blake’s multifaceted vision of Christ (this richness of identity will become evident throughout this book). For sake of convenience, I favour the use of ‘Christ’ to refer to Blake’s archetypal artist figure, in order to maintain a distinction between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Christ of Blake’s mythos. Regardless of Blake’s apparent preference for the name ‘Jesus’, as Rowland puts it: ‘Blake espouses an understanding of Christ [. . .] in which the historical Jesus of the gospels takes second place to the Christ “in whom we live and move and have our being” (cf. Acts 17:28).’9 Therefore, where I refer to ‘Jesus’, it is to the figure in the Gospels, but I more frequently discuss Blake’s ‘Christ’.

The Human Form Divine As just noted, one of Blake’s names for Christ was ‘the Human Form Divine’. For Blake, the Human Form Divine is the true state of humanity, of which Christ is the ultimate archetype; it is simultaneously the true identity of God. Blake did not regard Jesus as the unique incarnation of the divine in human but rather as the supreme embodiment of the eternal Human Form Divine; not the perfect union of two natures (as J.G. Davies sought to show), nor even God self-emptied (as Thomas Altizer argued), but a single HumanDivine nature which we also share.10 As Blake responded to Henry Crabb Robinson asking him about the divinity of Jesus: ‘He is the only

6

The Visionary Art of William Blake

God [. . .] And so am I and so are you’ (BR 421). Thus, Christ does not have the same unique status for Blake as in orthodox theology; as Blake writes of Moses and Abraham in his notebook description of the Last Judgement, it is not the person Jesus, but the state that he epitomises that makes him central to Blake’s vision (E556).

Imagination; the Divine Body As articulated in one of the so-called Laocoo¨n aphorisms quoted above, Blake conceives of Imagination as the identity of Jesus, and as his Divine Body in whom we are members. Thus, Imagination, for Blake, is not a faculty, nor even, as he writes in Milton: ‘a State: it is Human Existence itself’ (32[35]:32 – 3, E132). Imagination is an ontological reality – a way of being – which is the identity of Christ, and our true identity (for sake of convenience I do refer to Imagination as a ‘state’; when I do so the term should be understood as meaning an ontological reality). In this respect, Imagination is essentially synonymous with the Human Form Divine (cf. Jerusalem 60:56 – 8, E211; 70:19 – 20, E224). It is also the ontological reality of the world; an important letter that Blake wrote to a dissatisfied patron, Revd Dr Trusler, explains this aspect of his idea of Imagination: This World Is a World of Imagination & Vision I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike [. . .] to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination Nature is Imagination itself. As a man is So he Sees. As the Eye is formed such are its Powers [. . .] To Me This World is all One continued Vision of Fancy or Imagination. (23 August 1799, E702)

Trusler had complained that the work that Blake had produced for him was too fanciful; Blake’s retort is that the problem is not his work, but Trusler’s failure of vision. If Trusler saw with eyes of Imagination, he would see that the world is a world of Imagination and would recognise Blake’s works as productions of Imagination. Jesus, for Blake, is the perfect embodiment of Imagination because through his ministry, he changes the way that people see the world. Blake seeks to achieve the same aim through his work. We will encounter a number of Trusler-like figures in Blake’s depictions of Christ, whose eyes have not yet been formed to Imagination, as well

Introduction

7

as Christ-like figures who have embodied Imagination, the Human Form Divine. To embody Imagination is a social, rather than individualistic ideal – we become at once truly ourselves, and part of the Divine Body of Jesus, the Imagination. At times, there is apparent tension between Christ as actor and as facilitator (a figure who allows others to act; I focus on this topic in Chapter 3); this is because in Blake’s mythos the figure of Christ represents both the Imagination (or the Human Form Divine) itself and its supreme manifestation in Jesus. Thus, as actor, he is the type of the individual embodying that reality, and as facilitator he is Imagination itself engendering that process. Moreover, because Imagination is the true identity of God, Christ is the pre-eminent identity of the Godhead, and Blake is critical of paternalistic and legalistic figurings of the deity, as I discuss in the following.11

Blake’s Ancient of Days as Anti-icon to Christ Blake famously declared: ‘Without Contraries is no progression’ (MHH 3, E34). In considering his idea of Christ, it is helpful to keep in mind the principal figure against whom this central archetype in Blake’s mythos is defined, namely, the Father. Blake’s design known as The Ancient of Days (1794/1827?, Plate 1) epitomises a vision of the Father as the antithesis to his vision of Christ. This is one of Blake’s best-known images, which he himself reproduced multiple times and was reportedly a personal favourite (BR 523, 655). Inspired by a vision that Blake saw at his home in Lambeth in the 1790s (BR 72, 620), the design first appeared as the frontispiece to Europe in 1794, and he printed and coloured the plate as a separate work; he is said to have been working on the copy now in the Whitworth collection (illustrated) on his deathbed (cf. BR 523 620, 655, 682). The subject is God as Creator setting dividers on the void of the earth to measure and order it, as described in Proverbs 8:27. The picture represents a cosmology in which the universe is created by a Father who imposes oppressive order upon it. This is an unsettling portrait of the Creator: he is a tyrant, but even as he attempts to impose order on the dark void of the world, he is confined by the sun, and his hair blows in the wind, indicating that his power is not as

8

The Visionary Art of William Blake

absolute as might first appear, and that his Creation is flawed.12 Blake famously wrote: ‘I must Create a System, or be enslav’d by another Mans’ (Jerusalem 10:20, E153); his conception of Christ is, I argue, an attempt to escape the type of rule-bound conception of God and the universe represented in The Ancient of Days. Blake himself establishes a contrast between The Ancient of Days and Christ in the design’s original context in Europe. The poem is a commentary on the contemporaneous situation in Europe in the wake of the French Revolution, recast as a universal narrative that parodies John Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (1629; published 1645); this poem tells the story of Christ’s birth with an account of that event engendering the overthrow of pagan deities. Europe begins with the descent into the world of ‘the secret child’ (3:2, E61), who represents both Christ and Orc, inaugurating the possibility of the world being restored to life. However, for 1800 years, the true meaning of this ‘secret child’ had been perverted; at the end of Europe, Los rallies his sons to overturn this degenerate state (15, E66). Thus, The Ancient of Days is an anti-icon to the ‘secret child’ Christ, the terrifying embodiment of the consequences of a worldview governed by Urizenic Reason rather than Christ-like Imagination. In a manner analogous to Blake’s repeated return to this image, I refer to this design throughout the book as an anti-icon to Blake’s conception of Christ.

BLAKE’S THEORY OF ART AND ROMANTIC AESTHETICS That Blake’s theory of art is a religious one is well established in Blake scholarship. In Fearful Symmetry (1947), Northrop Frye interprets Blake’s idea of Imagination as a universal reality in which ‘[e]verything worth doing and done well is an art’, and because Jesus is Imagination itself, ‘we perceive as God: we do not perceive God’.13 In other words, all worthwhile activity is art, which is a participation in the activity of Christ the Imagination. This idea is central to my argument that Blake’s depictions of Christ must be read in the light of, and as expressions of, his theology of art. Frye’s reading of Blake was extended by Harold Bloom in Blake’s Apocalypse (1963), which argues that Blake’s poems are

Introduction

9

‘minute articulations’ of a ‘masterful design’ to reveal his ‘conceptual universe’.14 His reading of Songs of Innocence is particularly instructive in relation to the role of Christ in Blake’s apocalyptic religious aesthetic. Bloom observes Christ appearing multiple times in various guises here – as the shepherd of John’s Gospel in ‘The Shepherd’ (E5), as the child Tom Dacre in ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ (E10), as the pity in ‘On Another’s Sorrow’ (E17), and so on.15 Thus, in Bloom’s account of the Songs, Christ emerges as the essence and spirit of Innocence, although Bloom himself does not put it so explicitly. Christ is a key figure throughout Bloom’s account of the development of Blake’s apocalyptic aesthetic, culminating in Jerusalem, which Bloom reads as the coming together of word and vision in ‘Visionary forms dramatic’ (E257), in which individuals enter the communion of the humanised Word, the One Man (i.e. Christ).16 A similar idea re-emerges in Eaves’ William Blake’s Theory of Art (1982), which examines Blake’s writings on art. As noted above, in his account of Blake’s concept of audience, Eaves addresses Blake’s statement in Laocoo¨n that Jesus was an artist by arguing that Jesus’ miracles and parables are prototypes for how the artist should engage with his audience. These ‘works of art’ are acts of ‘identity rather than rehearsals of morals and doctrines’ and thus they engender a community in his image, which Eaves calls a ‘society of Imagination’. An individual becomes part of this social order by internalising Christ as Imagination.17 Eaves develops his account of Blake’s theory of art in The Counter-Arts Conspiracy (1992), where he examines Blake’s artistic theories within four frameworks: nation, commerce, religion and technology. In ‘Religion’, Eaves demonstrates that Blake’s Christian theory of art does not appear entirely sui generis in English school discourse – a matter that has also been examined by John Barrell.18 The interrelations between art and religion in Britain in the eighteenth century is a topic that remains underexplored in wider scholarship about the period, but Clare Haynes has shown that the relation of religion to art was addressed by eighteenth-century British art theorists in various, but piecemeal, ways.19 Both Eaves and Barrell show how the religious dimension of Blake’s theory of art had some precedents in contemporaneous art discourse, but Blake’s ideology is distinctive because its incorporation of religious ideas is so deep that

10

The Visionary Art of William Blake

his theories of art and religion are one and the same. Clearly other influences (including the other three spheres that Eaves examines in The Counter-Arts Conspiracy) are also important for Blake’s theory of art, but we can nevertheless characterise Blake’s theory of art as a theology of art (although Blake would not have described himself as a theologian).20 I will highlight two examples from the theories of artists in Blake’s circle, James Barry (1741 – 1806) and Benjamin West (1738 – 1820), to help to illustrate how his religious aesthetics can be seen in relation to contemporaneous art discourse. Parallels between Blake’s and Barry’s religious concepts of art and the viewer have been noted by scholars including Barrell and William Pressly.21 For Barry, the work of the artist is a participation in the image of the Creator and works of art should express a spiritual vision. Barry believed that art should both communicate the subjects that it depicts, but should also elicit a deeper form of engagement from the spectator: It is an absurdity to suppose, as some mechanical artists do, that the Art ought to be so trite, so brought down to the understanding of the vulgar, that they who run may read: when the Art is solely levelled to the immediate comprehension of the ignorant, the intelligent can find nothing in it, and there will be nothing to improve or to reward the attention even of the ignorant themselves, upon a second or third view.22

Whilst his was a spiritual ideology, Barry did not believe that the artist needed to express himself in religious subject matter. Indeed, although he stated in his Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Arts in England (1775) that the Reformation in England had led to the neglect of Christian subjects in favour of ‘the baser and lower branches’ of painting – ‘landscape, portrait, and still life’23 – elsewhere, in his account of his murals at the Royal Society of the Arts, he wrote that New Testament subjects had become ‘so hackneyed, that a moment’s inspection will convince us, there is hardly any thing admissible into them, which has not been executed over and over again’.24 Instead, Barry continued, ‘The Majesty of Historical Art requires not only novelty, but a novelty full of comprehension and importance.’25 Barry’s murals at the Royal Society of Arts depict scenes from classical mythology as Christian

Introduction

11

allegory; Blake owned a copy of Barry’s account of these paintings.26 As William Pressly has shown, Barry and Blake saw the role of the history painter and his/her work in like terms: the pursuit of art is the expression of divine, imaginative vision, and as a public service – in short, they regarded the artist as prophet.27 Blake himself used a variety of subjects to communicate his vision, including stories from the Bible and literature, and others of his own invention – all of which he harnessed in formulating his own world of images that expressed his mythos, and often innovating from the kind of hackneyed types that Barry criticised. Benjamin West also regarded his art as having a religious function. In 1779, he was commissioned by King George III to design a scheme for a ‘Chapel of Revealed Religion’ at Windsor; originally planned with the sanction of a committee of clergymen advising the king, West reinvented the scheme with his own agenda during the 25-year period that he worked on the project. As Pressly has shown, West’s innovation, which shifted the emphasis of the scheme from divine sanction of the monarchy to a more global outlook, probably led to the King’s withdrawal of funding from the project.28 Nevertheless, West found ample other opportunities to express his own ideals. For example, the catalogue of the exhibition of his painting Christ Rejected in London in 1814 (the text was also recycled in the catalogues for several subsequent exhibitions of the painting) described the aims of the work as religious and moral: It has been Mr. West’s object, in the delineation of this subject, to excite feelings in the Spectator similar to those produced by a perusal of the Sacred Texts, which so pathetically describe these awful events [. . .] The delineation of nearly the whole scale of human passions, from the basest to those which partake most of the divine nature, has thus been necessarily attempted.29

This passage describes how the artist expects his audience to interact with his work, equating the act of viewing his biblical painting with the reading of scripture itself. Blake also wrote about how the viewer should interact with his work; his model of audience engagement goes further than West’s, which is about recognition of and empathy with the human passions depicted his painting. Blake’s art sets out to make the viewer a

12

The Visionary Art of William Blake

participant rather than an observer, a partner in pursuit of visionary perception; he expresses this notion most explicitly in his notebook description of the Last Judgement (1810): If the Spectator could Enter into these Images in his Imagination approaching them on the Fiery Chariot of his Contemplative Thought if he could Enter into Noahs Rainbow or into his bosom or could make a Friend & Companion of one of these Images of wonder which always intreats him to leave mortal things as he must know then would he arise from his Grave then would he meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy [. . .] I intreat then that the Spectator will attend to the Hands & Feet to the Lineaments of the Countenances they are all descriptive of Character & not a line is drawn without intention. (E560)

In other words, the work of art is completed through the engagement of responsive viewers, which engenders their union into the world of the artwork, the world of Blake’s mythos, a state where art and religion are one. Blake’s intensely audience-centred approach to art, where the image exists to regenerate the field of perception, is an example of a larger narrative in the critical theory of Romanticism, which argues that the value of a picture or poem is derived from its power to move its individual beholder or reader. In Romantic Studies, this interactional model has been characterised as a move from a mimetic to an expressive aesthetic; as Mitchell writes of Blake, in an expressive aesthetic, the work is imagined as a living form (a phrase Blake himself used of Gothic art (On Homer’s Poetry, E270)), a catalyst for ‘collective awakening’ and a vehicle ‘delivering us into the human family’.30 In other words, Blake’s images are openings into a world of transformed sensory experience. To quote Mitchell again, Blake’s images are not ‘representational’, creating ‘a plausible visualization’ of a scene, but ‘symbolic’; not concerned with creating a realistic setting, but with schematising details to create a symbolic world. Blake is a ‘visionary’ and ‘transformer’ rather than a ‘visualizer’ and ‘translator’.31 With Blake, as for Caspar David Friedrich (1774 –1840) and J.M.W. Turner (1775 – 1851), the ideal image is open-ended because it arises from a condition in which the artist imagines the audience as empathetic subjects devoted to finding themselves through feeling

Introduction

13

or experiencing the vision provided by the artist.32 This process engenders the unification of individual parts into a whole – in Blakean terms, the spectator becomes a member of the Divine Body of Jesus. The ideal audience, then, is creative; its members belong to the world of the artwork because Romanticism is an attempt to picture the experience of the world re-imagined through visionary perception. Thus, the Romantic image is an experience of being in the world, not a record of things in the world. Blake’s belief that a work of art invokes the audience to believe that it is an encounter with our own embodied experience can be seen in his works at least as early as the Songs (1789/1794). Blake frames these poems as ‘Shewing the Two Contrary States’ (my emphasis) rather than, say, ‘explicating’, and notions of affect are central to many of the poems: from artistic exchange between the piper, the poet and ‘Every child [that] may joy to hear’ in ‘Introduction’ (Innocence, E7), to the litany of emotional response in ‘On Anothers Sorrow’ (E17). At the other end of his career, in Jerusalem (1804 – c.1820), Blake creates a myth in which, as Susanne Sklar has explored, he invites the viewer to enter into the Divine Body.33 In his visual works, Blake uses a range of pictorial processes to elicit such a response from his viewer; they include: figures facing into pictures with whom the viewer shares a perspective on the picture (such as the figure of Albion before the crucified Christ in Jerusalem 76, Plate 18; discussed in Chapter 5); figures reaching out of pictures as if about to embrace the viewer (such as that of Christ in the process of resurrection in the Volume II frontispiece for Night Thoughts, Plate 2; discussed in Chapter 1); scenes which seem to extend into the viewer’s space (such as the river Jordan in The Baptism of Christ watercolour, Plate 8; discussed in Chapter 3). The small scale of many Blake’s works also invites close engagement with the designs, in a way analogous to devotional images. While the size of his works would often have been dictated by necessity (variously the limitations of the mediums of printing and watercolour, and the requests of his patrons), and he did also have unrealised ambitions to produce monumental works for public spaces (DC, E531, 549), he was masterful in employing small scale to

14

The Visionary Art of William Blake

powerful effect. Beyond individual images, the interactive nature of Blake’s aesthetic is reinforced by his method of creating conversations between images within or across series of designs. He develops pictorial motifs that reappear or are adapted in multiple images, which help to shape narrative arcs within series, and to place individual designs in dialogue with one another. Thus, Blake creates a universe of symbols in which all his works participate and into which the viewer is compelled to enter in his/ her Imagination. Within this viewer-centric model of art, Blake’s Christ enacts the processes by which individuation is transformed into community. Christ is the archetypal expressive artist who makes the audience self-expressive subjects, the sensory opening by which we come to know that ‘The Old & New Testaments are the Great Code of Art’ (Laocoo¨n, E274). Elsewhere, in ‘To the Public’, his preface to Jerusalem, Blake imagines the union of artist and audience thus: ‘I [. . .] hope the Reader will be with me, wholly One in Jesus our Lord’ (E145). In Blake’s mythos, Christ is the archetypal generator of identity – the supreme artist – who enacts such an interactive engagement with his own public in his life, death and ministry. Therefore, as Joseph Viscomi writes in relation to Jerusalem: Ideally, the study of art is analogous to the study of Christ; the student, disciple, or reader undergoes a transformation or conversion; one comes to perceive self and world differently.34

I suspect that few viewers have ever responded to Blake’s invitation wholeheartedly – not least because his elaborate personal mythology complicates engagement with his works (a feature which distinguishes his work from that of most of his contemporaries) – and it is certainly not my concern here to evangelise my reader to seek a Blakean conversion in viewing his works.35 In terms of Blake’s aesthetic, my aim is simply to demonstrate how Blake uses a variety of pictorial devices to create a viewer-response dynamic in his depictions of Christ. Blake’s depictions of Christ are not only representations of ‘artistic activity’, but also seek to bring about the viewer’s transformation into the Human Form Divine through engaging with the figure of Christ, the archetypal artist.

Introduction

15

RELIGIOUS ART IN BLAKE’S TIME Having seen something of how Blake’s religious aesthetic relates to Romantic aesthetics, in examining Blake’s works with religious subject-matter, it is also helpful to consider the sorts of religious art that would have been known to him. Significant progress in the scholarly understanding of the roles of religious art in eighteenthcentury Britain has been made in recent years in the work of scholars including Clare Haynes and Nigel Aston, but there remains much work to be done; while this is a book about a single artist, it makes a modest contribution to this larger topic.36 I discuss specific themes and works by Blake’s contemporaries in comparison with designs by Blake in the main chapters; here, I give a brief overview of the types of religious art that were to be seen in Blake’s London. Art and religion had (and indeed, have) not always enjoyed the easiest of relationships in Britain since the Reformation, but the split was never total, and in Blake’s lifetime a variety of art depicting religious subjects was in circulation in Britain. British history painting was developing in the eighteenth century, fuelled not only by the foundation of the Royal Academy in 1768, but also by artists and print-sellers creating other opportunities for the exhibition and sale of such works. Biblical subjects (and extra-biblical ones, such as scenes from Milton’s Paradise Lost) were regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy summer exhibitions, and at other venues. Benjamin West, mentioned above, was the foremost painter of biblical subjects at the end of the eighteenth century, and into the early nineteenth century. As seen above, West was commissioned by the King to paint a scheme for a ‘Chapel of Revealed Religion’ at Windsor, and although the project was eventually abandoned, during the 25 years that he was working on it West regularly exhibited studies for the scheme at the Royal Academy and elsewhere. He received a number of other important ecclesiastical commissions, and also mounted his own exhibitions featuring biblical paintings, such as that showcasing Christ Rejected in 1814 (and repeated several times), the catalogue of which I quoted from above.37 In the early nineteenth century, artists such as J.M.W. Turner, Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786 – 1846)38 and

16

The Visionary Art of William Blake

John Martin (1789 – 1854) capitalised on the growing market for biblical painting, exhibiting their own large-scale pictures at public and private exhibition spaces in London.39 Beyond George III’s plan for the Chapel of Revealed Religion, other churches and chapels were increasingly installing new biblical works by British artists (Haynes has identified over 1,000 paintings installed in Anglican churches during the eighteenth century).40 Elsewhere, however, in 1773 a proposal for a scheme of religious paintings by five Academicians (James Barry, Giovanni Battista Cipriani, Nathaniel Dance, Joshua Reynolds and Benjamin West) for the interior of St Paul’s Cathedral had been blocked by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Cornwallis, and the Bishop of London, Richard Terrick. Thomas Newton, Dean of St Paul’s who supported the project, reported that Terrick objected that the scheme would be ‘an artful introduction of popery’.41 Such concerns (among other factors) also influenced the range of religious subjects that were painted for both the church and public exhibition.42 For example, narratives with a strong moral message, such as healing miracles and scenes from the parables, seem to have been generally regarded as ‘safe’ subjects because they had a didactic function, whereas singlefigure subjects such as the crucifixion were more open to idolatrous viewing. However, such trends were subject to variation according to local or topical factors, for, as Haynes has observed, the Church of England had ‘no consistent rules, laws, doctrines, or legal precedents to distinguish acceptable from unacceptable images’.43 There were also positive influences on the types of subjects depicted by artists; one example was the fashion for the sublime stimulated by Edmund Burke’s On the Sublime and Beautiful (1757) encouraging subjects such as the Deluge and scenes from the Book of Revelation.44 Beyond painting, the range of permissible and fashionable subjects was, to some extent, similar for images in other media, but different modes of viewing made different subjects permissible in other formats. For example, as Haynes notes, popular prints ‘were always captioned with the appropriate biblical reference, however recognizable the subject’, with the text serving ‘both as warrant for the image and guarantor of an appropriate response’ (e.g. Figure 44).45 I say more about some of the factors

Introduction

17

that influenced the contemporaneous prevalence and scarcity of specific subjects that Blake depicted where relevant to the images discussed in this book. London’s exhibition spaces also saw floods of Old Master paintings on sale in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in the wake of the dispersal of large European collections. Among the most important such sales was the Orleans Gallery (1793, 1798 – 9).46 It is highly likely that Blake visited this and other such displays in London; Butlin suggests, for example, that The Christ Child Asleep on a Cross (c.1799 – 1800, B410) could have been inspired by Guido Reni’s version of the subject that was shown at the Orleans Gallery.47 Another important display was the Truchsessian Gallery (1803 – 4), which displayed the collection of Count Joseph Truchsess to promote his ambition to establish a national art collection.48 Blake wrote enthusiastically about visiting the Truchsessian Gallery in a letter to his patron, William Hayley, describing it as an inspiring experience that had given him renewed confidence and illumination to continue the work that he was then producing for Hayley (23 October 1804, E756). Although he never travelled outside England, Blake would also have known other Old Master works through engravings – as an engraver himself, he was well connected in the London print trade, and he collected prints by artists he admired as funds allowed. Thus, for example, we see in Chapter 4 that he was familiar with the design of Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, although he never visited Rome (he also copied various figures from Michelangelo’s Sistine frescos in several early and one late drawing (B50, 167 – 70, 814)). It is also possible that Blake came into contact with Moravian art; as mentioned above, Blake’s mother had been a member of the Moravian church during her first marriage (she was widowed when she married Blake’s father). Thus, the young Blake could have been exposed to Moravian visual culture, such as devotional cards, and as, Marsha Keith Schuchard has suggested, it is possible that he visited the art collection of the influential Moravian, Count von Zinzendorf at the Fetter Lane Moravian chapel and Zinzendorf’s Chelsea home, Lindsey House.49 However, little is known of the paintings in Zinzendorf’s collection: Lindsey House was sold in 1774; many of the

18

The Visionary Art of William Blake

paintings were transferred to Fetter Lane, which was destroyed in the Second World War.50 Keri Davies has shown that Blake probably knew the Moravian artist Jonathan Spilsbury, but the extent of Blake’s contact with Moravianism and its art more broadly remains an open question.51 Illustrated Bibles (and so-called ‘Histories of the Bible’, which were essentially paraphrases of the narrative parts of the Bible) were produced throughout the period to suit a range of budgets; among the earliest commissions that Blake received as an engraver were three engravings for Edward Kimpton’s A New and Complete Universal History of the Holy Bible (c.1781),52 five for Harrison and Co.’s The Protestant Family Bible (c.1781)53 and five engravings for John Herries’ Royal Universal Family Bible (c.1782).54 By far the most ambitious illustrated Bible of the period was that issued by the publisher Thomas Macklin (1752 – 1800), which appeared serially between 1791 and 1800, followed by an additional volume for the Apocrypha in 1816 (the Old and New Testaments were subsequently reissued in 1824).55 The Macklin Bible featured 70 plates by, as announced on the title page, ‘the most eminent British artists’, many of which had been included in Macklin’s annual exhibitions between 1790 and 1796. Blake was not involved in the Macklin Bible, but a number of artists in his circle were, and he had worked for Macklin, so he must have known the project, and probably visited the exhibitions.56 At the other end of the scale, popular prints that depicted biblical subjects were widely and cheaply available for pasting into Bibles and prayer books (e.g. Figure 44). Biblical motifs were also invoked ironically in satirical cartoons by designers such as James Gillray (1756 – 1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1757 – 1827). Books of religious poetry and hymns sometimes included plates with religious subjects – Blake himself produced a number of engravings and designs for such publications, as well as watercolours and paintings based on religious poems such as John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Funerary monuments, and folk art such as embroidery samplers that contained biblical verses and motifs, were among the other ways that Blake and his contemporaries would have encountered religious imagery.

Introduction

19

BLAKE’S WORK AS AN ARTIST Christ appears in pictorial works throughout Blake’s career. A brief survey of the works in which Christ appears in Blake’s oeuvre will help to contextualise the case studies presented here. Blake’s training was as a commercial engraver, undertaking an apprenticeship with James Basire between 1772 and 1779. As mentioned above, among the works that Blake produced in the years after graduating from Basire’s studio were 13 engravings for Bibles of c.1781 – 2. These projects are Blake’s earliest extant pictorial engagements with biblical subject-matter (an earlier, lost work, is Moses and the Table of Stone (1774, B49)) and, as Bindman argues, must have influenced Blake’s turn to biblical subjects in his own drawings and designs in the following years (B83, 120– 5, 144 – 6, 155– 9, 162 – 6, 182). The only depiction of Christ among these early engravings was an image of John’s vision of Christ and the candlesticks in Revelation 1:12 – 20, which is based on a design by Bernard Picart in La Sainte Bible, but which Blake reworked for the print.57 From the same period, among what Butlin calls ‘miscellaneous early works’ are a group of sketches known as The Good Farmer (B120 recto, 121 –5), which seem to relate to Jesus’ parables on themes of harvest (c.1780 – 5). At the end of that decade, Christ appears in plates in All Religions Are One (c.1788/1795), There is No Natural Religion (c.1788/c.1794) and Songs of Innocence (c.1789). These works are among Blake’s earliest productions in illuminated printing – a method of relief etching that he devised which allowed him to combine image and text on the same plate.58 It is, as seen in Bloom’s argument, from this early stage that Blake’s idea of Christ as the prototype of the prophetic artist can first be traced, and Blake would continue to develop and enrich his Christology throughout his career. In the early 1790s, Blake’s attention was focused on the ‘Lambeth Books’ in which he developed his personal mythology in illuminated printing. Christ himself is not pictorially depicted in any of these works, although there are moments when Blake’s mythological figures act as types or anti-types (like The Ancient of Days) of Christ; we will see examples of other figures in Blake’s mythos acting as

20

The Visionary Art of William Blake

avatars of Christ at various points in this book. In this period, Blake also produced the ‘Large Colour Prints’ (dated 1795 although some impressions are on paper watermarked 1805), which include a variety of ‘Historical & Poetical’ subjects (To Dawson Turner, 9 June 1818, E771), including Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection (B325– 9), which I discuss in Chapter 1. In 1795, the publisher Richard Edwards commissioned Blake to produce designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts (1742 – 6). The 537 watercolour designs that Blake produced for this project include 35 depictions of Christ; I discuss this project in Chapter 1. At the end of that decade, Blake received an important commission from a private patron, the civil servant Thomas Butts, to produce 50 small biblical temperas. I discuss this series in Chapter 2. Blake subsequently produced another set of over 80 biblical designs for Butts, this time in watercolour, over a period of about six years from 1800. These works vary in size and style, apparently reflecting different periods of production. I discuss the biblical watercolours in Chapter 3. Between the Septembers of 1800 and 1803 Blake lived in Felpham, Sussex, a sojourn from London that was both frustrating and inspiring. This period has been identified as marking a kind of conversion in Blake’s Christianity, with an apparent sense of renewal in his writings at and after Felpham – a topic I discuss in Chapter 3. Meanwhile, in 1801, Blake began producing watercolours depicting works by Milton. Christ appears in Blake’s designs for Paradise Lost produced for Revd Joseph Thomas (1807, B529) and Butts (1808, B536) (12 in each set), and an incomplete set for John Linnell (1822, B537; three or four designs);59 in designs for Milton’s Nativity Ode for Thomas (1809) and Butts (c.1815) (six in each set); and in designs for Paradise Regained (c.1816 – 20, B544; 12 designs), purchased by Linnell in 1825. The last are the most significant series that I have not included in my case studies here. As I argue elsewhere, I consider them to be important for understanding Blake’s idea of Christ because I interpret them as expressing Blake’s idea of Christ as immanent Imagination in the world.60 However, in terms of Blake’s notion of Christ as artist, the Paradise Regained designs express similar aspects of Christ to the biblical watercolours of Jesus’ public ministry

Introduction

21

discussed in Chapter 3 (namely, the notion of figures from Jesus’ ministry acting as his types, seen in Simon Peter, Andrew and Jesus’ mother in the Paradise Regained series) and the depictions of Christ as a universal and eternal figure discussed in Chapter 4 (because the Paradise Regained designs show Christ as the eternal spiritus of the cosmos). Blake’s Milton pictures are variously in accord with, in critical dialogue with, and extend beyond the content of Milton’s text. These projects allowed Blake to develop key aspects of his theory of Christ as artist further. The most significant for my focus here are the Paradise Lost designs, which I discuss in Chapters 4 and 5, where I discuss, respectively, themes of eternity and iconoclasm in Blake’s aesthetic. At a similar time, Blake began work on his longest and most explicitly ‘Christian’ illuminated work, Jerusalem (1804 – c.1820). Here, Albion (the personification of England and the universal human) has turned his back on the Divine Vision, which is one of Blake’s names for Christ, and the poem is an account of his return. Thus, Christ is central to the salvific schema of Jerusalem; most significant pictorially is plate 76 – Albion before a vision of Christ crucified; this image is the principal focus of Chapter 5, which is concerned with Blake’s depictions of the Crucifixion as expressions of his iconoclastic aesthetic. In 1809, Blake hosted a disastrous one-man exhibition at his brother’s hosiery shop in Soho;61 the exhibition’s Descriptive Catalogue is crucial for understanding Blake’s theory of art. Although this theory is not articulated in explicitly Christological terms in this document, the exhibition is nevertheless significant in the development of Blake’s visual Christology. At this time (1805 –27), Blake was also working on several depictions of the Last Judgement (B639– 48), as well as writing two descriptions of this subject – one for Ozias Humphry (E552 – 4) on whose recommendation a Last Judgment62 watercolour was commissioned by the Countess of Egremont (1807, B642), the other in Blake’s notebook as ‘Additions to Blakes Catalogue of Pictures &c’ (E554 – 66) in which Blake extends his account of the nature of art in the Descriptive Catalogue in more explicitly Christological terms. During this period, Blake produced various other works depicting Christ (mostly for Butts), some

22

The Visionary Art of William Blake

apparently as separate works (c.1810 – c.1820, B671 – 4, 770) and two as part of an interrelated group of portraits of Adam, Eve, the Virgin and Child, and Christ (c.1810, B667 – 70). These works demonstrate Blake’s continuing interest in Christological subjects in a variety of contexts and formats. Blake’s exhibition catalogue, Last Judgement pictures, and the portrait group all reflect an interest in the figure of Christ as an eternal, emblematic figure, and are discussed in my account of that theme in Blake’s work in Chapter 4. In the final years of his life, as well as completing Jerusalem, Blake worked on designs for Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1824 – 7, B829) and Dante’s Divine Comedy (1824 – 7, B812), both of which were unfinished at his death; Blake’s depictions of the crucified Christ in these two series are discussed in Chapter 5. Christ also appears in the Genesis manuscript (c.1826 – 7, B828), another project for Linnell, which remained incomplete at Blake’s death; I mention designs from this work in connection with related subjects in Chapters 4 and 5. Finally, it was at this time that Blake inscribed the so-called Laocoo¨n plate (c.1826 –7, E273 – 5) which contains a series of aphorisms that summarise the theories about art and Christ which Blake had developed throughout his career – Blake’s final affirmation that ‘Christianity is Art’ (E274); I cite a number of aphorisms from this plate throughout this book and discuss its themes in the Conclusion.

FIVE THEMES IN BLAKE’S RELIGIOUS AESTHETIC As already noted, my analysis explores five key themes in Blake’s religious aesthetic, as expressed in Blake’s depictions of particular moments in Christ’s life and ministry from key projects throughout his career. In each case study, I situate the works discussed in relation to related subjects elsewhere in Blake’s works, and in visual culture in the period more broadly. Chapter 1 examines the notion of regeneration, as represented in Blake’s Night Thoughts designs (1795 – 7). The term is one that Blake used frequently in his writings to refer to processes of creative renewal; art should be regenerative. Christ himself undergoes the ultimate regeneration in his resurrection, and he engenders the regeneration of individuals in his role as agent of the apocalypse.

Introduction

23

Resurrection and apocalypse are found in works throughout Blake’s career, but these subjects play a particularly significant role in the Night Thoughts watercolours. In this project, Blake was faced with illustrating a poem with which he frequently disagreed, and thus a dynamic of creative conflict emerges between text and image in these designs. Significantly, Blake frames the two volumes of watercolours with images of resurrection and apocalypse and thus, I argue, enacts a process of regeneration upon Young’s poem. Chapter 2 is concerned with the notion of inspiration – a quality that is widely associated both with art and with Christ: art is both product of and generator of inspiration, and Christians regard Christ as an inspirational figure. This chapter examines the particular association of Christ and inspiration in Blake’s depictions of the birth of Christ – specifically, in his tempera paintings of subjects from Bible (1799 – 1800). In this group of 50 paintings for Butts, four relate to the Nativity of Christ. In this sequence, Christ is depicted as the embodiment of light, the incarnation of illumination and prophecy – and thus as a cipher for inspiration. Chapter 3 discusses Christ as facilitator, exploring a parallel between art and Jesus’ ministry as participatory – that is, as phenomena which facilitate engagement from their audiences and are thus community-building. More specifically, the chapter focuses on Blake’s depictions of Christ as facilitator in his biblical watercolours (1800 – 6); here, in his representations of Jesus’ public ministry, Blake presents a relatively inactive, even seemingly impassive, figure. I argue that this is Christ as an enabler, who allows other figures to act. I discuss Blake’s depictions of figures from Jesus’ ministry in the biblical watercolours whom, I argue, are exemplary audience members, who participate in the community that Jesus seeks to engender in his ministry. I also refer to others that Blake represents as responding inadequately or even adversely to Jesus’ ministry. In the terminology of the so-called Laocoo¨n plate, Blake conceives of Jesus as Imagination itself, and of individuals as members of that Divine Body when they themselves embody Imagination. The figures from Jesus’ ministry discussed here are thus members of the Divine Body of Imagination – ideal artistChristians.

24

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Chapter 4 examines the notion of Christ as an eternal, universal figure. In his description of his painting of the Last Judgement (1810), Blake wrote that his representations of Moses and Abraham in that picture are not meant to signify those persons, but rather ‘the States Signified by those Names’; in other words, they are (like the figures seen in Chapter 3), paradigmatic figures, universal types. This chapter explores how Blake depicted Christ as the ultimate emblematic figure – the perfect, eternal embodiment of the state that Blake called the Human Form Divine. Such a vision of Christ is particularly prominent in subjects from beyond the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; I examine four such themes from projects from the penultimate decade of Blake’s life, namely: Christ in cosmic history in the Paradise Lost watercolours (1807, 1808; 1822); as judge in depictions of the Last Judgement (1805, 1806, 1808, c.1809); as a timeless icon-like figure in Christ Blessing (c.1810) and its companion pictures; and as a typological presence in An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man (c.1811). In these subjects, like a figure in an emblem book, or one of Blake’s own mythological figures, Christ becomes a symbolic figure – a universal, eternal type for the individual artist-Christian. Chapter 5 examines the correspondence between Blake’s iconoclastic methods in his art and his notion of Christ’s death as an act of self-annihilation. The latter emerges in Blake’s later thought, with his notion of the need for the individual to annihilate his/her selfhood first appearing in his later revisions to his manuscript poem Vala/ The Four Zoas (c.1797 – c.1807), and in the illuminated books Milton (1804 – c.1811) and Jerusalem (1804 – c.1820). By envisioning the Crucifixion as an act of self-annihilation, Blake overcomes the difficulty he had with the doctrine of the Crucifixion as Atonement. Rather than a sacrifice paid to the Father, the Crucifixion becomes the supreme emblem of surrender of the selfish selfhood, an act of selficonoclasm, analogous to the nature of Blake’s own artistic methods. Such a vision of the Crucifixion is most powerfully expressed in pictorial terms in Jerusalem 76, Copy E (1804 – c.1820/c.1820); this chapter discusses that image alongside Michael Foretells the Crucifixion from the Paradise Lost series (1807, 1808, 1822; B529.11, 536.11, 537.3), and highlights parallels in other late works, including the

Introduction

25

Crucifixion in the illustrations to Bunyan (1824 – 7, B829.14) and Dante (1824 – 7, B812.90), and related themes in the engraved Illustrations to the Book of Job (1825/6). I also propose that this subject had a particular appeal for Blake towards the end of his life. I conclude with some brief reflections on the so-called Laocoo¨n plate in the context of Blake’s theology of art, and point to some of the ways in which the ideas presented here might speak to and be developed in wider scholarly and visual contexts today.

Hear the voice of the Bard! Who Present, Past, & Future sees Whose ears have heard, The Holy Word, That walk’d among the ancient trees. Calling the lapsed Soul And weeping in the evening dew: That might controll, The starry pole; And fallen fallen light renew! ‘Introduction’, Songs of Experience (1794, E18)

These are the destroyers of Jerusalem, these are the murderers Of Jesus, who deny the Faith & mock at Eternal Life: Who pretend to Poetry that they may destroy Imagination; By imitation of Natures Images drawn from Remembrance These are the Sexual Garments, the Abomination of Desolation Hiding the Human lineaments as with an Ark & Curtains Which Jesus rent: & now shall wholly purge away with Fire Till Generation is swallowd up in Regeneration. Milton, A Poem (1804–c.1811, E142–3)

To REGE ’NERATE. v.a. [regenero, Lat.] 1. To reproduce; to produce anew. 2. To make to be born anew; to renew by change of carnal nature to a chriſtian life. R REGENERA ’TION . n. . [regeneration, Fr.] New birth; birth by grace from the carnal affections to a chriſtian life. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1799)

CHAPTER 1

Regeneration Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts (1795 – 7)

Themes of renewal, rebirth and regeneration are present in Blake’s writings throughout his career. These processes happen to figures in Blake’s works, and his works seek to engender such changes in his reader/viewer. In the opening poem of Songs of Experience, the Bard, the personification of the poet – or more broadly, of creativity – calls the ‘lapsed Soul’ to renewal. Throughout Experience, the theme of the need to ‘fallen fallen light renew’ is reiterated through the various personages and metaphors that appear in these poems. In a passage in A Vision of the Last Judgment which I quoted in the Introduction, Blake gives a more explicit account of the regenerative aesthetic which his works seek to enact: he states that if the viewer enters into the images described in this text, he will ‘arise from his Grave [. . .] meet the Lord in the Air & then he would be happy’ (E560). In other words, the painting that he is describing is presented as a space in which the viewer can participate, and in which a rebirth or resurrection can take place. The term ‘regeneration’ itself (and its cognates) is most important in the three, interrelated, long prophetic works Vala/The Four Zoas (c.1797 – c.1807), Milton: A Poem (1804 – c.1811) and Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804–c.1820); all three poems are extended accounts of their respective protagonists’ journeys of spiritual renewal. For example, Milton, from which I quote above, is a Blakean rescue mission of the eponymous poet, whom Blake much admired,

28

The Visionary Art of William Blake

but whom Blake also believed fell short of true Divine Vision. Towards the end of the poem, Milton makes a speech expounding the principles of his transformed perception (from which I quote above). Here, he likens the ‘destroyers’ of Imagination (i.e. those who obstruct what Blake believes to be true art) to the curtain that veiled the Ark of the Covenant (the site of God’s presence) in the Temple in Jerusalem; this concealment is, Milton continues, purged by Jesus, swallowed up in a process of Regeneration. The allusion here is to the Gospel accounts of the veil in the Temple being torn in two at the time of Jesus’ death (Matthew 27:51, Mark 15:38, Luke 23:45); Blake (in the voice of Milton) is invoking this event to contrast the concealment of the destroyers of Imagination to the revelation of Imagination through regeneration in Jesus. These are just three of many examples of the central role that regeneration and renewal play in Blake’s works – both as a narrative theme, and as a process into which the reader/viewer is summoned. The prevalence of themes of regeneration and renewal in Blake’s works should be seen in relation to a more widespread interest in theories of vitalism in the Romantic period.1 The religious notion of regeneration as conversion is also clearly at work.2 That Blake saw religious and artistic regeneration and renewal as one and the same is particularly evident in the passages cited above from A Vision of the Last Judgment and Milton. In the former, what is ostensibly a description of a specific painting, Blake is simultaneously giving an account of the apocalypse and expounding his theory of art. The latter is an allegorical narrative in which the protagonist’s experience is presented as a model for the reader-viewer, and here he voices the regeneration that he has himself experienced in relation to an episode wrought by Jesus. Blake’s idea of regeneration is essentially synonymous with his theory of apocalypse. Literally meaning ‘to uncover’, the term ‘apocalypse’ comes from the Greek name for the Book of Revelation, ἀpokάlyci6 (apocalypsis). This, the final book of the Bible, recounts John’s vision of the end of the world, the second coming of Christ, the Last Judgement, and the advent of the New Jerusalem. Thus, ‘the Apocalypse’ usually refers to the end of the world as a future, cataclysmic event that will bring about a new order of celestial harmony. In literature and art the apocalyptic is usually characterised

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

29

by violent and fantastical imagery, reflecting the visionary origin of the Book of Revelation and of the accounts of later harbingers of the Apocalypse; some writers and artists of such material, like Blake, consider themselves to be prophets. Blake’s ‘apocalyptic’ is not primarily defined by subject-matter (scenes from Revelation, for example – although he does depict such scenes, as seen in this chapter and in Chapter 4) but by the dynamic operating between the work and the reader/viewer; his ‘apocalyptic’ works are those which seek to engender the transformation of the reader/viewer and/or of the texts that Blake depicts. Arguably, this definition could describe the aims of all of Blake’s works; certainly, we will encounter numerous images throughout this book that are ‘apocalyptic’ in Blake’s terms. The apocalyptic impulse that pervades Blake’s works should be seen in the context of the prevalence of apocalypticism in his time. Apocalyptic themes were widespread across a range of cultural phenomena: from religious and political discourses, to poetry, visual art and music.3 Events such as the Lisbon earthquake (1755) and the American (1775 – 83) and French Revolutions (1789 – 99) were interpreted as heralding the imminent coming of the Apocalypse. Figures such as Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott proclaimed themselves harbingers of the end of the world and gathered followers who supported and promoted their claims.4 Biblical exegetes of all denominations were fascinated by the Book of Revelation and the Old Testament visionary prophecy of Daniel.5 History painters – including Philip James de Loutherbourg (1740 –1812) and Benjamin West (1738 – 1820) at the end of the eighteenth century, and J.M.W. Turner (1775 – 1851), John Martin (1789 – 1854) and Francis Danby (1793 – 1861) in the early nineteenth century – also turned to these subjects, reflecting the cultural prevalence of apocalyptic themes and expectation, as well as the potential of such visionary subjects for sublime compositions, influenced by Edmund Burke’s On the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), and the enduring appeal of Revelation’s rich imagery for visual artists.6 Regeneration and renewal are central in the life and ministry of Jesus; he heals the sick, he challenges religious and social constructs (including through the creative medium of parables), and in the ultimate act of regeneration, he rises from dead and promises

30

The Visionary Art of William Blake

to return to enact apocalypse. All of these themes can be seen in Blake’s pictorial works throughout his career. As mentioned in the Introduction, among Blake’s earliest commissions as a commercial engraver was a depiction of Christ in an apocalyptic role in the plate The Vision of the Seven Golden Candlesticks for John Herries’ The Royal Universal Family Bible (1780 –5) which depicts Revelation 1:12– 20, and a group of sketches from this time, known as The Good Farmer, experiment with the theme of Christ as harbinger of apocalyptic harvest (c.1780 – 5, B120 verso, 121 –4). The Resurrection appears in All Religions Are One (c.1788/1795), as I discuss below, and several illuminations in Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789/1794) relate to Jesus’ healing ministry. Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection (B325 – 9; also discussed below) was the only New Testament subject in Blake’s group of 12 so-called Large Colour Prints which were apparently designed in 1795 (the dates of their printing is more complex question).7 All of these themes appear in Blake’s Night Thoughts designs (c.1795 – 7) – my main focus in this chapter – and in his biblical designs for Thomas Butts (1799 – 1806; I discuss other subjects in these series in Chapters 2 and 3). In later pictorial works, Gospel subjects became less prominent, but the notion of Christ as a regenerative figure remained important, particularly in the various depictions of the Last Judgement which Blake worked on from 1805 through to his death in 1827, and described in a letter (1808, E552 – 4) and in an extensive entry in his notebook from which I quoted above (c.1810, E554 – 66; I discuss Blake’s depictions and descriptions of the Last Judgement in Chapter 4). My focus here is how Blake employed the theme of regeneration in depictions of Christ’s Resurrection and apocalypse in his Night Thoughts designs; I argue that in these designs, the subjects of the Resurrection and apocalypse are not only important expressions of a notion of Christ as an emblem of regeneration, but are also used by Blake to enact an artistic renewal upon the poem.

BLAKE’S NIGHT THOUGHTS In 1795, the publisher Richard Edwards commissioned Blake to produce designs for Edward Young’s poem Night Thoughts (1742 – 6).

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

31

An example of the so-called ‘Graveyard School’ of poetry, this long poem, composed of nine ‘Nights’ (or books), is a series of reflections on the themes of life, death and immortality, influenced by Young’s own loss of his wife and step-daughter (the ‘Graveyard’ genre emerged in the eighteenth century, and was characterised by such themes). The poem was popular throughout the eighteenth and into the nineteenth centuries, and was published in numerous editions. Many contained a frontispiece to the poem as a whole or for each of the nine Nights, but these tended to repeat a limited range of subjects, especially assemblages of motifs associated with death and mortality, or scenes depicting graveyards or the poet in a domestic setting at night. Edwards’ project was rather more ambitious: he proposed to publish a four-volume folio edition of poem with about 200 plates designed and engraved by Blake. He apparently sought to rival recent high-profile literary illustration projects such as John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (1791 – 1803) and Thomas Macklin’s Poet’s Gallery (1788 – 96). These publisher-led projects commissioned new paintings from leading artists, which were exhibited in London and reproduced for sale as engravings. Edwards’ project took a somewhat humbler form in commissioning a single artist to execute designs in watercolour (generally a much less labour-intensive process than oil painting, and regarded by the art establishment of Blake’s day as of lesser status), but the publication itself was nevertheless planned to be deluxe. Edwards also did not exhibit Blake’s designs to generate interest in the project, as Boydell and Macklin did – in part, no doubt, because the medium and unusual format of Blake’s designs were not as suited to display as oil paintings. Blake probably began working on his watercolour designs in 1795 and worked on them over a period of about two years. Edwards had Young’s own copy of Night Thoughts, which was dismantled, and each page was inserted into an off-centre window in a folio sheet of paper, leaving a wide margin for each of Blake’s designs. There are 537 watercolours – one for each page of the poem, as well as title pages and frontispieces; from these designs, the 200 plates for publication were to be selected and engraved. Blake engraved 43 of the designs for the first of the four intended volumes, which was published in 1797. However, the project was abandoned

32

The Visionary Art of William Blake

before the remaining volumes were realised (Edwards having lost interest in publishing in favour of pursuing a diplomatic career). The watercolours were subsequently bound in two volumes and remained in the Edwards family for several generations (they are now in the British Museum and have been dismantled from their binding). The commission by far surpassed any that Blake had worked on previously, and is the first pictorial project in which he depicted the figure of Christ extensively – 35 times in the series. Christ had not been absent from Blake’s earlier works, but had only been depicted in isolated images and motifs, and figured in poetic works. As noted above, Blake had produced an engraving of John’s vision of Christ and the candlesticks for Herries’ Royal Universal Family Bible (c.1782), and a group of sketches known as The Good Farmer related to Jesus’ parables on themes of harvest (c.1780 – 5). At the end of that decade, Christ appears in vignettes in Blake’s illuminated books All Religions Are One (c.1788/1795), There is No Natural Religion (c.1788/c.1794) and Songs of Innocence (c.1789), but it is his poetic, rather than pictorial presence, which is central to the meaning of these works, as seen in the Introduction. Similarly, in the early 1790s the ‘Lambeth Books’, which then occupied Blake’s attention, did not feature Christ pictorially, although there are moments when Blake’s mythological figures act as types or antitypes of Christ. The prophetic voice and apocalyptic themes of these poems do, however, demonstrate that there was a religious impulse in Blake’s work in the 1790s. In this period, Blake also worked on the ‘Large Colour Prints’ that include Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection (1795), which I discuss below in relation to Blake’s depictions of the Resurrection in Night Thoughts. Unfortunately, there is little supporting biographical information about Blake’s religious beliefs in this period – as there is, for instance, in letters from and after his time in Felpham in the early 1800s that suggest that he experienced an intensification of his Christianity at that time, or the anecdotes from Henry Crabb Robinson which record conversations with Blake about matters of religion in the final years of his life. It is consequently difficult to draw any conclusions from the scattered depictions of

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

33

Christ from Blake’s early career, although their very existence – including the apparently experimental Good Farmer sketches, and the vignettes in Blake’s early illuminated works – evidence an early interest in the figure of Christ, and the inclusion of Christ in the Large Colour Prints is, I will demonstrate, a key precursor to Blake’s more extensive engagement with the figure of Christ in the Night Thoughts designs. Although the Night Thoughts project was an important commission for Blake, Young’s melancholy and moralistic poem was not the ripest of material for a designer; as mentioned above, illustrations in previous editions were limited in both number and range of subjects. Moreover, some of Young’s themes sat ill with Blake’s own views, particularly the poet’s promotion of reason in religious belief, and the paternalistic emphasis in his presentation of the deity; Blake’s opinion of such an idea of the deity is epitomised in The Ancient of Days. Scholarship on the designs has adopted a range of views on the relationship of Blake’s designs to the text – both in terms of the nature of the commentary at work in individual designs, and as to whether there is an overall schema operating in the series as a whole. At issue in the first of these debates is where Blake’s designs sit on the scale from straightforward illustration to designs which advance Blake’s own personal mythology in parallel to, and even at odds with, Young’s text. Whilst there are individual instances of fairly straightforward illustration among the designs, there is scholarly consensus that this is not the prevailing dynamic between text and design in these works. Towards the other end of the interpretive spectrum, Morton Paley, Thomas Helmstadter, and John E. Grant (and his co-editors of the 1980 edition of the watercolours) variously proposed that Blake inverted or undercut Young’s text in the designs.8 Such readings have been criticised by commentators including W.J.T. Mitchell and Detlef ¨ rrbecker in a series of articles in dialogue with Grant following Do the Clarendon edition of the watercolours,9 and later Christopher Heppner who argued that Blake was more faithful to Young’s text than much of the commentary had allowed and that the dynamic at work was ‘[v]ariation and extension [. . .] rather than opposition or inversion’.10

34

The Visionary Art of William Blake

The second question over the reading of Blake’s designs is whether they form a systematic schema in relation to Young’s text. It is in Grant’s reading that such a programme has been envisaged and, again, it is Mitchell and Heppner (among others) who question this perspective. In particular, Grant argues that Blake used the figure of Christ strategically in an overall scheme to refocus the paternalistic emphasis of Young’s poem.11 My own view is that there are a variety of dynamics at work in individual designs: some illustrate, some expand, and some are in creative conflict with the text. However, particularly in those in which Christ appears, it is Blake’s creative conflict with Young’s poem that comes across most strongly. I agree with Grant that Blake uses the figure of Christ to correct Young’s paternalistic emphasis, but I cannot believe, as Grant seems to want us to imagine, that every one of the 537 designs is a thoroughly thought-through expression of Blake’s ideas, still less that there is a detailed schema operating throughout the series (whether in Blake’s use of the figure of Christ or otherwise). I do, however, think that among the designs there are instances of such sustained reflection, particularly at key points in the sequence, such as beginnings and endings of Nights, and individually in many of the designs depicting Christ, because these often respond to moments in the poem where his presence is not directly suggested by the text. In this chapter, I focus on designs in which these two types coincide – depictions of resurrection and apocalypse in the designs which frame the two volumes of the watercolour designs as they were bound for Edwards’ personal collection. I argue that by framing the sequence of designs with these subjects, Blake signposts his endeavour to regenerate Young’s poem through a dynamic of creative conflict that operates in many of the individual designs. His use of these Christological subjects to frame the sequence reflects a new level of visual engagement with the figure of Christ in this series as a whole (as compared to previous pictorial projects). As noted, in many instances, Blake depicts Christ where he is not mentioned by Young – sometimes where Young refers to the Father, or in a role which is different to that described by Young, and elsewhere without any obvious prompt in the text. Some of the images of Christ in Night Thoughts are subsequently echoed in later

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

35

designs (especially the Butts watercolours), and I therefore consider this project to have been formative in the evolution of Blake’s ideas and iconography of Christ. RESURRECTION AND APOCALYPSE IN NIGHT THOUGHTS As noted above, although only the first of the four planned volumes was published, Edwards kept Blake’s 537 watercolour designs in two bound volumes. Blake gave each volume a frontispiece, both of which depict the Resurrection: Volume I has an image of Christ leaping from the tomb (B330.1, Figure 1) which was used as (and probably originally conceived for) the title page for Night IV in the published edition (cf. Figure 2); Volume II begins with an extraordinary image of Christ apparently in the process of resurrection (B330.264, Plate 2) which, according to the editors of the 1980 edition of the watercolours, was produced after the rest of the designs and specifically to balance the second volume with the first, indicated by its being on thicker paper than the rest of the designs and the absence of a verso drawing.12 Volume I ends with another image of Christ rising from the tomb (NT VI.42, B330.263, Plate 3), and following the frontispiece to Volume II, the general title page to the volume depicts the resurrected Christ appearing to Thomas (B330.265, Figure 3). Thus, Volume I begins and ends with images of the Resurrection, and Volume II begins with a double affirmation of the event. Volume II closes with an apocalyptic herald to heed Blake’s attempt to resurrect Young’s text: the antepenultimate design depicts Christ in the role of Revelation 3:20, ‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’ (NT IX.117, B330.535, Figure 4), and the final design depicts Samson destroying the temple (NT IX.119, B330.537, Figure 5). Together, these two designs are the final ‘side’ to the frame around the two volumes of watercolours created by the Resurrection images, and act as a closing warning of the consequences of not heeding Blake’s message of regeneration. Before examining the framing designs, I will explain how the Resurrection had featured in Blake’s work before Night Thoughts, and in the poem itself. I will then discuss the importance of this theme in both the engraved and watercolour volumes by Blake. Finally, I will

36

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 1 Night Thoughts, Frontispiece, ‘The Christian Triumph’ (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. interrogate the significance of the closing apocalyptic designs, including a consideration of apocalyptic themes elsewhere in the Night Thoughts designs. The theologian concerned the Resurrection is interested in questions relating to the nature of Christ’s resurrected body. Such

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

37

FIGURE 2 Night Thoughts, page 64 ‘The Christian Triumph’ (1797). 42.3 £ 32.0 cm. Engraving, finished in watercolour. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester. matters did not interest Blake. Although we do not have additional evidence about Blake’s beliefs about death in this period, in 1826 he would tell Crabb Robinson: ‘I cannot consider death as any thing but a removing from one room to another’ (BR 453), thus indicating that, at least at that later time, he did not think of death as a radical event. As we will see in the following discussions of Blake’s

38

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 3 Night Thoughts, General title page (to Volume II) (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. depictions of the Resurrection in Night Thoughts and elsewhere, Blake does employ pictorial motifs that imply a transformation in Christ’s body between death and resurrection, but these should, I argue, be understood as symbolising mental apocalypse rather than as depicting a physical purgation. Blake’s idea of the

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

39

FIGURE 4 Night Thoughts, Night IX, page 117 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. Resurrection is not of Christ casting off a physical body but as an event which is emblematic of the individual’s realising the state of Imagination, the Human Form Divine; this transformation is primarily mental rather physical. The Resurrection, then, is apocalyptic and, just as Blake states that the spectator will ‘arise from his Grave’ if he could imaginatively ‘Enter into’ A Vision of the

40

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 5 Night Thoughts, Night IX, page 119 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. Last Judgment (E560), so his depictions of the Resurrection seem to invite similar engagement from the viewer. Thus, these designs become not merely representations of, but also signs through which the viewer – and Young’s text – rises from the grave of vegetated perception to a state of imaginative vision.

FIGURE 6 All Religions Are One, ‘Principle 7th’ (c.1788/c.1795). 5.5 £ 3.5 cm. Relief etching. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens.

42

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Before Night Thoughts, Blake had already used the Resurrection as a motif to suggest the regenerative nature of (his) art, by depicting Christ rising from the tomb in a vignette on the final plate of All Religions are One (c.1788, Figure 6), his first illuminated book. This book expresses a notion of the unity of all religions, asserting in a series of ‘Principles’ that all religions are manifestations of ‘the Poetic Genius’. The Poetic Genius is presented as the ‘true Man’ and that from which all men, all things, and all concepts have their being and identity. In other words, it is a concept of the Divine in terminology associated with artistic creation and is similar to that which Blake later identifies with Christ as the Divine Body and the Imagination. The final Principle, below which the Resurrection vignette appears, is: As all men are alike (tho’ infinitely various) So all Religions & as all similars have one source. The true Man is the source he being the Poetic Genius (E2)

This arrangement implies that the Resurrection of Christ is a manifestation of the Poetic Genius, or even that Christ himself is ‘The true Man [. . .] the Poetic Genius’. The second vignette on the plate, below the text, depicts a dove hovering over a body of water – a reference to the spirit of God moving upon the face of the waters in Genesis 1:2. The outstretched arms of the resurrected Christ and the wings of the dove mirror one another, thus suggesting that Christ’s resurrection is a moment of re-creation, of creative regeneration. Here, this theme is embedded in a work in Blake’s own voice to express the regenerative purpose of his work; in the Night Thoughts designs, he would use the same theme to regenerate Young’s text. The Resurrection’s other pre-Night Thoughts appearance in Blake’s pictorial works further evidences the subject’s significance as an emblem of regeneration in Blake’s work in this period. As noted, Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection (1795) is the only New Testament subject among the ‘Large Colour Prints’ designed in 1795 (although impressions of some of the plates were printed later); this group of 12 monotypes depict subjects from biblical and literary sources and ideas of Blake’s own invention. The prints have been subject to much debate, both about their technique and

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

43

whether they form a unified series,13 a set of pairs14 or, more loosely, as Heppner argues, adopting a phrase from Butlin, ‘various aspects’ of Blake’s ‘universal philosophy’.15 I accept the last reading and therefore believe that the meaning of Christ Appearing is not tied to the rest of the group, but that its very inclusion among the 12 subjects demonstrates the subject’s significance for Blake in this period. Christ is at the centre of the design, standing frontally, his arms slightly raised from his sides to display the stigmata in his hands, his torso half bare to show the side wound and stepping forward with his left foot, likewise emphasising the wound there. On either side of him are disciples kneeling prostrate before him, one kissing the ground, others with their hands together in prayer; to Christ’s right, the foremost disciple is kneeling upright, looking at Christ, with his hands in a gesture of prayer. The closed postures of the Apostles (even, to some extent, the joined hands of the upright figure) contrast with Christ’s open gesture; he is inviting them, and the viewer, to behold his resurrected body, but instead, as Bindman puts it, all but the Apostle to Christ’s right ‘prostrate themselves as if [Christ] were an idol’.16 There is some debate over the exact biblical source for this design: it could be doubting Thomas (John 20:24 – 9), or the Apostles ‘terrified and affrighted’ at Christ’s appearance (Luke 24:36 – 40). Butlin favours the latter reading, noting that Rossetti records ‘Doubting Thomas’ as a separate subject (B328), although no version of such an alternative print is extant.17 However, the exact textual source of a design is not necessarily of primary importance to Blake, and it is possible that he is drawing on both narratives in Christ Appearing. There are three extant impressions of Christ Appearing, all of which, according to recent research by Joseph Viscomi, were printed in 1795;18 there are important differences in the figure of Christ and the arrangement of the Apostles in the three versions. The Christ of the first (Washington) copy (B326, Figure 7) gazes upwards, engaging neither with the disciples in the image, nor with the viewer; in the second (Yale) (B325), his gaze is cast downwards, towards the figure kissing the ground next to his left foot; in the final (Tate) pull (B327, Plate 4), his head has changed position so that his gaze is directed

44

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 7 Christ Appearing to His Disciples After the Resurrection (c.1795). 43.2 £ 57.5 cm. Colour print (monotype), hand-coloured with watercolour and tempera. National Gallery of Art, Rosenwald Collection. more firmly down to the same figure; he is increasingly sorrowful in the three versions of the print. As for the Apostles, in the Washington impression they are all cut off from engaging with the figure of Christ – those on his right are behind him and those on his left are blocked by his stepping forwards; in the Yale copy, the adjustment is slight, but Blake has altered the postures of the figures in the middle ground so that their gaze is little less firmly fixed downwards; in the Tate version, the figures in the middle ground have been brought forward, their clasped hands now in front of Christ (this awkward adjustment gives the impression that, as Robertson noted, the upright figure is four-handed),19 likewise, the man to whom Christ turns now has his head slightly closer to Christ’s foot and is no longer partially hidden behind Christ’s robes. Finally, the expression of the upright Apostle moves from apprehension (Washington), to nervous astonishment (Yale), to joy (Tate). The combination of Christ’s

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

45

turning towards the prostrate Apostle on his right, the bringing the Apostles somewhat out of their self-absorbed worship, and the more positive response of the upright Apostle can be read as an attempt by Christ in the picture, and by Blake as the artist, to correct the Apostles’ false model of belief. Clearly, Blake did not intend his audience to read these designs sequentially, but we might here be witnessing Blake’s own reflection on the post-Resurrection narratives. This experimenting with what it is to behold the risen Christ anticipates Blake’s subsequent engagement with the subject in Night Thoughts (and later projects) in which he develops an aesthetic that engages the viewer and seeks to engender a regenerative effect – both upon the viewer and on Young’s text. The Resurrection is not a dominant theme in Young’s Night Thoughts; indeed, the principal theme in which Christ appears in the poem is that of the cross and the Crucifixion. That theme is most prominent in Night IV, called ‘The Christian Triumph’, the cross being the victory to which this title refers. In his designs for that Night, Blake largely avoided depicting Young’s crucifixion imagery, apparently owing to his distaste for the celebration of the Crucifixion as a triumph, and objection to the doctrine of the Crucifixion as Atonement (a matter I discuss in Chapter 5). Curiously, when Young does mention the Resurrection in that Night (NT IV.17), Blake chooses instead to depict the poet’s metaphorical language: He rose! he rose! he burst the Bars of Death. *Lift up your Heads, ye everlasting Gates! And give the King of Glory to come in: (ll. 275–77)

Rather than Christ rising from the dead, Blake depicts a figure pulling up a portcullis (B330.126), looking upwards as he does so. At least one previous Night Thoughts illustrator had chosen to illustrate this reference to the Resurrection: an edition published in 1779 includes a plate designed and engraved by Edward Malpas which depicts Christ jumping from a chest tomb in a manner loosely recalling the Christ of Raphael’s Transfiguration (cf. Figure 27), with the figure of Death as a skeleton recumbent below with his crown falling off, and a bare cross in the background.20 Whilst this seems to have been an unusual subject among illustrations for Night Thoughts, the image is in itself a

46

The Visionary Art of William Blake

rather pedestrian depiction of the Resurrection. Imitations of the Christ of Raphael’s Transfiguration were the dominant model for depictions of the Resurrection in the period, a type that Blake rejects in all his versions of the subject. The year after Edwards’ volume was published, T. Heptinstall issued an edition with plates by Thomas Stothard, which also illustrated this passage; Stothard’s design is a very sentimental depiction of Christ being carried up to heaven by a host of angels, again with a bare cross in the background.21 Blake’s decision not to depict the Resurrection for this passage may reflect a desire to avoid the sort of staid imagery that Malpas and Stothard used, although, as we will see below, he produced innovative depictions of the Resurrection elsewhere. I suspect that, more specifically, Blake chose to depict Young’s metaphor of gates rather than illustrating Christ rising from the dead in order to avoid emphasising Young’s description of Christ as ‘the King of Glory’, since Blake rejected any concept of the deity (or indeed of any authority) which celebrates worldly trappings (as seen in The Ancient of Days). It was the perfect humanity – the Human Form Divine – of Jesus that Blake celebrated, not any glorified concept of Christ fabricated by organised religion. When Blake came to engrave plates for Night IV for the 1797 edition of the first four Nights, he did include an image of the Resurrection as the title page to the Night (Figure 2).22 This design departs from the usual format of the image surrounding a panel of text, having been designed on a clean sheet of paper rather than a sheet holding a page from Young’s copy of the poem (B330.1, Figure 1). It was apparently designed to replace the less striking design which Blake had produced in watercolour surrounding the title page of Night IV from Young’s copy (B330.110); there, Blake had depicted two figures standing on a riverbank in the right-hand margin looking up towards a vision of a celestial city blazing in the sky in the upper margin.23 As noted above, Night IV was called ‘The Christian Triumph’ and focused on the cross as victory – a theme that sat ill with Blake’s dislike of the doctrine of the Atonement. Blake’s designs for this Night find various ways to adapt and circumvent Young’s crucifixion imagery; only once does he directly use imagery of the

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

47

FIGURE 8 Night Thoughts, page 90 ‘Healing Affliction’ (1797). 42.3 £ 32.0 cm. Engraving, finished in watercolour. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

Passion, in an image of Christ bearing the nails of the Crucifixion (NT IV.12, B330.121) and even here, Young’s description of Christ hanging on the cross is transplanted into a fiery apocalyptic world suggestive of the Harrowing of Hell. Elsewhere in his designs for this

48

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Night, Blake’s designs shift the focus further from the Crucifixion, such as NT IV.39 (B330.148; engraved page 90, Figure 8), depicting line 689: ‘That Touch, with charm celestial, heals the Soul Diseas’d;’ Young is referring to being ‘touched’ by the ‘sovereign [. . .] miracle’ of the cross (ll. 678–88), but Blake shows Christ healing a Lazarus-like figure by literally touching him, thus locating Christ’s salvific ministry not on the cross but in his living, regenerative ministry (I discuss Blake’s depictions of Jesus’ public ministry in Chapter 3). Blake’s engraved title page for this Night, depicting Christ rising from the tomb, accompanied only by Young’s sub-title to the Night, locates ‘The Christian Triumph’ not in the Crucifixion, as in Young’s text, nor in a celestial place, as in the original title page design, but in the supreme emblem of regeneration of the Resurrection. Whether or not Blake realised when he produced this new design for Night IV that the remaining volumes of the poem originally planned would not be realised, it seems, as the 1980 editors argue, that Blake conceived this volume as having its own internal coherence, and that he sought to provide the reader-viewer of this volume with a vision of the regeneration of the Resurrection (the theme is reinforced with the inclusion of Blake’s design which is apparently based on the raising of Lazarus towards the end of the volume, on page 90).24 The description of this design in the ‘Explanation of the Engravings’ included in Edwards’ edition, thought to have been written by Blake’s friend and fellow-artist Henry Fuseli (1741–1825) is: ‘The resurrection of our Saviour, typical of the resurrection of all his servants from the grave.’25 These descriptions are important evidence of a contemporary reading Blake’s designs. While brief, some are telling readings of the designs: in this case, the writer tells us that we are to view Christ’s resurrection as a type for an experience that we, the viewer, can share. The athletic, cruciform, pose of Christ in this design is a recurring one in Blake’s images, which seems to represent a state of spiritual vitality and Imagination. The composition, including Christ’s pose, is, as Bentley identified, closely related to Richard Westall’s design for Book III of Paradise Lost for Boydell’s 1794–7 edition of the works of Milton (Figure 9).26 However, whereas Westall’s Christ leans slightly backwards, away from the viewer, and looking heavenwards, from where a blast of light shines upon him, Blake’s Christ appears to be jumping out of the

FIGURE 9 Benjamin Smith, after Richard Westall, ‘Paradise Lost B. 3’ (1795). Engraving. Before page 85 in: The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a Life of the Author, by William Hayley (1794 – 7), Volume 2/3. 44.0 £ 34.0 cm. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

50

The Visionary Art of William Blake

picture, towards the viewer, and the radiance around his head is emanating from him (the object of his gaze, however, is unclear). The openness of Christ’s gesture contrasts dramatically with the constricted bodies of figures that epitomise spiritual contraction in Blake’s images, such as The Ancient of Days (Plate 1), and Urizen on the title page of his eponymous book (Urizen 1). Indeed, Blake elongated Christ’s left leg (contrasting with the more realistic proportions in Westall’s picture) – a stylisation of anatomy that emphasises the dynamism of the figure. The setting of this design is likewise imaginary. The pair of angels kneeling on the ground with a burial cloth stretched between them in the foreground apparently draws on John 20:12 where Mary Magdalene goes to the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning and sees ‘two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain’. However, there is nothing else to suggest that the scene is a first-century burial place. Instead, behind Christ is a blaze of light, and to either side are great clouds, which he is pushing apart with his expanded arms, thereby apparently placing him in the sky. Thus, Blake has depicted an impossible space (at once tomb and sky), which reinforces that this is a miraculous event, and makes the scene transcend a particular historical timeframe such that it becomes a timeless vision of regeneration. By presenting his own interpretation of the ‘Christian Triumph’, rather than illustrating the Crucifixion, as celebrated by Young, Blake invokes the viewer to look beyond the Crucifixion, and thus beyond Young’s text, to a regenerated, Blakean state of creative vitality, personified in this figure of Christ. When Blake presented the full sequence of 537 watercolours to Edwards after the publication project was abandoned, the design that had prefaced Night IV in the engravings was relocated as a frontispiece to the entire series (with the words ‘The Christian Triumph’ removed). Thus, Blake foregrounds the hope of the Resurrection from the moment the reader-viewer opens the first volume of watercolours, before s/he encounters even the title of Young’s melancholic poem. It is in this arrangement that Blake’s visual regeneration of Young’s poem through the figure of Christ reaches its fullest expression; as outlined

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

51

above, this opening frontispiece becomes part of a visual framing of the two volumes of watercolours. The frontispiece is balanced at the end of the first volume with another image of Christ rising from tomb, seen from a quite different perspective (NT VI.42, B330.263, Plate 3). Here, rather than leaping outwards, towards the viewer, the rising Christ is depicted in the lefthand margin, in the mid-ground of the pictorial space, seeming to float upwards from a grave set into the ground. In the foreground, in the lower margin, an aged man kneels next to the tomb, his face halfburied in his hands and hair, and perhaps also a burial garment from the tomb (it is difficult to interpret the mass of white stuff in his hands). Such white-haired, bearded, aged men are a recurrent type in Blake’s images and have a number of associations; here, the figure seems to be a personification of Death and a type of Urizen, Blake’s personification of constricted, rational thought epitomised in The Ancient of Days. The design depicts the final two lines of text of this Night: More powerful Proof shall take the field against Thee, Stronger than Death, and smiling at the Tomb (ll. 819–20)

Thus, there is textual precedent for a depiction of Death, and this is an identity which figures of this type assume a number of times in Blake’s Night Thoughts designs, such as the title page to Night I (B330.6), where the poem’s themes of ‘Life, Death & Immortality’ are personified, and as in NT I.13 (B330.18) where Death is a bellman, tolling the call of mortality. That this figure is also to be associated with Urizenic constrained Reason is evident from the context of Night VI as a whole, in which the poet is attempting to prove immortality to Lorenzo, the infidel antagonist of the poem. Two pages previously, Blake had depicted a passage in which the poet invited Lorenzo to ascend to the clouds to see the glories of the world and thereby understand them to be the work of immortals (NT VI.40, B330.261). Blake depicted this passage with a scene from the temptations of Christ, subversively casting the poet in the role of Satan, thereby representing the command to reason to belief in God as satanic. Thus, when a Urizen-like figure appears two pages later, absorbed in himself, or at best in material proof

52

The Visionary Art of William Blake

of the Resurrection if he is holding a burial garment, we are surely to read him as a personification of Reason. What Blake shows us here, then, is an inadequate response to the Resurrection: Death-Reason is physically closed in on himself, not seeing the dynamic, gravitydefying, figure rising from the tomb behind him. Thus, the poet’s celebration of Reason in Night VI is represented as a blinkered mode of perception, to which Blake’s rising figure of Christ offers an alternative. Therefore, Blake reminds the reader-viewer that it is the Resurrection/ Imagination and not Death/Reason that is the true state of things, but that he still has further work to do to redeem Young’s text. The next page of letterpress in the sequence for which Blake had to produce a design was the general title page to Volume II (B330.265, Figure 3). In this design, Blake depicts another inadequate response to the Resurrection: that of doubting Thomas, who said that he would only believe that Christ was resurrected if he could touch Christ’s wounds. As noted, this narrative may be or inform the subject of Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection, discussed above; certainly the figure of Christ here seems to be based on that in the earlier design. Thomas’ error was in misplacing his faith in sensory perception. Blake described the five senses as an ‘abyss’ (MHH 6, E35), although he does not reject them altogether; rather, he thinks that the senses need to be ‘formed’ by Imagination – as he wrote in the letter to Trusler that was discussed in the Introduction: ‘As a man is So he Sees. As the Eye is formed such are its Powers’ (23 August 1799, E702). Blake’s handling of the subject is unconventional: usually in depictions of this narrative, Thomas is standing or crouching at Christ’s side, with other disciples present; here, there are no other figures present and Thomas is half sprawled across the ground, reaching up dramatically and imploringly to Christ’s side wound. Although Christ returns Thomas’ gaze and his arms are open – even displaying the wound in his left hand – he is markedly stepping forward with his right foot in a way which prevents Thomas from getting any closer to him. Rather than presenting Christ as blocking Thomas, I contend that Blake is implying that Thomas is approaching Christ in the wrong way. Thomas’ almost supine posture suggests that he is in a state of, spiritual weakness and thus needs to undergo a resurrection himself – a regeneration of vision.

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

53

When Blake added the frontispiece to Volume II (B330.264, Plate 2), he provided a vision of the Resurrection to counteract the two inadequate responses to the event between which it was placed. This is an extraordinary image, which seems to depict Christ in the very moment of transformation, a subject that may be unprecedented and is certainly bold (it is more common to see Christ after the Resurrection or leaping from the tomb, rather then actually in the process of resurrection). It therefore anticipates the similarly innovative depiction of the very moment of Christ’s birth in The Nativity tempera (B401, c.1799 – 1800, Plate 5; discussed in Chapter 2) and the Butts Descent of Peace (B542.1, c.1815, Figure 12), as well as the remarkable Resurrection sequence in the biblical watercolours in which the viewer becomes privileged witness to the very moment of Christ’s awakening (The Angel Rolling Away the Stone from the Sepulchre, c.1805, B501) and emergence from the tomb (The Resurrection, c.1805, B502). In these various designs, both birth and resurrection (or re-birth) are figured as manifestations of light and vision. The frontispiece to Volume II of the Night Thoughts watercolours is a transitional image both in its placement within the object created for Edwards (between the two portions of Young’s text) and in its subject matter – Christ is, to use a phrase from Jerusalem, seen here ‘passing thro’ the Gates of Death’ (27:63, E173). He is emerging from darkness in a dramatic burst of light, dispelling the black clouds that recede at the edges of the picture. Only his torso is visible, and where the rest of his body should be are two figures sprawled on the ground – the soldiers who watched Christ’s tomb and ‘became as dead men’ (Matthew 28:4) when he rose. It is as if Christ is emerging from their bodies, so that they become his ‘Members’ (Laocoo¨n, E273), transformed from their death-like state to life in the Divine Body. As Butlin highlights, this is a development of the vignette at the top of the final plate (10) of All Religions Are One, discussed above. Reading the second Night Thoughts frontispiece alongside the All Religions Are One plate suggests that it is not Young but Christ (and Blake) that is the Poetic Genius. In the Night Thoughts image, Blake has changed the perspective so that the viewer is above, rather than in front of, the tomb, and Christ is propelling himself towards us. This effect is further emphasised by the contrast between the visceral rendering of

54

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Christ’s body, which has a three-dimensional quality, and the flatness of the background, making it appear that he is bursting from the page. It is also notable that Christ is wearing a wedding band on his left hand, drawing on the tradition of Christ as the bridegroom of humankind.27 This is Christ as the embodiment of visionary energy inviting the viewer into his embrace and into union and regeneration with him. The addition of this image at the centre of the sequence of designs transforms Blake’s Night Thoughts. Sitting between two images depicting inadequate responses to the Resurrection, this Blakean vision of the event liberates the reader-viewer from these false conceptions. Christ’s embrace and the luminescence emanating from him engulf the viewer and Young’s text in his transformative energy. This is resurrection as apocalypse, enacted both upon the viewer of this image and on Young’s text. Thus, this image also anticipates the antepenultimate design in the Night Thoughts sequence (NT IX.117, B330.535, Figure 4), which forms part of the closing frame to the series and depicts Christ as in an apocalyptic role. This latter design picks up on the poet bidding Night farewell and rejoicing in the dawn of ‘Eternal Day’ (l. 2412) as the poem draws to a close; Blake depicts Christ as the Eternal Day, with a sunburst as his halo, in the role of Revelation 3:20: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock.’ This design should be read both with the Resurrection images as part of Blake’s regenerative framing of the Night Thoughts designs, and alongside the apocalyptic themes of other designs for preceding Nights. Thus, before explaining how this image forms part of Blake’s closing regenerative framing of the Night Thoughts sequence, I will briefly survey some of the earlier appearances of apocalyptic imagery. Whilst the poem’s central themes of ‘Life, Death, and Immortality’ are concerned with the ultimate fate of the individual, it is not rich in the sort of vivid apocalyptic imagery that Blake depicts; thus, such images are only sometimes directly prompted by the text. A prominent example of an apocalyptic insertion on Blake’s part is his design for the frontispiece to Night VIII depicting the Whore of Babylon (B330.345) – an appropriate, but by no means requisite, interpretation of the subtitle, ‘The Ambition and Pleasure, with the Wit and Wisdom of the World’. Blake’s ‘eschatologising’ of the text in his

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

55

designs is a continuation of the apocalyptic themes in his illuminated prophecies of the 1790s, and reflects the broader cultural prevalence of such themes in this period. What is distinctive about Blake’s apocalyptic Night Thoughts designs is that they include images of both destruction and of renewal; the juxtaposing of imagery of cataclysm and regeneration is relatively unusual in this period, with the former dominating contemporaneous apocalyptic discourse and art. Apocalyptic images appear throughout the Night Thoughts series, but the theme is developed most extensively in the designs for the final three Nights (those contained in Volume II of the watercolours), and especially Night VII; I will highlight four examples from this Night to give a flavour of Blake’s apocalyptic imagery in Night Thoughts. Night VII is ‘The Second Part of the Infidel Reclaimed’, continuing the themes of VI, which sought to educate the infidel Lorenzo in immortality. At the beginning of Night VII, Blake indicates that the Infidel’s reclamation will be a union engendered through Christ by adorning the first page of the Preface with a depiction of the return of the Prodigal Son (B330.269, Luke 15:20–32) – an appropriate interpretation of the poet’s theme, although not directly suggested in the text; the subject offers the possibility of salvation for those who recognise their error. In the designs that follow, there are numerous warnings of the consequences of failing in this recognition (as the poet warns in the Preface, God punishes the wicked) as well as reminders of the possibility of salvation. In NT VII.45 (B330.317) Blake depicts apocalypse as harvest, relating to the theme of agricultural metaphors in Jesus’ parables of seed flourishing and dying and the separation of wheat and chaff (Matthew 13:1–30, Mark 4:1–29, Luke 8:4–15) with which Blake had previously experimented in The Good Farmer sketches (c.1780 – 5, B120 – 24). NT VII.45 (B330.272) depicts line 914 ‘Did Death’s dark Vale its Human Harvest yield?’28 and falls within a section that presents ‘The gross Absurdities, and Horrors of Annihilation urg’d home on Lorenzo’ (NT VII.viii). Blake’s image of ‘Human Harvest’ is at a turning point in a sequence of designs, between images of annihilation and images of ascension, union and (re-)birth, the implication being that the harvest (which, read in terms of Jesus’ parables, is the work of Christ) engenders the positive scenes that follow.

56

The Visionary Art of William Blake

In NT VII.52 (B330.324) Christ himself is depicted in apocalyptic mode in the Harrowing of Hell; he is gliding above Lucifer in a pit of flames, bearing the key to release the good souls. This subject comes directly from Young’s text, which refers to Christ descending into Hell to raise the dead (ll. 1039 – 43) and Lucifer ‘For one short Moment’ adoring his ‘Guest’. Christ is looking at the key in his left hand; his right hand is stretched down towards the flames in a gesture of presentation, indicating a choice between the key of life and the flames of Hell. Satan’s hands are raised and his mouth is open, indicating astonishment (l. 1042); Blake could be implying that even Lucifer is offered the possibility of resurrection. The following design (NT VII.53, B330.325) depicts Christ in a different role, as archer, representing line 1072: ‘Th’ Almighty’s outstretcht Arms took down his Bow.’ Once again, Blake is Christologising Young’s text by depicting ‘Th’ Almighty’ as Christ. This is the first of several iterations of the motif of Christ as bowman in Blake’s works and anticipates the imagery of the famous preface to Milton in which Blake articulates a desire to restore England as the New Jerusalem, where Christ, ‘the Countenance Divine’, is embodied; as archer, he is also the one who wields the ‘Bow of burning gold’, representing Blake’s – or Blakeas-Christ’s – ‘Mental Fight’ with Young’s poem (Milton 1:13, E95). When Blake came to depict Revelation 3:20 for NT IX.115, he must surely have thought back to these apocalyptic images from the Night earlier in this volume of designs. Although apocalyptic subjects were widespread in visual culture in the Romantic period, I have not found other representations of this subject – perhaps because it has less visual drama than scenes featuring cataclysm and monstrous beasts. Here, in this antepenultimate design, Blake depicts a moment of apocalyptic anticipation. Three figures are sat at table, poised, staring intently towards the doorway that, together with the text panel, separates them from Christ, who stands on the opposite side holding the door knocker. It is unclear whether he has already knocked or whether the figures on the right are awaiting the moment of his coming. For the designs surrounding pages of text, Blake indicated the lines he depicted with an asterisk; here, lines 2418 – 9 are starred: ‘True Taste of Life, and constant Thought of Death: j The Thought of Death, sole Victor of its Dread!’ Thus, this Christ is both

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

57

‘Eternal Day’ (l. 2412) and ‘True Taste of Life’. Situated at the end of the sequence, the design acts an emblem of the apocalyptic, creative conflict which Blake’s designs engender on Young’s poem, so that the figure of Christ is also a representation of Blake’s own regenerative ‘knocking on the door’ of Young’s poem; indeed, Christ is literally knocking on the panel of text which the image surrounds. The end of Night IX has the most dense section of images of Christ in the Night Thoughts series as a whole – 11 of the final 26 designs. This number is almost a third of the 35 depictions of Christ throughout the nine Nights. As already noted, I do not believe that Blake began the sequence of 537 designs with a detailed scheme for Christ’s appearances in mind (nor indeed those of any other specific figure or motif), but I do think that the density of Christological subjects in this final section is significant. The poem itself closes in a more optimistic tone than much of what goes before, but that in itself does not account for Blake’s choice of the figure of Christ, rather than any other positive emblem(s), as such a dominant presence here. Assuming that Blake worked on the designs more or less in sequential order, the fact that Christ appears so frequently in the closing designs may reflect a Christological turn in Blake’s own thought in the latter stages of working on the project, and thus a last-minute urgency to emphasise the figure of Christ as the (pictorial) narrative reaches its conclusion. However, whether such a change in his beliefs could have been influenced by his work on the Night Thoughts project, and/or other factors is difficult to assess given the lack of biographical evidence about Blake’s beliefs in this period. Whilst Christ’s appearances in the Night Thoughts designs do not alone constitute clear evidence of his beliefs in this earlier period, they do point to Christ having a notable (and perhaps an increasingly important) place in Blake’s thought whilst he was working on Night Thoughts – before what has sometimes been identified as a Christian turn in his work post-1800. The prevailing theme in the ten depictions of Christ preceding his appearance as ‘Eternal Day’ is the individual’s union with him. To give three examples: in NT IX.93 (B330.511), Christ is the True Vine, a figure who unites others in himself – in Blakean terms, in his Divine Body – as branches to a vine; in NT IX.114 (B330.532), Blake depicts the death of the poet, with Christ hovering above, suggesting that

58

The Visionary Art of William Blake

through Blake’s re-creation of Night Thoughts, Young, despite his errors, has become a member of Christ’s Divine Body;29 and NT IX.116 (B330.534) depicts the wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11) for line 2397: ‘Takes His Delights among the Sons of Men’, representing Christ as engendering conviviality among the wedding party. Following such designs, as well as pointing back to earlier apocalyptic subjects already discussed, the depiction of Christ as ‘Eternal Day’ knocking on the door in NT IX.117 at once reinforces the promise of his enduring and unifying inspiration, and is a reminder to heed Blake’s pictorial critical commentary in order to be included in that fellowship. A depiction of Revelation 3:20 might have been a fitting final design for the Night Thoughts series, but Blake still had two further pages to fill, in which he depicts the consequences of not responding to Christ the ‘Eternal Day’. NT IX.118 (B330.536) depicts the descent of Darkness ‘ailing Intellectual Light, j And Sacred Silence whispering Truths Divine’ (ll. 2444–5) as a cloaked figure about to engulf the personifications of Intellectual Light and Sacred Silence. More important is the final design, NT IX.119 (B330.537), which depicts Samson destroying the prison house (Judges 16:25–30) for lines 2464–5: ‘When Time, like Him of Gaza in his Wrath, Plucking the Pillars that support the World.’ Blake had previously written about Samson in Poetical Sketches (published 1783), where, as Andrew Lincoln notes, Samson ‘can be seen as a type of the artist who struggles against the materialism of his own age’.30 The early poem associates Samson with ‘Truth, that shinest with propitious beams, turning our earthly night to heavenly day’ (E443); given the proximity to the image of Samson in Night Thoughts to that of Christ as the dawn of ‘Eternal Day’ it is probable that Blake had this idea of Samson as a prophetic figure in mind. ‘Samson’ means ‘man of the sun’ in Hebrew, although whether Blake would have known this fact is not clear; the first record of Blake learning Hebrew is in 1803 (To James Blake, 30 January, E727), but he could well have picked up such a gobbet elsewhere.31 The Samson of Blake’s watercolour is not blind, as in the biblical account, but openeyed – an innovation which recalls the aphorism from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite’ (MHH 14, E39). Samson’s iconoclastic act can be read as a final act of purging the vision of Night

Resurrection and Apocalypse in Night Thoughts

59

Thoughts. We see the moment before the pillars are fully dislodged and falling down; Samson could bring the pillars down upon the panel of text, but it might still be saved from complete destruction. Blake must have known the long tradition of reading Samson as a type of Christ, and this final image in Night Thoughts can be read as a depiction of the destruction that will result from not heeding the ‘knock’ of Christ the Eternal Day, and that of his agent, Blake, enacting a regenerative apocalypse on Night Thoughts. CONCLUSION In this, his first major series of designs for a literary text, Blake initiates a method of ‘corrective’ interpretation which continues to operate in many of his designs to other authors, most extensively in his numerous designs for the works of Milton (I discuss examples in Chapters 4 and 5; the same impulse is at work in Blake’s illuminated poem Milton, as discussed at the start of this chapter). Indeed, Blake’s whole artistic project can be seen as an apocalyptic mission in the terms he defines in A Vision of the Last Judgment (1810): ‘whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual’ (E562). The two acts are equally important; in his Night Thoughts designs, Blake does not simply critique Young’s text but rather regenerates it. This creative conflict is most prominently at work in the framing designs that I have discussed in this chapter, where the supreme acts of regeneration in the life of Christ – his rising from the dead and his return in apocalypse – mark out Blake’s renewal of Young’s text at the beginning and end of each of the two volumes of watercolours. Here, Christ becomes artist as renewer, giving new life to this poem in the visions presented by Blake. This process of renewal is, I have argued, also offered to Blake’s viewer, most powerfully in the frontispiece to Volume II, where Christ seems to burst from the page to embrace and illuminate the viewer. In the next chapter, I explore a different nuance of illumination – that of inspiration and prophecy, particularly as depicted in the biblical temperas representing the birth and infancy of Christ.

Burke’s Treatise on the Sublime & Beautiful is founded on the Opinions of Newton & Locke on this Treatise Reynolds has grounded many of his assertions [. . .] They mock Inspiration & Vision Inspiration & Vision was then & now is & I hope will always Remain my Element my Eternal Dwelling place. how can I then hear it Contemnd without returning Scorn for Scorn— Annotations to Reynolds (c.1798– 1809, E660–1)

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. Advertisement of the Exhibition (1809, E528)

The Bard replied. I am Inspired! I know it is Truth! for I Sing According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius Who is the eternal all-protecting Divine Humanity To whom be Glory & Power & Dominion Evermore Amen Milton, A Poem 13:52–14:3 (c.1804–11, E107–8)

INSPIRATION, that secret influence of the Holy Ghost which enables men to love and serve God. John Wesley, The Complete English Dictionary (1790)1

CHAPTER 2

Inspiration Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas (1799—1800)

‘Inspiration’ can carry a range of meanings. Today, for example, people frequently talk quite informally about being ‘inspired’ by the examples of figures in the public eye or their own social circles. In Blake’s time, it had various meanings, including, as seen in the definition from Wesley, divine inspiration. The latter was a matter debated by biblical scholars in the period in relation to the status of scripture. For Blake, the concept was quite specific, synonymous with prophetic insight and Blakean Imagination. Hence, the Bard in Milton is ‘inspired’ by the Poetic Genius or Divine Humanity. At the start of that poem, Blake suffixed his famous preface (‘And did those feet [. . .]’ (E95– 6)) with a verse from the Book of Numbers: ‘Would to God that all the Lords people were Prophets’ (E96). Thus, Blake identifies prophetic inspiration and the ‘mental fight’ that it engenders, as for all. Prophecy is not seeing the future, but rather, as Christopher Rowland puts it, engaging ‘in mental struggle to discern the inadequacies of the present and conceive the way to a more hopeful future’.2 Prophetic inspiration then, is the insight which that mental effort engenders, and it in turn provokes social criticism, striving for the bettering of that which is amiss. The images that I discuss in this chapter are primarily related to the first aspect of prophetic inspiration – the insight itself – rather than the action that it engenders. This latter aspect of prophecy is more prominent in

62

The Visionary Art of William Blake

designs discussed in Chapter 3, and in Blake’s notion that an individual must strive to reject error and embrace truth, mentioned in my concluding remarks of Chapter 1. Here, I am concerned with how Blake depicts prophetic illumination as a state to be celebrated and emulated.3 For Blake, true art is both product and generator of inspiration because it participates in the reality of Divine Humanity or Imagination. He therefore rejected contemporary models of art and poetry that emphasised academic excellence and naturalistic observation as the foundation of excellence – hence his condemnatory remarks in annotating Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses, and he later made similar comments about observation versus inspiration in his 1826 annotations to Wordsworth’s Poems (E665 – 6).4 In the advertisement for his one-man exhibition in 1809, Blake declares that, among other aims, his exhibition will be a showcase for art that is engendered by inspiration; he even describes inspiration as a foundational principle for the flourishing of society – the implication being that because inspiration comes from being in accord with Divine Humanity, its existence in society is part and parcel of a flourishing community of brotherhood (Chapter 3 discusses the corporate nature of Blake’s concept of Divine Humanity in detail). Blake’s Christ, then, embodies inspiration because it is a characteristic of Divine Humanity. More particularly, this quality is epitomised in his role as a prophetic figure, who both manifests and engenders illumination. This notion can be seen as early as Blake’s first illuminated book, All Religions Are One (c.1788), where, as seen in the Introduction, the Poetic Genius is described as the source of all religions (although the term ‘inspiration’ is not used), through to the mid-career passages quoted above, and it remains central in late works such as Jerusalem (although other terms such as ‘prophecy’ and ‘vision’ are more prevalent than ‘inspiration’ in Blake’s later writings). This chapter examines the particular association of Christ and inspiration in Blake’s depictions of the birth of Christ in his tempera paintings of biblical subjects (1799 – 1800); four extant and one lost design in this series relate to the Nativity of Christ. In this sequence, Christ is depicted as the embodiment of light, the

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

63

incarnation of illumination and prophecy, and thus as a cipher for inspiration.

THE BUTTS BIBLICAL TEMPERAS I am Painting small Pictures from the Bible [. . .] My Work pleases my employer & [. . .] is Something better than mere copying after another artist. But above all I feel myself happy & contented. To Cumberland (26 August 1799, E704)

In 1799, Blake received a commission from Thomas Butts, a civil servant, to produce 50 small tempera pictures of biblical subjects. Blake worked on the series in that year and the following, probably finishing before he moved from London to Felpham, Sussex, in September 1800 (although he added at least one further work to the series, in 1803 (B405)). This was the first of numerous important commissions from Butts; the patron subsequently requested a second series of biblical designs from Blake, in watercolour (discussed in Chapter 3), as well as several sets of designs for works by Milton, and a number of other works, including miniatures of members of the Butts family (1801(?), 1809, B376 – 8), and smaller groups of works of religious subject-matter (some of which are discussed in Chapter 4). It is not known how, or where, Butts displayed his large Blake collection. Joseph Viscomi proposed that some might have been displayed in the girls’ school run by Mrs Butts, which is an attractive theory in light of Blake’s celebration of the figure of the child (a topic I discuss in Chapter 3) and his comments about children often being the most perceptive viewers of his work (To Trusler, 23 August 1799, E703), but it remains speculative. Viscomi also argued that the duplication of some subjects in the tempera and watercolour series could be accounted for if the Buttses had two residences, as it appears they may have done between 1793 and 1808. The fact that some subjects appear in both series might have been to do with different uses of the two sets (the temperas would, presumably, have been displayed on walls or as cabinet pictures, and there are various possibilities for the original use of the watercolours, as discussed in Chapter 3), although there are also examples of duplication (or near duplication) within each series (B410 – 2, 494 – 7).5

64

The Visionary Art of William Blake

The biblical designs can be read at two levels: on the one hand, they are attentive ‘illustrations’ of the biblical text, but they are simultaneously distinctively Blakean re-imaginings of the narratives, which become vehicles for Blake’s own religious vision. The extent of Butts’ influence over the series is an open question; it seems that he specified some of the subjects to be included, but he apparently gave Blake a fairly free hand in executing them, because Blake wrote to him: ‘I am inflexible & will relinquish Any engagement of Designing at all unless altogether left to my own Judgment. As you My dear Friend have always left me for which I shall never cease to honour & respect you’ (To Butts, 6 July 1803, E731). Butts himself was from a Methodist background and it is generally assumed that he held fairly conventional Christian beliefs; Blake himself addressed Butts as ‘Friend of Religion & Order’ in a letter of 2 October 1800 (E711).6 Whether Butts read the works simply as biblical ‘illustrations’ or if he understood the Blakean symbolism that they contain is unclear. Butts was friend as well as patron, as evidenced in the pair’s warm correspondence (particularly during Blake’s years in Felpham); it therefore seems unlikely that he was entirely oblivious to the Blakean meanings of the designs. Of the 50 biblical temperas, 30 are extant, and other subjects are known from records such as William Michael Rossetti’s census in Gilchrist’s Life of Blake (1863, revised 1880; B379 –432). Some of these works have been discussed in some detail (especially The Nativity), but there has not been a detailed reading of the series as a whole. There are good reasons for this lacuna. On the one hand, given that Blake worked on these paintings over a period of less than two years and they were presumably intended to be hung together, there is a case for reading them as a series. At the same time, several factors caution against too programmatic a reading. First, as David Bindman highlighted, the series is marked by eclecticism in style and subjectmatter; Blake seems to have used the commission as an opportunity to experiment in this respect, exploring influences from the varieties of art that he encountered in London at this time.7 Second, there is a question over whether Blake ‘finished’ the series: as Mary Lynn Johnson emphasised in arguing that the project was abandoned before completion, there are few Old Testament subjects

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

65

(although a bias to the New Testament is also notable in the biblical watercolours), and nothing from Revelation – a significant omission in light of Blake’s interest in the apocalyptic.8 The Resurrection is another significant absence, especially in light of the importance of that subject in the Night Thoughts designs. A third issue with interpreting the series as a whole is the loss of some works, and the absence of a record of the original hanging scheme. Thus, a complete understanding of the series is impossible on secondary grounds, and may not have been intended by Blake in the original scheme. Nevertheless, there are themes and emphases in the series as we know it; my reading of the Nativity sequence explores such an aspect of the series, and is made in light of the considerations just cited. As seen in the extract from the letter to Cumberland above, when Blake received the commission for the temperas, he expressed a sense of optimism. Following the failure of the Night Thoughts project, here was an opportunity for him to depict subjects that would develop his expression of his religious-artistic vision in pictorial terms. Indeed, Raymond Lister suggested in his discussion of The Nativity (B401, Plate 5), that Blake may well have conceived of this project as his own nativity as a painter.9 This idea makes Blake’s Nativity tempera analogous to Milton’s Nativity Ode, which the poet identified with his coming of age as a poet (Blake would later illustrate this work in two sets of six watercolours in 1809, B538 and c.1815, B542).10 Given that this was Blake’s first important commission in painting (as distinct from watercolours), albeit painting on a small scale, and one that involved engaging with a text with rather richer visual potential and existing visual legacy than Night Thoughts, Lister’s theory is compelling. As with the preceding years, when Blake was working on the Night Thoughts designs, there is scant evidence about Blake’s beliefs in the period when he made the biblical temperas beyond his works themselves. There are, however, some telling passages in his letters in 1799 and 1800 that point to the strength of Blake’s spirituality at this time. As seen in the Introduction, on 23 August 1799, Blake wrote a letter to the dissatisfied patron, Trusler, in which he outlines his theory of art as the product of Imagination and Vision, and lambasts his patron’s failure of vision; Blake is writing as one who is spiritually

66

The Visionary Art of William Blake

confident and secure (E702 – 3). The optimism related to the Butts temperas in the letter to Cumberland quoted above reinforces this impression, and this tone continues in letters in 1800 (E704 – 9), even before the move to Felpham, where, as previously noted, Blake apparently experienced some kind of religious renewal. Both the textual evidence, and the visionary energy of the biblical temperas examined here, continue the impression given by the Night Thoughts designs discussed in Chapter 1 that Blake’s spiritual fervour was already strong in the closing years of the eighteenth century. The biblical designs are certainly significant for the development of Blake’s vision of Christ as the archetypal artist because they depict moments from across the narrative of Jesus’ life, and apparently with relatively few restrictions from the patron. As noted above, four extant and at least one lost tempera depict subjects from the Nativity narratives, which is a disproportionate number of the total of 50 subjects from the Bible as a whole relative to the period of time in Jesus’ life, although this bias does reflect the larger proportion that Blake devoted to the New Testament, and the prevalence of Nativity subjects in Western art. The pictures in Blake’s Nativity group have a strong sense of series – an unfolding narrative that reflects Christ’s identity as the source of illumination and prophecy; his advent is part of an on-going process of revelation. This sense of sequence, which will be seen in the discussion of the paintings below, and the proportional prominence given to the Nativity, would have been more evident when the paintings were hung together. Since for Blake, Christ is the source of artistic activity, if he conceived of this commission as a coming of age as an artist, then it is a kind of birth as Christ – Blake’s own realisation of the Human Form Divine.

THE NATIVITY NARRATIVES IN BLAKE’S OEUVRE Before discussing the Nativity temperas in detail, it is helpful to have some context about how Blake engaged with this subject throughout his career, and about the types of depictions of these subjects circulating in the period. Blake produced at least 26 designs of subjects related to the birth and infancy of Christ throughout the

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

67

course of his career, from a sketch of the Madonna and Child in the 1780s (B83), to his two sets of six watercolours to Milton’s Nativity Ode (1809, B538; c.1815, B542), to the icon-like ‘The Black Madonna’ from late in Blake’s oeuvre (1825?, B674).11 I note connections and comparisons with a number of Blake’s other Nativity designs in my discussion of his Nativity temperas below. Blake also re-imagined the Nativity narrative in two of his illuminated books. His early prophecy Europe (1794) is a commentary on the contemporaneous situation in Europe, recast as a universal narrative that parodies Milton’s Nativity Ode. It begins with ‘the secret child’ descending into the world (3:2, E61), a figure who represents both Christ and Orc (Blake’s mythological figure who embodies revolutionary energy), inaugurating the possibility of the world being restored to life. However, for 1,800 years (i.e. the period between the birth of Christ and when Blake was writing), the true meaning of this ‘secret child’ had been perverted. Europe is a clarion call to overturn this degenerate state, and the prophecy ends with Los rallying his sons in this endeavour (15, E66).12 The Ancient of Days (Plate 1) is the frontispiece to Europe and functions as an anti-icon to the ‘secret child’ Christ – the terrifying embodiment of the consequences of a worldview governed by Reason rather than Christ-like Imagination. Blake’s other re-imagining of the Nativity narrative is in his late epic Jerusalem (61, E211–12; 1804–c.1820); here, Blake creates an account of the exchange between Mary and Joseph at the news of her pregnancy. Joseph is initially angry, calling her an adulteress (61:6, E211), but is moved to forgiveness, and hence he becomes a paragon of Blake’s ‘Divine Image’ of ‘Mercy Pity Peace and Love’ (E12; the nature of Jesus’ conception is left ambiguous in the Jerusalem passage, but elsewhere Blake ridiculed the doctrine of the virgin birth – ‘On the Virginity of the Virgin Mary & Joanna Southcott’, E501).13 The advent of Christ is, then, a prevalent theme in Blake’s pictorial works. As noted above, the Nativity is a widespread theme in Western art, and Blake would have known examples in prints, sales of Old Masters and works by his contemporaries. For example, in exhibitions in London, there were numerous examples at the Orleans (1793, 1798–9) and Truchsessian (1803–4) galleries of European paintings, and Thomas Macklin’s gallery included Joshua Reynolds’ Holy Family

68

The Visionary Art of William Blake

(exh. 1790), John Opie’s The Presentation in the Temple (exh. 1791–3, 1795), Richard Westall’s The Adoration of the Shepherds (exh. 1792–3, 1795; William Bromley’s print after Westall is Figure 11), and William Hamilton’s The Annunciation (exh. 1793, 1795)14 – a comparable proportion of the total 41 biblical works exhibited by Macklin to similar subjects in Blake’s tempera series (these exhibitions are discussed in the Introduction). So Blake had plenty of precedents available to him when he came to depict the Nativity sequence in the Butts series, and his designs show an awareness of these visual traditions, but he makes the subjects his own, and includes some unusual pericopes, omitting the traditional Annunciation but including the relatively unusual The Angel Appearing to Zacharias (B400, Plate 6). The prevalence of Nativity subjects in Western art echoes the liturgical importance of Advent and Christmas, and it is also possible that the theme’s prominence in the series for Butts reflects the more orthodox preferences of this patron. However, as already noted, Blake’s handling of the scenes is innovative, which supports a reading of these designs as more Blakean than Buttsian. In this chapter, I argue that Blake represents the birth of Christ as the advent of illumination and prophecy, and as manifesting the oneness of divinity and humanity – the single Human-Divine nature called the Human Form Divine, which Christ perfectly embodied and is the true form of every individual. To inhabit the Human Form Divine is to occupy a state of illumination, to be members of the Divine Body of Christ the Imagination. However, we do not always inhabit this true form and fall into an inadequate, mundane state of vision. The birth of Jesus is the supreme manifestation of the Human Form Divine. Whereas in orthodox theology, the birth of Jesus is the Incarnation (the union of humanity and divinity in Jesus) for Blake, it is the ‘inmortation’ (the mortal manifestation) of the eternally Divine Human, and represents the possibility of the individual embodying this state of true vision. THE INFANCY OF CHRIST IN THE BIBLICAL TEMPERAS The New Testament sequence of the biblical temperas opens with The Angel Gabriel Appearing to Zacharias (B400, Plate 6). As noted

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

69

above, this is an unusual subject: I have not come across any examples by Blake’s contemporaries, but Blake may have seen prints of Old Master versions such as Ghirlandaio’s Tornabuoni fresco.15 The angel is bringing news of the birth of John the Baptist – the prophet of Christ and a figure with whom Blake himself identified. The Baptist appears on the frontispiece to Blake’s first illuminated book, All Religions Are One (c.1788), with his words ‘The Voice of one crying in the Wilderness’ (John 1:23, cf. Isaiah 40:3), which, as Erdman suggests, is probably Blake identifying himself as a Baptistlike prophetic Figure (Figure 10).16 The Baptist is an archetypal man of Imagination; hence, the annunciation of his birth is a prophecy of illumination. Blake’s design eschews the Temple architecture which usually dominates images of this subject, as seen in the Tornabuoni example, and contrasts the priestly trappings of Zacharias and the Temple with the simple white garment of the angel – the herald of the prophet who points to the blast of light coming from above. Zacharias doubts Gabriel’s prophecy and is struck dumb in punishment until the child is born (Luke 1:18 – 20), demonstrating that doubt hinders prophecy. As Bindman highlights, this blast of light outshines the menorah and the fire on the altar, beginning a motif of light representing the advent of illumination in Christ in the tempera series and Blake’s other depictions of the Nativity.17 For example, Blake associates Christ’s birth with light in the designs for Milton’s Nativity Ode, especially in The Annunciation to the Shepherds (1809, c.1815, B538.2, 542.2), which represents the advent of visionary inspiration through the birth of Christ. A similar theme is at work in The Black Madonna (1825?, B674), which depicts Christ and his mother before a starry night sky. A glow emanates from them and their haloes emit thorns of light; in the background, the sun is rising behind the hills, indicating that a new dawn is being inaugurated. Here, Christ is, as Bindman argues, the light which dispels the stars of night, a notion which Blake anticipates in The Angel Appearing to Zacharias by depicting a dawn of light which outshines that which Zacharias kindles and will dispel his doubt.18 The next biblical tempera is The Nativity (B401, Plate 5). Blake’s image is a highly unusual take on this very traditional subject: at the

70

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 10 All Religions Are One, ‘The Voice of One Crying in the Wilderness’ (c.1788/c.1795). 4.6 £ 3.7 cm. Relief etching. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. centre of the image is a tiny leaping Christ, bursting across the stable in a blast of light, his arms outstretched in a cruciform gesture. This light outshines the paler light of the star of the Nativity outside, seen through a window. The star is also cruciform and resembles that in ¨ rer’s Melancholia I (1514), a print that, according to Samuel Palmer, Du Blake kept a copy of in his workroom (BR 752 fn.).19 Christ is leaping

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

71

away from his mother, who swoons into Joseph’s arms, and towards the outstretched arms of Elisabeth who kneels opposite with John in her lap. Christ is often depicted as the source of light in images of the Nativity, but Blake’s idea of Christ as a leaping blaze is apparently unprecedented, breaking with the convention of depicting figures grouped adoringly around the infant, as, for instance, in Westall’s The Adoration of the Shepherds, mentioned above (Figure 11). In his essay on the Adelphi paintings, James Barry singled out the Nativity as a subject that had been too widely depicted in such terms by ‘barren imitators’; as mentioned in the Introduction, Blake owned this text, and he may have had this passage in mind when he tackled this popular subject in such innovative terms.20 There are several texts that could have inspired Blake’s leaping child. Christopher Rowland proposes The Protoevangelium of James, which describes: ‘a great light in the cave, so that their eyes could not bear it, but the light gradually decreased until the infant appeared’.21 This description implies a miraculous birth in which Christ simply bursts into being. The Protoevangelium was available in English in this period, although there is no other evidence that Blake read it. There is also an apocryphal tradition that Christ’s birth was ‘miraculous’ because Mary did not suffer labour pains owing to her Immaculate Conception (Genesis 3:16 identifies woman’s ‘sorrow in ‘bring[ing] forth’ children as a consequence of the Fall). Whether or not Blake knew this theory, his later rejection of the virgin birth in The Everlasting Gospel (c.1818) and the fact that Mary is suffering in the painting makes such an influence unlikely. Other suggestions for the source for the leaping child that have been made include: J.M.Q. Davies’ suggestion that the inspiration was Elisabeth’s statement at the Visitation that the child leapt in her womb at the news of Mary’s pregnancy (Luke 1:41), although does not explain why Blake might have transferred the Baptist’s leaping to Christ (I do discuss another connection with the Visitation narrative, below);22 others suggest a link to Blake’s poem ‘Infant Sorrow’ in Experience (E28): ‘My mother groand! my father wept. j Into the dangerous world I leapt’, but the negative tone of the poem does not seem to fit the painting.23 Blake might also have had pictorial source(s) in mind for his leaping child. Archibald Russell proposed that Blake took the leaping

72

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 11 William Bromley, after Richard Westall, The Adoration of the Shepherds (1793). 30.1 £ 24.0 cm. Etching and engraving. For Luke 11:15 – 17 in The Holy Bible (1800), Volume 6/7. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester. figure from a Roman bas-relief representing the birth of Dionysius in a similar manner, although I have not found evidence that Blake could have known the carving.24 Rowland highlights that such a figure sometimes features in Annunciation images, zooming from the heavens towards to Virgin, and so the image could be read as a

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

73

conflation of Annunciation and Nativity; Blake could not have known the examples that Rowland cites,25 but although I have not identified an example that Blake is likely to have known, it is plausible that he encountered such pictures at London’s Old Master sales, and/or in engravings. A tiny Christ child in a blaze of light also sometimes appeared in other Nativity-related subjects, such as Rogier van der Weyden’s Vision of the Magi (c.1445 – 8, Gema¨ldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen, Berlin), where the wise men see a vision of the Christ child in the star that leads them to Bethlehem.26 Like the Annunciations mentioned by Rowland, this is not a picture that Blake could not have known in the original, but he may well have encountered similar works. Any or all of these sources could have been in Blake’s mind when composing The Nativity, but I think the most likely inspiration is one which Blake certainly knew, but which has curiously not been discussed by commentators on the painting: Milton’s Nativity Ode. As noted above, Blake’s Europe parodies Milton’s poem, and he later produced two sets of watercolour designs based upon it. In the poem, Milton introduces Christ as ‘That glorious form, that light unsufferable, j And that far-beaming blaze of majesty’ (ll. 8 – 9).27 That this could be the source of the leaping child in a blaze of light in The Nativity is strengthened by the fact that Blake re-used the motif in the Butts set of designs for Milton’s poem (Figure 12, B542.1, c.1815),28 and the ‘unsufferable’ might be the inspiration for Mary’s swooning.29 An association with Milton’s coming-of-age poem also resonates with Lister’s theory that Blake regarded the Butts commission as his own birth as a painter; hence, the Christ child can also be read as an avatar for Blake himself as a prophetic figure bringing forth spiritual truth. The depiction of Christ in a blaze of light here, and Blake’s striking uses of light elsewhere in the biblical temperas, also reflects the Johannine Prologue, which refers to the coming of ‘the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world’ (John 1:9). It is the Baptist who bears witness to the Light (John 1:7 – 8), a connection that could have influenced the apparently unprecedented inclusion of John and Elisabeth here,30 and strengthens the continuity with The Angel Appearing.

74

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 12 The Descent of Peace, illustration 1 to Milton’s On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity (c.1814 – 16). 15.9 £ 12.6 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens. Regardless of Blake’s source(s) for the leaping child, the figure represents Christ as the embodiment of vital, illuminating energy. The figure is tiny (as Rowland recommends, compare his size to that of Elisabeth’s hands),31 but his bodily proportions are adult-like, implying his spiritual maturity.32 The dynamic cruciform of Christ’s

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

75

pose also points forward to his crucifixion and resurrection (compare the figure to that of The Resurrection, c.1805), thus linking Christ’s birth with the redemption of his death. The pose is a recurrent one in Blake’s images, often accompanied by a blast of light, and is associated with spiritual energy; the leaping Christ of the first Night Thoughts frontispiece was similar, but there are more exact counterparts elsewhere.33 The most direct parallel with the tiny Christ of The Nativity is the leaping babe in the Large Colour Print, Pity (1795, B310 – 5). This child is leaping into the arms of a figure riding a horse through the sky, away from a woman lying supine on the ground, who is probably the mother giving birth to the child.34 The source of the design is a passage from Macbeth, in which Macbeth refers to ‘pity, like a naked new-born babe’ (Act I, Scene 7).35 Blake depicts this simile literally, with a child who, as Heppner puts it, combines ‘the vulnerability that inspires pity with the energetic response aroused in a pitying spectator’.36 Pity is one of the attributes that Blake identifies with ‘The Divine Image’ (Innocence, E12 – 3), which strengthens the connection between the infant in the print and Christ in The Nativity. However, the facial expressions of the two infants are different: as Heppner describes, that of Pity is ‘almost indignant, as if he were still suffering from the shock of recent entry into this dark and stormy world’, contrasting with that of the infant Christ, which is radiant and joyful.37 Christ’s gesture is also stronger, more embracing, than the apparently imploring arms of the infant Pity; he is ready to offer himself to die and rise again.38 The inclusion of proleptic motifs in images of the infant Christ is not uncommon in Western art; for instance, the manger is sometimes depicted as tomb-like, or occasionally the Christ Child is shown lying in a cruciform pose.39 The biblical narrative itself points towards Christ’s death with the magi’s gift of the burial spice myrrh (Matthew 2:11). Beyond The Nativity, many of Blake’s images of the infant Christ and his images of the child Christ incorporate motifs that foreshadow his crucifixion. Notably, later in the biblical tempera sequence, there are four (extant) extrabiblical subjects of the child Christ which explicitly reference his forthcoming Passion: The Virgin Hushing the Young Baptist (B406),

76

The Visionary Art of William Blake

a version of the Madonna and Child Il Silenzio motif, in which the child Christ is in a death-like sleep on a burial-garment-like cloth, and the Virgin hushes the Baptist; Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Riding a Lamb (B409, Figure 15), an image I return to in relation to The Flight into Egypt below, in which the lamb alludes both to Christ as the Lamb of God, and to his riding into Jerusalem on a colt, which marked the start of his Passion; and two versions of The Christ Child Asleep on a Wooden Cross (B410 – 1), where Blake reinvents a subject favoured by Baroque artists such as Annibale Carracci and Guido Reni (indeed, as Butlin suggested, Blake could have been directly inspired by Guido Reni’s The Infant Jesus Sleeping on the Cross, shown at the Orleans Gallery in 1798 (B410)).40 This is the only instance of duplication within the tempera series; possible reasons for this repetition include: that the two versions were intended to be complementary, expressing different dimensions of the subject, or that one was painted as an improvement of the other (which in turn raises the questions of at whose instigation, and why both were apparently kept by Butts). However, there is no documentary evidence to illuminate this problem.41 In these childhood subjects, and in the Nativity sequence itself, Blake creates his own proleptic motifs, and which often, like the leaping Christ of The Nativity, point beyond the Crucifixion to the Resurrection, thus connecting Christ’s birth with his re-birth. Blake’s depictions of other figures present in the stable are also important. On the left, in the middle ground of the picture, a swooning Mary falls into Joseph’s arms; he looks down at his wife, with a sombre expression; Christ is leaping away from his parents towards the right and foreground of the picture, where Elisabeth reaches towards him, apparently ready to receive him in her outstretched hands, her mouth slightly open and her expression one of rapt astonishment; the naked Baptist is sitting on her lap, his hands together as in prayer; his face is difficult to read owing to the cracked surface of the picture. The two pairs of figures represent alternative responses to Christ and to the spiritual energy that he embodies. Mary is overwhelmed by the birth of the child, making hers a poor response that reflects a theme in Blake’s work of Mary’s actions as inadequate; an early example is ‘To Tirzah’ in the

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

77

Songs where Blake implies that she bears responsibility for Jesus’ death (E30) and, as noted above, later, in Jerusalem, Blake’s re-telling of the Nativity narrative casts her as an adulteress (E211 – 2).42 Joseph, supporting Mary, and focusing his attention on her, is likewise disengaged with the Christ child. Mary’s swooning posture anticipates that of Moses’ mother in Blake’s 1824 watercolour (B774) and engraving of the hiding of Moses.43 Rossetti also records a tempera from the Butts collection, now untraced, of this Old Testament subject; he describes Moses’ mother in this work as ‘swoon[ing] into her husband’s arms’, which indicates that this painting was similar to Blake’s later versions of this subject and could therefore have been viewed as a typological pair to The Nativity when the temperas were hung together.44 Whereas Mary is overwhelmed by the birth of her son, Moses’ mother is grieving giving up her child. As Bindman highlights, Moses and Christ are connected typologically as prophetic figures: the hiding of Moses allows for the survival of Hebrew prophecy in the fallen spiritual state represented by Egypt (‘Israel deliverd from Egypt is Art deliverd from Nature & Imitation’, Laocoo¨n, E274) and the birth of Christ inaugurates a new phase in prophetic history.45 Hence, Mary’s overwhelmed response to the birth of Christ (and by extension, Joseph’s disengagement) can be seen as an Egypt-like state of spiritual inadequacy, a point that would have been more evident when all the temperas were (presumably) together in Butts’ home.46 Contrasting with the inadequate response of Jesus’ parents, Elisabeth is reaching out to him enthusiastically, apparently seeking to draw him towards her and her own son, the Baptist, and thus to be engulfed in the spiritual illumination which he embodies. Blake must have had the Visitation narrative in mind when he included these figures in this scene; Luke records that when the pregnant Mary goes to visit her pregnant cousin Elisabeth: when Elisabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elisabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost: And she spake out with a loud voice, and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For, lo, as soon as the voice of

78

The Visionary Art of William Blake thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed: for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord. (Luke 1:41–5)

There then follows Mary’s song of praise known as the Magnificat. What is significant in relation to Blake’s Nativity is that the Visitation narrative has Elisabeth and the Baptist in the womb responding to Christ before Mary’s song of praise, and apparently without being told of Mary’s pregnancy – this knowledge comes to them through the Holy Ghost. Hence, as the Baptist is the one who goes before Christ to prepare the world for him, Elisabeth can be seen as one who is spiritually before Mary. Blake’s Nativity presents the cousins’ respective responses to the advent of Christ in rather starker contrast; but his depiction of Elisabeth’s enthusiastic reception of the child must surely have been inspired by that earlier passage in Luke. As noted, it is harder to read the figure of the Baptist owing to the condition of the painting, but his prayer-like gesture, and the precedents of the Baptist as archetypal Christian prophet in Blake’s oeuvre, as discussed in relation to The Angel Appearing to Zacharias, are sufficient to be confident that he is also responding positively to the advent of Christ. Therefore, the two pairs of figures in the stable present the viewer with alternative ways to respond to Christ and the illumination that he embodies. Blake is willing his viewer to emulate Elisabeth and the Baptist; as the figure of Christ leaps towards them in the foreground of the picture, he is also leaping towards us (echoing Blake’s method in the Night Thoughts resurrection frontispieces) and thus is ready engulf us in the illumination of his vital and salvific energy. The next image in the tempera sequence, The Adoration of the Kings (B402, Figure 13), is a rather more conventional scene than Nativity. The composition reverses that of Nativity, thus, as Bindman proposes, creating a pair (not excluding the other pairing of The Nativity and the lost Hiding of Moses).47 Contrasting with the supernatural leap of The Nativity, this Christ sits in his mother’s lap, but again, his figure is adult-like, suggesting his spiritual maturity. His arms are reaching out to accept the gifts of the Magi, indicating his openness to receiving others into his Divine Body (a notion I explore further in Chapter 3); rather than showing him in direct profile, Blake

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

79

FIGURE 13 The Adoration of the Kings (1799). 25.7 £ 37.0 cm. Tempera on canvas. Royal Pavilion & Museums, Brighton & Hove.

depicts Christ turning slightly towards the viewer, so that we too are invited into this company, echoing his leaping towards us in Nativity. As in Nativity, he emanates a glow of light and outshines the light of the star outside. Thus again, Blake emphasises the divinity of Christ in this image, showing him as a figure of illumination; this Christ is also a very human figure, embodying the ideal Blakean spiritual state in which the human and divine are synonymous, and with open arms, he invites the viewer to participate in that state. The series continues with The Circumcision (B403, Figure 14), which focuses on the physical humanity of Christ, both in its very subject, and in the more realistic pose of the infant Christ than the two preceding designs; here, the child is suckling at his mother’s breast and tugging at her dress, rather than adopting adult-like poses. There are two rabbis involved in the ceremony – one circumcising the infant, the other standing to one side, holding a book and raising his other hand to heaven, presumably saying prayers. Both are aged bearded men with severe facial expressions, and the angle formed by the arms of the standing figure echoes the dividers of The Ancient of

80

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 14 The Circumcision (c.1799–1800). 25.7 £ 36.4 cm. Tempera on canvas. q The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. Days, indicating that he is an oppressive figure. In styling the rabbis thus, Blake reiterates his critique of religious ritual in The Angel Appearing. Meanwhile, Mary looks down at her child in openmouthed astonishment and some of the onlookers have a similar reaction. Blake may here be borrowing an element from a related subject, the Presentation of Jesus (Luke 2:22– 38), which he had depicted in Night Thoughts (NT IX title page, B330.417) and would return to in the watercolour series (c.1803 – 5, B470); these two subjects, both taking place in the Temple, are sometimes conflated in art. The Presentation is a moment when the child’s divinity is manifest for, upon seeing Christ, Simeon rejoiced in the salvation which Christ will bring, proclaiming the words known as the Nunc Dimittis. In Blake’s Presentations, the attendant figures are similarly moved, and the astonished onlookers in The Circumcision may likewise be recognising the divinity of the Christ Child. The next tempera is The Flight into Egypt (B404, Plate 7), which depicts a Christ still further from the powerful figure of Nativity; here, he is a vulnerable, huddled figure who, as Graham Robertson puts it,

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

81

FIGURE 15 Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Riding a Lamb with St John (1800). 27.3 £ 38.7 cm. Pen and tempera on canvas. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

‘nestles to [his mother] in fragile helplessness’.48 The child’s apparent distress contrasts with the serenity of his mother’s features and relaxed posture. They are surrounded by six floating putti which, as Archibald Russell proposed, probably represent the souls of the innocents slain by Herod,49 anticipating Holman Hunt’s The Triumph of the Innocents (1870 –1903).50 Blake’s is a strange, mystical version of the scene, which breaks from the convention of showing the figures in a landscape. The donkey glides along with the floating infants, in spite of its clumsy proportions. This image of Christ riding on an animal is echoed in two other subjects in the tempera series: Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Riding on a Lamb with St John, mentioned earlier, and Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (B422, Figure 16). In these designs, Blake creates a triptych in which Christ is carried towards his death by three beasts at three stages of his life. Read in this way, he progresses from being carried in his mother’s arms in Flight into Egypt, to Riding on a Lamb with his mother’s support, to sitting strong and facing the fate ahead of him in Entry into Jerusalem.

82

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 16 Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (1800). 31.1 £ 47.9 cm. Tempera and pen on copper. q CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections. The parallel between Flight into Egypt and Entry into Jerusalem is particularly important. These two episodes are typologically related, since it was Herod’s fear that Christ threatened his kingship that led to the massacre of the innocents, and when Christ entered Jerusalem, he was praised as King, and it was on a charge of claiming that role that he was crucified five days later. The connection is further reinforced by the presence of the putti in Flight into Egypt and children in Entry into Jerusalem. However, the huddled infant in Flight into Egypt is markedly not kingly, emphasising the paradox of the power of this physically vulnerable figure, resonating with ‘The Divine Image’ of Songs of Innocence: ‘To Mercy Pity Peace and Love, j All pray in their distress’ (E12). In light of Blake’s idea of Egypt as spiritually fallen, Flight into Egypt can be read as a triumphal journey towards the redemption of that state, and thus as an allegory of the individual’s redemption by inhabiting the state of illumination epitomised by the infant Christ. The final image in the tempera Nativity sequence, The Repose in Egypt (B405, c.1803?, Matthew 2:14) is lost. Rossetti describes it:

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

83

‘The Holy Family are within a tent; an angel at its entrance; the donkey outside.’51 This work is probably the image described by Blake in a letter to Butts: I send you the Riposo [. . .] It represents the Holy Family in Egypt Guarded in their Repose from those Fiends the Egyptian Gods. and tho’ not directly taken from a Poem of Miltons (for till I had designd it Miltons Poem did not come into my Thoughts) Yet it is very similar to his Hymn on the Nativity which you [. . .] will read with great delight. I have given in the background a building which may be supposed the ruin of a Part of Nimrods tower [. . .]. (6 July 1803, E729)

That Blake apparently added this additional subject three years after completing the rest of the works suggests the importance of the Nativity sequence within the series as a whole. The wording ‘I send you the Riposo’ implies that Butts was expecting the picture, but whether it was directly requested by him, or proposed by Blake, is not documented. The references to Milton’s Nativity Ode and Nimrod’s tower (the tower of Babel) confirm that Egypt represents a fallen spiritual state which is overturned by the birth of Christ; Milton’s poem describes the birth of Christ overthrowing pagan deities, and the tower of Babel also represents humanity misplacing its spiritual energy. When Blake depicted Milton’s poem (1809, B538; c.1815, B542), he devoted three out of six images in each set to the overthrow of the pagan gods (B538.3 – 5, 542.3 – 5). As Pamela Dunbar highlights, these images are pictorially in disarray, crowded with an excess of detail;52 this violence and chaos contrasts with the peace of the stable scenes which frame the series (B538.1, 538.6, 542.1, 542.6). Thus, as in his allusions to the redemption of Egypt in various designs, Blake’s designs for Milton’s Nativity Ode emphasise that the advent of illumination represented by Christ’s birth redeems the world from its fallen spiritual state. Blake’s 1806 watercolour, The Repose of the Holy Family in Egypt (B472, Figure 17) is another version of the subject of the lost tempera, which may hint at Blake’s earlier depiction of the subject; where subjects from the temperas are repeated in the watercolours, the designs are never identical but nor is the handling ever radically different (compare the Baptisms (B415, 475) and the Entombments (B427, 498)). The watercolour Riposo shows Christ suckling at his

84

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 17 The Repose of the Holy Family in Egypt (1806). 35.1 £ 37.0 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink, and graphite on paper. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. mother’s breast, thereby, like the tempera Circumcision, emphasising his physical humanity; this point is reinforced by the donkey drinking from the Nile – both it, and Christ, are subject to the needs of the flesh.53 The composition of the watercolour resembles that of The Hiding of Moses, thus further reiterating Blake’s Egypt-Nativity trope and strengthening that case that Blake’s tempera of this subject employed similar pictorial language. Contrasting with the separation of Moses’ family, the Holy Family represents unity as Jesus and his parents enjoy a moment of rest following their flight from Bethlehem. Beyond, the sun is rising, which, as seen in The Black Madonna, implies a new dawn, dispelling the darkness of the fallen spiritual state which Egypt represents.

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

85

FIGURE 18 Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775 – 1851), Holy Family (exhibited 1803). 102.2 £ 141.6 cm. Oil on canvas. q Tate, London 2017. J.M.W. Turner’s Holy Family (exh. 1803, Figure 18) presents a helpful counterpoint to Blake’s watercolour, illuminating the distinctiveness of Blake’s pictorial methods. Turner’s painting was probably motivated by a desire to present himself as a history painter (although unsuccessfully, according to contemporary reviews),54 and places the Holy Family in a realistic landscape (European rather than Egyptian). By contrast, Blake’s image is an expression of his mytho-theological ideas, and its elements are schematised and symbolic rather than realistic. Here, and in the tempera designs, which have been the focus of this chapter, we have seen Blake developing this world of symbol-making to present the narrative of Christ’s Nativity as a metaphor for illumination and prophecy. As I noted at the start of the chapter, the biblical temperas gave Blake the opportunity to exercise his pictorial imagination for the first time in an extended way in the medium of painting, and in relation to a text he greatly admired. His enthusiasm for the project is not only expressed in his comments in the letter to Cumberland quoted earlier

86

The Visionary Art of William Blake

in this chapter; it leaps out of the pictures (quite literally in the case of Nativity). In the Nativity sequence, Blake presents the advent of Christ as the birth of spiritual energy, of Imagination, of inspiration. These designs also demonstrate Blake’s belief that the birth of Jesus was not a super-natural incarnation of the Divine in human, but the perfect manifestation or ‘inmortation’ of the Divine Humanity that is the true nature of all individuals. Hence, Blake’s images of the Divine Human infant as a cipher for inspiration, who illuminates those in his presence, are an invitation to renounce inadequate states of vision and to embody the true, illuminated state of Divine Humanity.

CONCLUSION A catalogue entry for the Philadelphia Museum by Richard Dorment describes The Nativity as the ‘dramatic crux’ to the tempera series (although his comment that ‘since there is no Annunciation, [Nativity ] separates the Old from the New Testament’ apparently ignores the existence of The Angel Appearing to Zacharias);55 I would extend this description to the sequence of Nativity designs discussed in this chapter. It is difficult to determine from the extant temperas whether there was a unifying schema to the series as a whole; the general impression from Blake’s other complete, or more complete works in series is that, except where he was working on a very discrete set of designs to a specific text (as in the various Milton watercolours), he worked more in terms of recurring themes and patterns rather than an overall schema. The fact that he apparently added at least one additional subject to this series in 1803 reinforces the impression that the biblical temperas are not a rigorously systematic series. Certainly though, as we have seen within the Nativity group, in the apparent connection to the lost Old Testament Hiding of Moses, and the proleptic images of the child Christ, Blake conceived the designs as interconnected. Reading more in terms of a web of recurring themes then, the series as a whole displays a number of important concerns in the context of Blake’s theological-mythos: condemnation of idolatry in Moses Indignant at the Golden Calf (B387), the question of right judgement in The Judgement of Solomon (B392), the celebration

Illumination and Prophecy in the Biblical Temperas

87

of the child in Christ Blessing the Little Children (B419), and display of compassion in Christ the Mediator (B429). Overall, the various themes that Blake explores in the biblical temperas are encompassed within the prevailing concern of his artistic project to deal with modes of judgement and response to inspiration. In Nativity, we saw that the differing reactions of Mary and Joseph, and Elisabeth and John, to the birth of Jesus represented different levels of response to the illumination of Christ. Such figurings of individuals’ encounters with inspiration are important throughout the series, and are allegories for the response that Blake hopes his art will engender of the viewer. Among the Old Testament designs, Abraham and Isaac (B382) unusually has the boy finding the ram that will replace him as a sacrifice, while his father is a more passive figure, looking up to heaven in sorrow for the act he has been commanded to make; thus, this is a picture about the superiority of childlike perception. In the New Testament, the healing miracles of Christ Raising Jairus’ Daughter (B417) and The Healing of Bartimaeus (B420) similarly show these patients as actively responding to Christ, in contrast to the more passive onlooking figures.56 Hence, Blake’s images of Christ are often (at least) as much about the attendant figures as exemplars of Imagination as about Christ himself as artist. The next chapter examines this matter in more detail in relation to the biblical watercolours created for Butts by exploring how Blake depicted other biblical figures who respond to Christ’s inspiration and become members of the community of Divine Humanity.

Visions of these eternal principles or characters of human life appear to poets, in all ages [. . .] but the Greeks, and since them the Moderns, have neglected to subdue the gods of Priam. These Gods are visions of the eternal attributes, or divine names, which, when erected into gods, become destructive to humanity [. . .] for when separated from man or humanity, who is Jesus the Saviour, the vine of eternity, they are thieves and rebels, they are destroyers. A Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures (1809, E536)

Imagination the real & eternal World of which this Vegetable Universe is but a faint shadow & in which we shall live in our Eternal or Imaginative Bodies, when these Vegetable Mortal Bodies are no more. The Apostles knew of no other Gospel. Jerusalem 77 (1804–c.1820, E231)

CHAPTER 3

Facilitator Ministry as Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours (1800—6)

In 1853, a group of Blake’s pictures from the Butts collection were auctioned at Foster’s.1 Lot 71 was ‘Christ and the Little Children’, and Lot 96 was ‘The Church and Christ’. Butlin demonstrated that the biblical tempera now known as Christ Blessing the Little Children was ‘The Church and Christ’ (B419, Figure 19); the other painting is lost (cf. B432). The titles given to these pictures cannot be traced to Blake, but the confusion provides a way into thinking about how Blake represents Christ as a figure who engenders community. If Blake can be said to have an ‘ecclesiology’ (a concept of church structure), it is not an institutional Church, but consists in being members of the Divine Body of Christ.2 Elsewhere, in his description of The Canterbury Pilgrims in the catalogue for his 1809 exhibition (which describes Chaucer’s characters as types of the universal ‘classes of men’ (E533)), Blake identifies Jesus as the vine, a metaphor from John 15:5 that he had previously depicted in his designs for Night Thoughts (B330.511). The implication is that ‘characters of human life [. . .] eternal attributes, or divine names’ are like branches of Jesus the vine, and when they are separated from him and held up as gods in their own right, they become destructive to humanity because humanity is one and the same as Jesus the vine; the branches (‘characters’) only flourish as part of the vine (‘Jesus’). Similarly, we saw in the Introduction that in the

90

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 19 Christ Blessing the Little Children (1799). 26.0 £ 37.5 cm. Tempera on canvas. q Tate, London 2017. aphorisms of the so-called Laocoo¨n plate, Blake refers to Jesus as ‘the Divine Body’, ‘the Imagination’ in whom we are ‘Members’ (E273); and in the passage from Jerusalem quoted above, he refers to Imagination as the only Gospel that Apostles knew, and the reality in which we have our true identities. This chapter examines how Blake depicts figures from Jesus’ public ministry in his biblical watercolours for Butts (1800–c.1806) as exemplars of Imaginative activity, and thus as members of the Divine Body – the corporate body of Christ in whom individuals have their true identity. We see Blake expressing such a view of the Apostles in the quotation from Jerusalem, quoted above, as well as in another Laocoo¨n aphorism: ‘Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists’ (E274). As seen in the Introduction, that Blake’s notion of being members of the Divine Body is related to his conception of Jesus’ public ministry is suggested by Morris Eaves in his account of Blake’s theory of art. Eaves argues that Blake conceives of his own relationship with his audience as a ‘Society of Imagination’, which is modelled on and through Christ. He notes that in the Gospels, Jesus generated social order through ‘the works of art’ of parables and miracles, which

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

91

Eaves reads as less rehearsals of morals than acts of identity; they are Christ and create a community of Imagination in his Divine Body.3 Blake’s own name for this society of Imagination is ‘Golgonooza’, which is a utopian city of art that appears in the prophetic books Vala/ The Four Zoas (c.1797–c.1807, Milton (1804–c.1811) and Jerusalem (1804–c.1820). Golgonooza is inhabited by figures from Blake’s own mythology, and is identified as the city of Los, Blake’s incarnation of Imagination. Like Orc, Blake’s embodiment of revolutionary energy, Los, as Imagination, is an avatar of that aspect of Christ. Christ himself also sometimes appears in Blake’s accounts of Golgonooza, variously called the Lamb, the Divine Vision and Jesus. In this chapter, I expand upon Eaves’ conception of Jesus’ ministry as engendering social order in two respects: first, by focusing on ‘the conceptual content that can be mined from [Blake’s] [. . .] designs’, which Eaves does not examine (his focus is on Blake’s direct theoretical writings on art);4 second, by considering other aspects of Christ’s ministry – not only the parables and miracles which Eaves cites. Indeed, while miracles do play a significant role in a variety of Blake’s works, his only depictions of parables are the previously mentioned Good Farmer sketches of the 1780s (B120 recto, 121– 5), an image of the Good Samaritan in NT II.35 (B330.68),5 and four versions of a watercolour depicting The Wise and Foolish Virgins – one in the Butts watercolours and three further versions for other patrons (c.1805, c.1822, c.1825; B478 –81; I discuss these designs below). This relative absence might seem surprising in light of Blake’s conception of Jesus as an artist, but for Blake, ‘art’ is not limited to ‘the arts’, but includes any act of Imagination. As Northrop Frye puts it, for Blake: ‘Everything worth doing and done well is an art, whether love, conversation, religion, education, sport, cookery or commerce.’6 In Blake’s depictions of Jesus’ public ministry, Jesus himself is often relatively inactive: sometimes the respondent to the activity of others and elsewhere almost impassive – it is simply his presence which engenders Imagination at work in the activity of the central figures. By emphasising the action of Jesus’ audience, Blake presents the viewer with exemplars, as well as anti-types, of artistic activity. Thus, these images are also representations of the artist’s relationship with his viewers, and hence continue to develop Blake’s viewer-response

92

The Visionary Art of William Blake

aesthetic that we have seen in designs in the preceding chapters. Beyond the audience members in the watercolours of Jesus’ ministry discussed here, there are numerous other figures in Blake’s works who are exemplars of imaginative activity that would merit further study – not least some from his own mythology such as Los, Orc, Albion and Jerusalem. Of the figures discussed here, many of their ‘types’ are prevalent in other images by Blake, as I will highlight in my discussions of their appearances in the biblical watercolours. I also show how some of these figures can be related to contemporary issues in Blake’s time, thus reinforcing my reading of these biblical persons as types for Blake’s audience becoming members of the Divine Body, embodying the Human Form Divine epitomised by Jesus.

THE BUTTS BIBLICAL WATERCOLOURS As noted in Chapter 2, following his commission of 50 tempera pictures of biblical subjects, Butts asked Blake to produce a second set of biblical designs, in watercolour. This project commenced in 1800 and Blake was producing designs until about 1806 (with at least one design added later, The Whore of Babylon (1809, B523)). There were over 80 designs in all (B433 – 526), which vary in size and style, apparently reflecting different periods of production. Although it is not known how the Buttses displayed their Blake collection, we know that the watercolours were matted, with inscriptions indicating the relevant biblical passages, at some point between 1802 and 1819, as has been shown by Joseph Viscomi by dating the boards used for the mounts.7 This format made the watercolours suitable for display, or they could have been kept in a portfolio, forming a picture-Bible, in a manner similar to collectors having bound volumes of the prints of Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery (1789 – 1805), which gave them a gallery of Shakespeare pictures in book form. Some scholars have suggested that the watercolours could have been intended as extra-illustrations for a Bible.8 This theory might account for the duplication of some subjects between the temperas and watercolours, because the functions of the two would have been fundamentally different. It could also explain the existence of similar subjects within the watercolours; for example, there are four

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

93

depictions of the crucifixion (B494– 7), which relate to different details in the various Gospel accounts and could therefore have been intended to be placed with the relevant passages in the text. However, the distribution of other designs within a Bible would have been problematic. For example, as mentioned elsewhere, there is a sub-group of designs of similar colour scheme and composition relating to the death, burial and resurrection of Christ (B498, 500 – 2, 504), which draw on texts from across the Gospels and beyond; their unity as a sequence would have been disrupted by placing them alongside the various relevant passages in a Bible, and some of the designs conflate details from more than one passage. There would also have been very large portions of un-illustrated text, particularly in the Old Testament, and in the Epistles, although uneven distribution of plates was not uncommon in Bibles published with illustrations, the Macklin Bible being a good example. I find it difficult to believe that Blake would have created distinct sub-sets of designs such as the sepulchre series in the knowledge that they would be broken up within a Bible. It is possible that the project began with the intention of extra-illustrating a Bible, and changed direction as the series evolved, but together with the evidence of the matting (not original but undertaken during Blake’s lifetime), the uneven distribution of the designs in relation to the biblical text makes the display or portfolio theories the most plausible circumstances in which the designs were ultimately kept by Butts. While Butts apparently ordered 50 temperas (To Cumberland, 26 August 1799, E704), it seems that there was no specified number of watercolours and that the series grew as Blake produced new work.9 Thus, the watercolours are, as Robert Essick puts it, an ‘organic’ series with what David Bindman calls ‘episodic’ sub-groups which speak to each other across the set as a whole.10 The designs often also point back to Night Thoughts and the biblical temperas, and are echoed in later designs. Blake only dated some of the designs and hence we are often dependent on stylistic analysis to determine the likely years of production; I note the dates given by Butlin. Like the temperas, the watercolours cover the broad sweep of the Old and New Testaments and, similarly, there is a bias to New Testament subjects (53 to 34 Old Testament subjects). The list of

94

The Visionary Art of William Blake

subjects in the watercolour series that are extant or were recorded by Rossetti or others (B433 – 526) reveals slightly different emphases here compared to the temperas; considering the New Testament designs in particular, there is proportionately less emphasis on the beginning of Jesus’ life (B470 – 4 relate to infancy and childhood, but there are no designs for the Nativity itself), and greater numbers of subjects from Jesus’ public ministry (B475 – 90), death, burial and resurrection (B494– 504), and there are depictions of his posthumous ministry in subjects from Acts and Revelation (B505 – 6, 517, 525). Christ also appears in a group of three subjects from the Psalms (B462 – 4), thus representing his ministry extending beyond the life of Jesus. While in the temperas, we saw an emphasis on Christ being the Human Form Divine, in the watercolours we see more of him doing the work of Divine Humanity – not only in the public ministry of Jesus (my focus in this chapter), but also throughout cosmic history (a matter I discuss in relation to other works in Chapter 4). Blake was working on this series during and after his years in Felpham (1800 –3), Sussex, where he moved at the invitation of his patron William Hayley. As already noted, this period has often been identified as a period of religious renewal or even conversion for Blake.11 We have seen in the preceding chapters that Blake was already developing his distinctive, Christological theory of art in his works in the years preceding the move to Felpham and thus I consider the idea that Blake experienced a conversion in Felpham to be overstating the case. There is, however, certainly evidence in Blake’s letters from Felpham that he felt a sense of spiritual rejuvenation when he moved there from London, and that he had some powerful visionary experiences during his time there. For example, on a premove visit to Felpham in September 1800, Blake wrote a poem that describes a vision he had there of a ‘Ladder of Angels’ (E709), in which he expresses a feeling that there was a connection between heaven and earth there. One can well imagine Blake feeling that the firmament was thinner in the fresh air by the sea than in London’s smog. This vision may have inspired the biblical watercolour Jacob’s Ladder (c.1800 – 5, B438),12 which closely corresponds to Blake’s description of the vision. The Sussex years must also have brought Blake into contact with the gothic architecture and monuments

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

95

of Chichester Cathedral, which must have influenced the renewed interest in gothic forms in works of this period, such as the biblical watercolour Angels Hovering over the Body of Christ in the Sepulchre (c.1805, B500; during his apprenticeship he had been tasked with drawing similar monuments in Westminster Abbey).13 Although Blake’s time in Sussex started well, it ended badly. Blake had become frustrated with Hayley’s demands as a patron, which occupied him with work that he found tedious, such as portraiture and designs for Hayley’s poems.14 The final straw came when Blake had an argument with and threw Private John Scholfield (a soldier posted locally) out of his garden in August 1803. Scholfield accused Blake of making seditious statements, a charge for which Blake was put on trial; Blake returned to London the following month, before the two trials (at the second of which he was acquitted).15 The troubles of these years, and the spiritual rejuvenation that Blake experienced, are important contexts for viewing the biblical watercolours produced during and following his time in Felpham.16 With these matters in mind, I now explore how the biblical watercolours allowed Blake to further develop his ideas about Christ in visual terms through his depictions of figures from Jesus’ ministry as Christ-like exemplars of Divine Humanity. In some cases, I also discuss figures in the same or related designs that act as counterpoints to the exemplary figures, who are antithetical to the Divine Vision. I address the subjects broadly in terms of their biblical sequence, and Butlin’s numbering, but I depart from this order where I discuss thematic groupings of two or more related subjects.

John the Baptist versus Satan Jesus’ public ministry begins with his baptism by John in the River Jordan. Blake’s biblical watercolour of this episode (c.1803, B475, Plate 8) is one of three versions of this subject that he produced, the others being in the biblical temperas (B415) and the later watercolours for Milton’s Paradise Regained (c.1816 – 20, B544.1). The general composition of the two Butts designs is quite similar, but the depictions of the two protagonists is different (in the tempera, Christ faces the viewer and the Baptist into the picture; in the watercolour Christ faces into the picture and the Baptist is in profile); the general

96

The Visionary Art of William Blake

composition of the Paradise Regained design is quite distinct from both its predecessors, although some elements, such as the inclusion of attendant figures of all ages, are similar. This was not a popular subject with contemporaneous painters, but it sometimes appeared in illustrated Bibles, editions of Paradise Regained and popular prints in the period. Such designs tended to be sentimental and theatrical, dominated by angels with voluminous drapery.17 Blake’s picture derives elements from this tradition, but invents his own composition in which a whole host of angels, in simple garments, fill the sky above the figures in the River Jordan. The key figure interacting with Christ here is John the Baptist, who, as seen in Chapter 2, has a special status for Blake because he is the original Christian prophet. His role here is in some respects distinct from the other figures that I will discuss from Jesus’ public ministry; I have referred to the figures discussed in this chapter as Jesus’ ‘audience’ because I am arguing that they present a model for the artist’s interaction with his viewer, and in most cases the figures that I discuss are the respondents to Jesus’ activity, but here, it is the Baptist’s action that is central. The distinction between the Baptist and other figures in Jesus’ ministry is, however, more apparent than actual. In fact, Jesus asks John to baptise him, and John initially protests that Jesus has no need to be baptised (Matthew 3:13 – 5). What we are witnessing then, is John’s response to Jesus’ request, and more significant than the water flowing from John’s hand on to Jesus is the sky full of light, angels and the dove descending – manifestations of divinity which are engendered by Christ rather than John. Indeed, John looks up at these dramatic phenomena in astonishment. Whereas most of the attendant figures are prostrating themselves before Christ, apparently oblivious to the phantasmagorical events above them, John, and a young woman to the left of Jesus, gaze up in rapt astonishment: they are seeing with the eyes of ‘Imagination and Vision’ (To Revd Dr Trusler, 23 August, 1799, E702). Thus, we see here a device which appears in many of Blake’s biblical watercolours, of contrasting exemplary with inadequate responses to Christ, reflecting the prevailing trope of contraries in his oeuvre – as seen in The Nativity and other biblical temperas.

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

97

This theme would have been more evident when viewing the design alongside The Third Temptation (c.1803–5, B476, Figure 20), which follows The Baptism in the extant watercolour sequence, although it was probably produced slightly later. While The Baptism is an image of community-building, The Third Temptation shows a moment of division: Jesus’ rejection of Satan; but this is division that engenders unity, for it is the rejection of Satan’s attempt to disrupt Jesus’ ministry. Here, Jesus stands strong on a rocky outcrop and Satan falls down in a cloud of smoke that curves under the rock. I read this composition as a

FIGURE 20 The Third Temptation (c.1803 – 5). 41.6 £ 33.4 cm. Pen and ink, pencil and wash on paper. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

98

The Visionary Art of William Blake

visual play on Satan’s words to Jesus: ‘All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me’ (Matthew 4:9). Although Satan is simply described as ‘leaving’ Jesus (Matthew 4:11), Blake interprets him as falling away, and he is in a kneeling pose if we imagine the view from Jesus’ perspective. Satan’s folded figure also resembles a foetal position, implying his vulnerability. Blake could have taken the idea of Satan falling from Milton’s account of the temptation on the Temple (Paradise Regained IV.562),18 but its insertion into a depiction of Matthew’s account is an ironic innovation. The angels watch Satan falling; they are a dramatic counterpoint to him, their blaze of light contrasting with his smoky trail, and the line of their bodies curving up towards Christ, opposite Satan’s helpless falling away.19 Alongside The Baptism, this design shows that division, as represented by Satan, has no place in the Divine Body. To return to The Baptism: here, as in Blake’s two other depictions of the event, Blake frames the scene with the picture plane cutting through the waters of the Jordan, so that we see the feet of the figures through the water and crucially, the implication is that the viewer is also standing in the river, and hence involved in this event; this is not an uncommon way for an artist to compose this scene, but nor is it the only convention, and it is notable that Blake uses it persistently. Blake also used this device in The River of Life (c.1805, B525), the last watercolour in the biblical sequence; there the river seems to flow from the viewer’s space into the picture, but the implication that the viewer is encompassed in the fellowship depicted in that scene is the same.20 Although Blake would probably not have accepted the tradition of interpreting the Baptism as Christ taking on the sins on humanity through baptism, the more general idea that this event is symbolic of Christ sharing in the lot of humankind (hence his insistence to be baptised against John’s protestations) is relevant to understanding Blake’s picture. In short then, this is an image of Christ as one of us, and we are presented with the choice of whether to join his company or to suffer the division that befalls Satan.

The Wise and the Foolish The theme of unity versus division is reinforced in The Wise and the Foolish Virgins (c.1805, B478, Figure 21). This is the only design in

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

99

the biblical watercolours that depicts one of Jesus’ parables (Matthew 25:1 – 13). Jesus himself does not appear in this design; rather, it is a manifestation of his ministry of Imagination. Although depicted widely in ecclesiastical architectural carvings in northern Europe, and there are paintings of this subject, such as that by Tintoretto (c.1546, Upton House, National Trust), it seems to have been an unusual subject in Blake’s day (it became more popular in Victorian art). One example published in London in 1795 is a mezzotint by Valentine Green, after Godfried Schalcken, which focuses the viewer’s attention on the wise virgins, placing them just

FIGURE 21 The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (c.1805). 36.0 £ 33.2 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink, and graphite on paper. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

100

The Visionary Art of William Blake

off-centre and highlighted by their lamps; only three of the foolish virgins are depicted in the far right of the picture and are in shade because their lamps have dimmed or expired. Blake despised such use of chiaroscuro (contrasting light and shade), calling the technique an ‘infernal machine’ (DC, E547).21 Blake takes a rather different approach: the two groups are given roughly equal space in the picture frame, and the image is ambiguous as to which group of virgins is at fault. The standard interpretation of this parable in biblical commentary was as a narrative about piety and religious hypocrisy: the wise virgins are properly pious, fuelled with spiritual oil, whereas the foolish virgins are hypocrites, bearing only empty lamps.22 Blake despised religious hypocrisy, as personified in ‘modest dame Lurch, who is always at Church’ and who makes her children endure fasting and birching in ‘The Little Vagabond’ in Experience (1794, E26); and in the figure of Job in Blake’s reworking of the Old Testament narrative (c.1805 – 6/ c.1821 – 7), where Job is cast as a self-righteous figure who enacts the rituals of organised religion without genuine spiritual integrity.23 So Blake’s design could be read as a rejection of the error of the foolish virgins. On the other hand, the accusatory gesture of the central ‘wise’ virgin makes her an unattractive figure and, perhaps she, like the accusers in Blake’s notebook description of the Last Judgement (and Satan in The Third Temptation), will be cast out (E565). The dramatic encounter between the accusatory ‘wise’ virgin and a pleading ‘foolish’ one echoes a similar arrangement of figures in Hogarth’s Satan, Sin and Death: the ‘wise’ virgin resembles the figure of Satan (whom Blake calls ‘the Accuser’ (VLJ, E564)) and the ‘foolish’ virgin that of Sin. In the parable, the foolish virgins are condemned because they do not fulfil a social expectation, but for Blake the performance of social and religious duties is not the measure of an individual; thus, the ‘wise’ virgin can be read as a self-righteous accuser, a figure like ‘Dame Lurch’ or pre-conversion-Job, and the foolish virgins as figures ignored and rejected by the establishment. The ambiguity and disarray of Blake’s representations of the virgins themselves is counterpointed with the elegant figure of the herald above. This is an innovative visual representation of the verse: ‘And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

101

out to meet him’ (Matthew 25:6). Blake’s depiction of the herald as a trumpeter references the recurring trope of heralding trumpeters in Revelation (1:10, 4:1, 8:2, 8:6, 8:13, 9:14, 11:15, 18:22; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:52, 1 Thessalonians 4:15 – 7); such figures appear elsewhere in Blake’s apocalyptic designs, including in the Last Judgment compositions. The closest parallel is an early drawing known as The Last Trumpet (c.1780 –5), which also depicts a trumpetblowing herald flying through the sky and reaching out with his free arm.24 In the early drawing, the herald is announcing the Day of Judgement, and in The Wise and Foolish Virgins he reuses this motif to represent the coming of the bridegroom as an apocalyptic event, in keeping with the traditional reading of the parable as an allegory for the second coming of Christ. However, the herald in The Wise and Foolish Virgins can also be read as an avatar for Christ himself – an emblem of the prophetic artist who told the parable and that if the viewer is to ‘side’ with any of the figures in the design it is with this one, who announces the overcoming of the division in the scene below. This design apparently had special appeal for Blake and/or his patrons because, uniquely among the biblical watercolours, Blake made three further versions of the Butts design for his friend and fellow-artist John Linnell (c.1822, B479), for Chichester engraver William Haines (c.1825, B480, Plate 9), and for President of the Royal Academy, Sir Thomas Lawrence (c.1825, B481). It is not clear whether this design was requested by these patrons or proposed by Blake. Linnell presumably had sight of Butts’ collection given that he also commissioned copies of Butts’ watercolours of the Book of Job (B550; B551) and Paradise Lost (B536; B537), and it therefore seems likely that he requested this design from among the biblical watercolours. Similarly Lawrence also bought a replica of another Butts picture, The Vision of Queen Katharine (c.1825, B549, after B548), suggesting that he too had seen Butts’ collection. As Butlin notes, the picture for Haines seems to be based on the Linnell composition, but whether Haines had seen Linnell’s picture, or commissioned it directly from Blake is unclear. Although there is no direct evidence of Haines and Blake having known each other beyond the commissioning of this work, both had produced engravings for William Hayley’s Life of

102

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Romney (1809), and it is possible that they had come into contact during Blake’s time in Sussex. Blake’s later revisions of this design emphasise the role of the herald more powerfully: whereas in the Butts design the figure is more stylised and seen in profile, in the later versions, his face is turned towards the viewer, and his right arm is stretched out with an open palm in a gesture of invitation (compare Figure 21 and Plate 9). Thus, the later versions of the watercolour are more explicit in engaging the viewer and presenting us with a choice between the unity of the Divine Body, and the division and chaos that exists outside that state25 – a theme that is an important thread throughout Blake’s depictions of Jesus’ ministry.

Children In Christ Baptizing (1805, B485, Figure 22),26 Blake depicts figures gathering to Christ to be baptised. This is an allegorical depiction of John 3:22: ‘After these things came Jesus and his disciples into the land of Judaea; and there he tarried with them, and baptised.’ Blake sets the scene anachronistically in a church – an innovation which seems surprising in light of his rejection of organised religion; however, he depicts this church not as a place of ‘priests [. . .] walking their rounds’ (‘The Garden of Love’, Experience, E26), but filled with people of all ages and centred on Christ himself. Christ is looking up to Heaven as a dove and blast of light descend from above, recalling his own baptism, making this scene an allegory of it. Blake could be alluding to Paul’s statement that through baptism we ‘put on’ Christ and become one in him (Galatians 3:26 – 7), although there is no suggestion of Paul’s notion that it is into Christ’s death we are baptised (Romans 6:3 – 6; Colossians 2:12), which is antithetical to Blake’s vision of Christ as life. The most prominent figures in this scene are the children – a key type in Blake’s mythos. For Blake, as most famously articulated in the Songs (1789, 1794), childhood represents a state of unfettered, instinctual vision; it is a state of Imagination and hence is Christ-like.27 Blake’s celebration of the child emerges from a widespread interest in children and childhood in the eighteenth century. Children’s literature had emerged as ‘a distinct and secure branch

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

103

FIGURE 22 Christ Baptizing (1805). 31.8 £ 38.3 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over graphite on paper. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mgrs. William Thomas Tonner, 1964-110-2. of print culture’ and, in art, there was a proliferation of depictions of children adopting a variety of roles.28 Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s influential E´mile (1762), published in English in 1763, argued that children were corrupted by education, and possessed distinctive characteristics and insights which could offer something to adult onlookers.29 The changing attitudes to children in this period can be seen by comparing two collections of children’s poems from either end of the century: Isaac Watts’ Divine Songs (1715) and Anna Letitia Barbauld’s Hymns in Prose (1781).30 Whereas Watts’ tone is very didactic, Barbauld encourages an instinctual engagement with the world as the basis for shaping the child’s mind. Blake’s celebration of the figure of the child is distinctive for not simply celebrating childhood as a state in itself, but conceiving of Imagination as a mode of perception in which one inhabits a kind of eternal childhood.

104

The Visionary Art of William Blake

In Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789/1794), Blake responds to contemporary educational ideals which emphasised the instruction of children in moral and religious ideals, satirising the popular genre of educational hymns for children like those of Watts and Barbauld.31 The Songs reject instructional models of education, instead celebrating the intuitive, Imaginative vision that a decade later Blake expounded in the letter to Trusler that I have referred to several times. Innocence and experience are not alternatives, but ‘contraries’ which are in dynamic tension; experience should not destroy innocence, but nor should it be avoided. Innocence was first published in 1789 and the combined Innocence and Experience in 1794, but Blake continued to reprint it until the end of his life, changing the ordering and colouring in different copies, indicating their ongoing presence in his thought.32 When Blake includes children in his images of Jesus, their presence is often not demanded by the biblical text; he adds them to his biblical scenes to represent the appropriate way to respond to Jesus. Blake often places children closest to Christ, leading the way before adults, and sometimes even being gathered into his embrace, almost becoming physically integrated into his Divine Body. The biblical origin of Blake’s elevation of child-like vision is the story represented in the biblical tempera, Christ Blessing the Little Children (1799, B419, Figure 19), mentioned at the start of this chapter. The synoptic Gospels all record a narrative in which Jesus tells his disciples: ‘Suffer the little children to come unto me [. . .] Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein’ (Mark 10:14–5; cf. Matthew 19:13–5; Luke 18:15–7). In many ways, Christ Baptizing could also be read as a depiction of that saying of Jesus: those immediately surrounding him are children, and he holds one infant in his arms. Indeed, Graham Robertson, sometime owner of this work, called it ‘Our Lord of Little Children’.33 Two children are holding hands around the font, seeming, as Robertson notes, to form part of its design;34 thus, they are participating in Christ’s ministry, symbolically incarnating the church of life into which people are here being baptised. As the figures closest to Christ, the children lead the way for the adults. As in many of Blake’s designs, the children have the bodily proportions of adults, which, as we saw in relation to the figure of

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

105

Christ in Nativity, implies their spiritual maturity. The child, then, is an archetypal member of the Divine Body.

Patients of Miracles Another key figure type in Blake’s biblical designs are patients of Jesus’ miracles. Three of the biblical watercolours depict such episodes: Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood (B482, Figure 23), Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain (B483, Plate 10), and The Raising of Lazarus (B487, Plate 11). Broadly speaking, these are all miracles in which an individual patient is healed by Jesus (two restored from death). Blake did not include other types of miracles in this series, such

FIGURE 23 Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood (c.1803–5). 32.3 £ 29.8 cm. Watercolour. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

106

The Visionary Art of William Blake

as the food-related events, although he had previously depicted such subjects elsewhere: the miraculous draught of fish (B330.488) and the wedding at Cana appear in Night Thoughts (B330.534), and the feeding of the multitude is in the Butts temperas (B416).35 Miracles were a much disputed topic in the eighteenth century; in his annotations to Bishop Richard Watson’s Apology for the Bible (1796) Blake makes his own, albeit private, intervention into the debate: Jesus could not do miracles where unbelief hinderd [. . .] The manner of a miracle being performd is in modern times considerd as an arbitrary command of the agent upon the patient but this is an impossibility not a miracle neither did Jesus ever do such a miracle. (E616–7)

Watson’s Apology was published in response to Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason (1794, 1795),36 which challenged the ‘Fabulous Theology’ of institutional Christianity and the authority of the Bible, and rejected the very notion of miracles. Paine’s treatise emerged from a climate of scepticism in the eighteenth century. Thomas Woolston proposed in a series of publications in the late 1720s that the biblical accounts of miracles should be read as allegorical narratives rather than violations of the laws of nature;37 and perhaps most notably, David Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’ in his 1748 Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding rejected miracles based on an argument from credibility, because according to Hume, the evidence against a miracle will always outweigh the evidence for it.38 At the same time, early Methodists (among others) were reporting contemporary miracles, which John Wesley defended in The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained (1746)39 and in a letter in response to Conyers Middleton’s denial that miracles continued to occur beyond the events recorded in the New Testament (1749).40 Another that shared Middleton’s view that miracles no longer occurred was the Swedish polymath and mystic Emmanuel Swedenborg (1668–1772). Swedenborg spent time in London in the 1710s and from the 1740s to his death in 1772. Many of his writings were published in English and Swedenborg’s ideas were the basis for the New Church movement that emerged in the late eighteenth century. William and Catherine Blake attended the first meeting of the New Church in London in 1789. Its manifesto, which the Blakes signed, included among its resolutions, ‘Miracles do not occur’ (BR 52).

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

107

Swedenborg’s rationale for this denial was that he thought that miracles compel belief, and would therefore take away spiritual freedom, making an individual a mere ‘natural Agent’ and destroying his capacity to have faith through the Word.41 In Blake’s depictions of miracles, we will see that he denies the occurrence of miracles that compel belief, but thinks that belief can compel miracles; these subjects are a demonstration of the transformative power for the individual of embodying the Human Form Divine. There were more eighteenth-century British precedents for images of Christ healing than many of the other religious subjects. Such scenes were considered appropriate for display in hospitals, and the Foundling (opened in 1741) and St Bartholomew’s (founded 1123; underwent extensive building from the 1730s) became important cultural venues and public art spaces.42 At St Bartholomew’s, William Hogarth painted The Pool of Bethesda (1736; the non-miraculous healing subject of The Good Samaritan followed in 1737), depicting the narrative in John 5:1–8 in which Jesus heals a paralytic. Hogarth’s emphasis is very much on the healing, rather than the miraculous element of the event. This could simply be a consequence of the location of the work, but Ronald Paulson detects ‘traces of Deist satire’ which point towards a Woolstonian position of the biblical miracles as allegory.43 Conversely, Benjamin West’s Christ Healing the Sick, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1781, was for the scheme for the Royal Chapel of Revealed Religion, and thus was intended to promote the establishment position (West would later return to this subject for a painting exhibited at the British Institution to great acclaim in 1811, and another presented to the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia in 1815).44 There were also numerous examples exhibited at the Royal Academy and British Institution during Blake’s lifetime. Blake himself depicted Jesus’ miracles in a variety of projects across his career: from vignettes of Lazarus-like raisings in ‘The Divine Image’ and ‘The Chimney Sweeper’ in the Songs of Innocence and There is No Natural Religion, to designs for Night Thoughts (B330.148, 330.422, 330.518) and the Butts biblical temperas (B417, 420) and watercolours. In the biblical watercolour Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood (c.1803 –5, B482, Luke 8:43 – 48, Figure 23), Blake depicted a narrative that places a particularly strong emphasis on the belief of

108

The Visionary Art of William Blake

the patient. Blake had previously represented this narrative in NT IX.03 (B330.421, Figure 24), depicting line 38: ‘To know ourselves diseas’d, is Half our Cure.’ In this passage, the poet is telling the antagonist Lorenzo that his continued boasting is a sign of his disease; he is told that the sick in body readily seek aid, but the sick in mind covet more disease and, at their worst, think themselves well (ll. 35– 7). Young could have been alluding to the biblical notion that faith heals, and certainly Blake’s invocation of this theme is appropriate. As noted, Luke’s narrative places a particularly strong emphasis on the woman’s faith in her cure: she merely touches the hem of Christ’s garment; he does not even see her because of the crowds. When Blake returned to this subject in the Butts watercolour, he combined the composition of the earlier version and another image from Night Thoughts: Christ as the ‘Great Philanthropist’ (the phrase from Young that Blake depicted), standing in a crowd, surrounded by people of all ages (IV.34, B330.143). Depicting the biblical narrative more closely than in the Night Thoughts image of the miracle, in the Butts watercolour Blake places the woman among the crowd, and specifically among the children, who look at Christ with bright-eyed eagerness. The adults, by contrast, are sorrowful – apparently unable to see past the woman’s affliction and to recognise the Human Form Divine in her. Thus, Blake implies that her reaching out to Christ is child-like, which as discussed above, is a mode of perception that Blake associates with Divine Humanity. Blake could have found this association of the woman with children within the biblical narrative: this miracle occurs when Jesus is en route to Jairus’ dying daughter, and Luke parallels the woman and the girl: the girl is 12 and the woman has been afflicted for 12 years, and Jesus addresses the woman as ‘daughter’. There is no obvious visual connection between this image and Blake’s tempera of Jairus’ daughter for Butts (B417), but later sales records suggest that there may have been another depiction of Jairus’ daughter (B418), which could have belonged to the watercolour series and thus acted as a pair to Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood. The lost work was sold with a collection of temperas, leading Butlin to conclude that this is the more likely medium; however, as Butlin also notes, it would have been curious for Blake to depict the

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

109

FIGURE 24 Night Thoughts, Night IX, page 3 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. same subject twice in the same series – although not unprecedented, as we saw with The Christ Child Asleep on the Wooden Cross in Chapter 2 (B410– 1). The two watercolours of raisings, Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain (c.1803 –5, B483, Luke 7:11 – 5, Plate 10) and The Raising of

110

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Lazarus (c.1805, B487, John 11:43 – 4, Plate 11), do not emphasise the belief of the patients as noticeably as in the healing picture just discussed. This is in contrast to most of Blake’s earlier depictions of figures being raised, which clearly represented the patients as active participants in their resurrections by showing them sitting up and reaching upwards towards the figure of Christ (such figures are seen in ‘The Divine Image’ in Songs of Innocence (1789); on the frontispiece to There is No Natural Religion (Copy L, c.1795); in NT IV.39 (B330.148), which was also engraved (page 90, Figure 8); in two proofs of this Night Thoughts plate redeployed in Vala/The Four Zoas (c.1797 – c.1807, B337.45, 337.97);45 and in The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter in the biblical temperas (B417)). Neither the son of the widow of Nain, nor Lazarus in the biblical watercolour, are as strikingly active in the processes of their resurrections: the boy has his hands together in a gesture of prayer, and Lazarus’ hands are at his sides as he floats out of the tomb. This difference in emphasis in the dynamic between the patients and Christ in these two watercolours compared to Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood and Blake’s earlier depictions of raisings is, at least in part, a reflection of the biblical accounts of these narratives. The difference is also more apparent than actual, with both designs showing an active engagement in the process of their resurrections in ways other than the dramatic arm gestures seen in Blake’s earlier depictions of raisings. In Luke’s narrative, Christ sees the body of the widow’s son being carried out of the city and initiates the raising out of compassion for the woman. Nevertheless, Blake does not depict the son as a completely passive patient of Christ’s aid: he and Christ are looking directly at one another, indicating that the event is fundamentally about the relationship between these two figures – the boy is restored to life because he has faith in Christ, or in Blakean terms, because he embodies Christ-like Divine Humanity. The faith of the boy is emphasised by his gesture of prayer, as does the contrast between his serene interaction with Christ and the reactions of other figures in the design: the mother is distraught and the funeral bearers are apparently oblivious to the miracle; by contrast, the aged men following the pallbearers are attending to the boy’s resurrection. Both here, and in The Raising of Lazarus, the pairing of Christ and the raised is reinforced by their white garments, in contrast to the black

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

111

and other coloured clothes of the attendant figures (white is of course the usual colour of burial, and of Christ’s garment in Blake’s designs, but the contrast of the others’ attire is nevertheless notable). The Raising of Lazarus depicts a very different narrative: whereas the widow and her son were apparently strangers whom Jesus happened upon, Lazarus and his sisters were his friends, and the sisters asked Jesus to help before their brother died. Again, Blake indicates a relationship between Christ and the patient by showing Lazarus looking directly at Christ, although here, the gaze is not returned, with Christ instead looking out of the picture, towards the viewer. Blake’s design is apparently indebted to elements of Rembrandt’s 1630–2 painting of the subject (Figure 25): Christ’s raised arm and facial expression, the startled onlookers, the positioning of Lazarus across the bottom of the frame with his head on the right, and the cave setting. The original painting was in Germany and Switzerland in the late eighteenth century, but the similarities are so striking that Blake must have seen a copy of Rembrandt’s picture; several works of this subject attributed to Rembrandt were sold in London in the 1780s and 1790s.46 Such a borrowing might seem surprising given Blake’s critical remarks about Rembrandt in the catalogue to the 1809 exhibition and the (harder to date) annotations to Reynolds (E528, 529, 540, 550, 575, 579, 661–2). What Blake criticised in Rembrandt was his use of colour and chiaroscuro and, thus, Blake could be invoking the elements of Rembrandt’ design ironically: Blake’s style here is characteristic of his work with flattened perspective, and simple lines and colouring, as if he has expunged the errors of Rembrandt’s use of colour and shadow from the composition. Blake has again contrasted the white garments of Christ and Lazarus with the black and coloured outfits of the attendant figures, and the central figures’ solid postures with the wild gestures of the terrified onlookers and the distraught sisters. There is a further contrast here between the responses of the two sisters, with Martha looking at her brother, and Mary focused on Christ; we will see below that Mary is encompassed in another important type of Divine Humanity in Blake’s thought, that of the Magdalen. As a depiction of a miracle, the key figure here is Lazarus. The healing and raising miracles depict the patients experiencing a process of regeneration, and this latter type

FIGURE 25 Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, The Raising of Lazarus (c.1630 – 2). 96.36 £ 81.28 cm. Oil on wood. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

113

specifically anticipates the resurrection of Christ himself. The foreshadowing is more striking here than in Blake’s other depictions of raising miracles because the composition of this design is similar to the contemporaneous The Entombment (c.1805, B498) and its related images in the sepulchre series of the biblical watercolours (B500–4): Lazarus occupies the same space in The Raising of Lazarus as the body of Christ in The Entombment and its companions. Thus, both within this image, and in the context of the watercolour series as a whole, Lazarus is paired with Christ as a type of Divine Humanity and of regeneration engendering that ideal state.

Apostles and Prophets A different kind of miraculous event is seen in The Transfiguration (c.1800, B484, Figure 26), where the miracle happens to Christ himself. Nevertheless, the role of the attendant figures is important here. This event is recorded in all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew 17:1– 9, Mark 9:2 –10, Luke 9:28 – 36); in Mark’s account: Jesus taketh with him Peter, and James, and John, and leadeth them up into an high mountain apart by themselves: and he was transfigured before them. And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them. And there appeared unto them Elias with Moses: and they were talking with Jesus. (Mark 9:2 –4)

This is a moment in which Christ’s divinity is supremely manifest: he appears in glory, and the Father’s voice announces from the clouds that this is his Son (Matthew 17:5, Mark 9:7, Luke 9:35). The subject presents a challenge to the artist, namely to depict a process of transformation in a single frame. The example that Blake would have known best (not in the original) is that of Raphael, which was one of the most celebrated works of art in the Romantic period, praised in discourses on art and widely reproduced and imitated, especially in engravings and popular prints (Figure 27 is a copy made by Thomas Lawrence, aged 13).47 It also influenced depictions of the Resurrection (as mentioned in Chapter 1) and the Ascension. However, apart from reproductions of Raphael’s painting, the subject was rarely depicted by Blake’s contemporaries (probably partly owing to the weight of comparison with Raphael); one example is Robert

114

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 26 The Transfiguration (c.1800). 37.7 £ 32.4 cm. Watercolour on paper. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Smirke (senior)’s design for the Macklin Bible (exh. 1791 – 3, print by Joseph Constantine Stadler published 1791), which follows Raphael’s design in placing Christ elevated among clouds, with the Apostles in the foreground below, shielding their faces from his radiance.48 Blake’s watercolour instead appears to be based on the composition of Ghiberti’s relief from the ‘Gates of Paradise’, which Blake could have known via an engraving or perhaps his friend John Flaxman’s drawing of the relief in a sketchbook from his travels in

FIGURE 27 Sir Thomas Lawrence, after Raphael, Drawing after ‘The Transfiguration’ (1782). 117.5 £ 73.7 cm. Pastel on paper, mounted on linen. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

116

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Italy (1787, Figure 28). Like Ghiberti’s design, Blake flattens the perspective so that the figures are all positioned on the same plane, and whereas Raphael places Christ and the prophets in a lofty position in the clouds, here, they hover just above the sleeping Apostles. Thus, Christ is brought closer to the prophets and the Apostles within the picture frame, and the entire group is closer to the viewer within the pictorial space. Blake therefore presents a more intimate encounter with the transfigured Christ than Raphaelesque depictions of the subject. The Raphaelesque convention of placing Christ among clouds telescopes the next few verses of the narrative into the moment of transfiguration: a cloud overshadows Jesus and the disciples as Moses and Elijah depart, and from the cloud they hear a voice, saying: ‘This is my beloved Son: hear him’ (Mark 9:7). By omitting reference to the voice of the Father, Blake depicts Christ manifesting his divinity without the mediation of the Father. He illuminates the figures around him; his light shines on the Apostles and the elaborate swirls of his garment flow around them. Moses and Elijah (shown with his visionary attributes of fire and a wheel) kneel at either side of Christ; this deferential pose is another innovation from conventional iconography (they are normally hovering in the clouds with Christ) and indicates that the prophets recognise that Christ supersedes the Old Testament order. The recumbent Apostles represent a range of responses to the transfigured Christ. Blake has followed the pictorial tradition that derives from Luke’s account of the event that ‘Peter and they that were with him were heavy with sleep: and when they were awake, they saw his glory, and the two men that stood with him’ (9:32). Blake depicts the three Apostles at different stages of waking to see Christ in his glory: the central figure is still asleep; the one on the right is startled, and shields himself with his right arm; the figure on the left looks up, captivated, at the sight of Christ. The last is a Blakean innovation from conventions of depicting the subject, where the Apostles are usually shown shielding themselves from the light of the transfiguration. For Blake, that illumination is not a supernatural manifestation of Christ’s unique divinity, but a sign of his perfect embodiment of the Human Form Divine. Thus, the

FIGURE 28 John Flaxman, The Transfiguration, from Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Baptistery Doors, Florence, from Flaxman’s Italian Sketchbook (1787). 21.9 £ 15.2 cm. Graphite, pen and ink and grey wash on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

118

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Apostle on the left, and the two prophets, are able to behold that illumination without guarding their gaze, whereas the other two Apostles represent inadequate modes of perception. While Blake usually depicts Apostles as figures who respond astutely to Christ, the deficient response of those here serves as a reminder to Blake’s viewer against complacency. He had depicted a similar theme The Agony in the Garden (c.1799 – 1800, B425, Luke 22:41 – 4) in the tempera series, where the Apostles fall asleep during the watch after the Last Supper, and thus, in Blake’s design, do not witness a rather spectacular appearance from a sustaining angel.49 And as mentioned previously, his Job series is an extended account of the difference between superficial piety and deep divinity. In these subjects, where otherwise positive figures are depicted as lacking, Blake emphasises that embodying the Human Form Divine is an endeavour that requires constant striving, not merely going through the motions of being a follower of Jesus. The viewer of The Transfiguration is therefore presented with a range of possible responses to Christ, and so we are invited to consider our own engagement with him. Although it is difficult to determine the object of Christ’s own gaze, his unusual gesture (hands raised in front of his chest, palms facing outwards) engages the viewer, thus inviting us into the light and company of his transfiguration and not to slumber in an inadequate state of vision.50 We will encounter the Apostles in a more positive light in a design at the end of Jesus’ public ministry.

Magdalens Another aspect of Jesus’ ministry are the questionings put to him by groups such as the Scribes and Pharisees intended to expose him as a fraud or blasphemer. Blake includes one such episode in the biblical watercolours in The Woman Taken in Adultery (c.1805, B486, John 8:1 –11, Figure 29).51 The key figure here is the woman, who must be seen in the context of Blake’s other depictions of ‘Magdalens’, both in this series, and in Blake’s oeuvre as a whole. Although the woman in John 8 is not named, she is one of several female figures who have been conflated into the single, pseudo-biblical persona of Mary Magdalene as a penitent prostitute. Blake assumed this tradition,

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

119

calling the woman taken in adultery Mary in The Everlasting Gospel (E521) and depicting the women in his images of these various narratives with similar appearance. Hence, I refer to her, and to other such figures in Blake’s works as ‘Magdalens’. The Magdalen appears eight times in the biblical watercolours: in four episodes in Jesus’ public ministry (B486 – 9), and four in the Passion-Resurrection sequence (B497 – 8, 503– 4). In the temperas she appeared twice, in The Entombment (B427), and the extra-biblical Christ the Mediator (B429). For Blake, much as in traditional interpretations, the Magdalen represents Christ’s forgiveness:52 he does not condemn her, but offers her new life; he welcomes her into his circle of friends,

FIGURE 29 The Woman Taken in Adultery (John VIII, 8–9) (c.1805). 35.6 £ 36.8 cm. Pen and watercolour over graphite on paper. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, museum purchase with funds donated by contribution, 90.110. Photograph q 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

120

The Visionary Art of William Blake

and she has privileged roles, including, in John’s Gospel, being the first to see the resurrected Christ (20:11 – 4), as Blake depicted in The Entombment in the watercolour series (B498).53 Moreover, Blake presents her as Christ-like, as a type and even counterpart of Jesus. In eighteenth-century England, the term ‘Magdalen’ referred to prostitutes, who were a visible presence on the streets of London. This association of the prostitute with her pseudo-biblical type was perpetuated through the circulation of sentimental narratives presenting these women as penitent victims. London’s Magdalen Hospital, which opened in 1758 for the reformation of prostitutes, was particularly prominent in this endeavour. Thus, ‘Magdalens’ became objects of social change, infantilised and de-individualised.54 Blake’s own reference to the contemporary Magdalen in his poem ‘London’ presents her as a victim but rejects any sentimentality: ‘the youthful Harlots curse’ is a cry of horror, as well as a reference to venereal disease – hence she is an agent of death, who ‘blights with plague the marriage-hearse’ (Experience, E27).55 ‘London’ criticises the society that engendered the harlot’s plight and emphasises the divinity and dignity in all humankind. So too in images of the pseudo-biblical Magdalen, Blake focuses not on her sinfulness, but on her dignity, and on the intensity of her faith. Blake’s watercolour of John 8:1 – 11 depicts the moment when Jesus has told the accusers of the woman: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her’, and as he stoops to write in the ground for the second time, the accusers exit the Temple, leaving Jesus alone with the woman (8:7 – 9). This is a narrative about the Law: the Temple elders try to test Jesus by bringing the woman before him, hoping to catch him breaking the Law, but instead he holds up a mirror to their accusations, showing the charge to be hypocritical, and he does not condemn her. This theme recalls two of Blake’s early watercolours of English history, The Penance of Jane Shore (c.1779, c.1793, B67 – 9) and The Ordeal of Queen Emma (c.1793, B59), both of which depict women vindicated of accusations of adultery. The emphasis on the Law also links The Woman Taken in Adultery to the contemporaneous watercolour God Writing Upon the Tables of the Covenant (c.1805, B448): both God and Christ are writing with their fingers, and there is a long interpretive tradition that what Christ was

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

121

writing in the dust was his new law (the idea originated with Augustine and had long passed into popular belief). As I have argued elsewhere, Blake depicts Christ as an incarnation of Divine Humanity replacing the Law by making the form of his elegantly stooped figure, and the architecture of the Temple, resemble the tablets of the Law.56 As Christopher Heppner has discussed, in An Essay on the Theory of Painting (1725) the art theorist Jonathan Richardson used this narrative as an example to explain how an artist should select the appropriate point in a narrative to depict in a painting.57 Richardson recommends the moment when Christ pronounces: ‘He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone’ (John 8:7), because at this point in the narrative, Jesus is the central actor, and he is not stooping (which would be ‘not so graceful, and noble’), nor is he left alone with the woman (which would leave the scene ‘disfurnished’).58 Blake is shy neither of depicting Christ stooping, nor to leave his design ‘disfurnished’; indeed, as is typical of Blake’s designs, he has omitted extraneous detail such as elaborate architecture, and whereas Richardson highlighted the faces of the elders as ‘an opportunity of [the artist] exerting himself, and giving an appealing Variety to the Composition’, Blake omitted this feature by depicting the elders departing with their backs to the viewer.59 Blake’s design focuses simply on the encounter between Christ and the woman. Standing opposite Christ, the woman acts as his pair; although their poses are different, Blake gives them similar features, wavy red hair, plain white garments and bare feet, in contrast to the brightly clad, sandalled elders. This pairing is echoed later in the watercolour sequence in two of a group of designs depicting Christ in the sepulchre: in The Entombment (c.1805, B498), Mary Magdalene stands in the doorway to the tomb, and the body of Christ lies below; in The Magdalene at the Sepulchre, Mary Magdalene is inside the empty tomb, where Christ’s body had lain, looking up at the doorway, where Christ now stands in the place that she had stood. Thus, the figure of the Magdalen is presented as a counterpart to Christ in the biblical watercolours, a theme later echoed in The Everlasting Gospel and Jerusalem. Her hands are tied behind her back, which is quite the opposite of Christ’s athletic gesture, and prevents her from attempting to cover herself, as the woman is usually concerned to

122

The Visionary Art of William Blake

do in depictions of this scene. Instead, her pose is dignified, and she is not trying to hide her crime. The dignity of the woman is reinforced by comparing this scene to its Old Testament counterpart in the watercolour series, Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (c.1803–5, B439, Figure 30), which is another scene of accusation of adultery. Joseph and Potiphar’s wife occupy the same places in the frame as Christ and the woman, respectively, but here, Potiphar’s wife is the accuser. In contrast to the dignity of the Magdalen, Potiphar’s wife, the real culprit here, waves her arms and legs voluptuously. She has abused her position of power, whereas the Magdalen has been abused by structures of power. The binding of the accused woman’s hands shows her helplessness and symbolises the Law and the Church’s rule-bound religion, as criticised in ‘The Garden of Love’ in Experience, where the church is ‘binding with briars [. . .] joys & desires’ (E26). The pairing of the victim of the Law and Christ who displaces it indicates that being a member of the Divine Body is not about following a legal or moral code but simply (but more demandingly) being the embodiment of Christ the Imagination. Christ does not condemn the woman, but tells her ‘go, sin no more’ (John 8:11); as Christopher Rowland highlights, by pointing to the space the accusers have vacated, Christ gives the woman the Imaginative freedom to transform fully into his likeness.60 Thus, this victim of social oppression becomes a member of the Divine Body; indeed, as Rowland notes, in bending to write, Christ is bowing before her, indicating that he recognises the divine in her.61 As viewers of this scene, we are invited to make that same recognition as Christ and to emulate her as an embodiment of Divine Humanity. The Magdalen’s other appearances in the biblical watercolours are similar in theme to Jesus’ statements to patients of his miracles that their faith healed them (as seen in Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood). Jesus makes a similar statement to the ‘sinner’ who washes his feet in the house of the Pharisee: ‘Thy faith hath saved thee; go in peace’ (Luke 7:50), and when he has dinner with Martha and Mary in Luke 10:38 – 42, Jesus tells Martha that she is too cumbered with serving and that Mary, who sat with him, ‘hath chosen that good part’ (7:42). These episodes inform Blake’s idea of the Magdalen as particularly Christ-like and Christocentric in her

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

123

FIGURE 30 Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife (c.1803 – 5). 35.7 £ 31.8 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink, and graphite on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT. vision. In The Raising of Lazarus (Plate 11), Blake contrasts her focus on Christ with her sister’s looking at Lazarus and the onlookers’ fright. In The House of Martha and Mary (c.1805, B489, Figure 31), Christ is looking at Martha but gesturing to Mary, indicating that she is the model for ‘serving’ him (Luke 10:42); this subject might have appealed to Blake’s disregard for social and religious rituals – for Blake, as in Luke’s narrative, knowing Christ is more important than serving dinner. In Mary Magdalene Washing Christ’s Feet (c.1803 – 5, B488, Figure 32), the contrast between action and inaction is

124

The Visionary Art of William Blake

subverted: although Martha is here sat at the table, mirroring Christ’s pose, it is Mary who more closely resembles him, wearing a similar white garment and, like Blake’s Christ, has red hair. Martha’s hair is covered, and her head bowed, as if she is the one in need of Christ’s aid. Mary’s act provokes discord among Blake’s diners, which could derive from Luke 7:39 in which a Pharisee is appalled that Jesus allows a sinful woman to anoint his feet, or, in line with Butlin’s identification of the scene as John 12:4 – 8,62 the upset could be Judas’ protest that Mary’s lavish anointing of Jesus is a waste of money; the design could also be a conflation of both narratives. Blake’s Jesus does not engage in the confrontation, which is characteristic of his role as unifier, as seen throughout the biblical watercolours, and epitomised

FIGURE 31 Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (c.1803 – 5). 34.8 £ 33.2 cm. Watercolour. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

125

FIGURE 32 Mary Magdalene Washing Christ’s Feet (c.1805). 34.9 £ 34.6 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over graphite on paper. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mgrs. William Thomas Tonner, 1964-110-10. in the final subject from Jesus’ public ministry, The Hymn of Christ and the Apostles (c.1805, B490, Figure 33).

Disciples At the end of his account of the Last Supper, Mark records: ‘And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives’ (Mark 14:26; cf. Matthew 26:30). The Hymn of Christ is an almost unprecedented subject in art, but has obvious appeal for Blake because it identifies Christ and the Apostles with an activity readily

126

The Visionary Art of William Blake

recognisable as artistic.63 Indeed, Blake uses music as a symbol for imaginative activity several times in his works, including in the figure of the Piper in the Songs, and in Job’s conversion to music-making (discussed below). The title is a misnomer because, as Mary Lynn Johnson highlights, the figures on either side of Jesus are female and thus are not Apostles (they may, as Johnson suggests, be Martha and

FIGURE 33 The Hymn of Christ and the Apostles (c.1805). 37.7 £ 32.2 cm. Pen and watercolour over pencil on paper. Collection of Robert N. Essick: Copyright q 2017 William Blake Archive. Used with permission.

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

127

Mary).64 Mark’s narrative does allow for the presence of others at this gathering: Jesus first ‘sendeth forth two of his disciples’ to prepare the Passover (Mark 14:13 – 6; surely likely to be women), and then ‘in the evening he cometh with the twelve’ (14:17); Mark does not say that the two disciples had left, nor that there were no others present. Thus, Blake demonstrates an attentive reading of the biblical text, and the work would better be known by the more inclusive title The Hymn of Christ and the Disciples. As a group of believers whom Jesus gathers to participate in and continue his ministry, the disciples are an obvious point of reference for thinking about life in the Divine Body. It is not always possible to identify figures in Blake’s images of Jesus’ ministry as his disciples or Apostles. There are numerous designs in which attendant figures may include some of Jesus’ followers; often these groups include figures of all ages, both male and female, which resists giving the Apostles special status. It is usually only where their presence is demanded by the biblical text that figures can be firmly identified as Apostles or disciples in Blake’s designs. They are often presented as core representatives of the Divine Body, who, like Jesus himself, are relatively inactive, simply acting as witnesses to events in which the emphasis is on other agents, such as in The Ascension (c.1803 – 5, B505), where the focus is on the ascending Christ. It is only where they are central to the action that Apostles or disciples assume more active roles. However, even where they are relatively inactive, their presence should not simply be explained merely in terms of Blake following the biblical text and pictorial tradition; they represent types of the community of the Divine Body in which the central subject is also participating. For example, in The Raising of Jairus’ Daughter in the biblical temperas (B417), three Apostles act as one frame of the composition, balancing Jairus and his wife, and the parents are also paired with Christ; this double pairing identifies the parents at once with Jesus himself and with the community of his Divine Body symbolised by the Apostles. However, as seen in The Transfiguration, the Apostles are sometimes inadequate in their response to Jesus, which serves as a reminder to Blake’s viewer against complacency in belief. The Hymn of Christ is a clear manifestation of Blake’s statement that ‘Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples were all Artists’ (Laocoo¨n, E274).

128

The Visionary Art of William Blake

The subject must also have appealed to Butts, whose father (also Thomas) compiled a hymn book for John Wesley, Harmonia Sacra (c.1753).65 Blake himself might have been exposed to the strong Moravian culture of hymn singing by his mother.66 In terms of its biblical source, this subject belongs to the Passion sequence, but this context is not obvious in the image. Contrasting with the confusion among the Apostles in his earlier tempera The Last Supper (c.1799 – 1800, B424) and the violence of Judas Betrays Him (c.1803 – 5, B491), which immediately follows this design in the sequence of biblical watercolours, this is a moment of harmony and unity before the betrayal by Judas and the Apostles’ denial of Jesus. Thus, this image can best be read as the last in the sequence of Christ’s ministry, rather than the first of his Passion, representing the completion of his public ministry as a creative act. Christ himself is not making music – it is happening all around him, but he is simply standing, his eyes raised to Heaven, as the locus of the activity taking place. The depiction of music making links The Hymn of Christ to three Old Testament designs in the biblical watercolours. First, in Jephthah Met by his Daughter (c.1803?, B451, Judges 11:34 – 7), the daughter’s three attendants are playing pipes and a tambourine, and in The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter (1803, B452, Judges 11:30 – 1, 39), there is a timbrel and a lute on the altar with the girl. These two designs relate to a story in Judges in which Jephthah swears an oath, before going into battle, that when he returns home he will offer the first person he sees as a sacrifice; as seen in the first design, that first person is his daughter, who greets him with ‘timbrels and with dances’ (Judges 11:34) and so he sacrifices her, as seen in the second design. The instruments on the altar are Blake’s innovation, and point to a reading of this narrative as a sacrifice of the girl’s childlike Imagination. As I argue elsewhere, The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter may have had an autobiographical resonance for Blake, because he produced it towards the end of his time in Felpham, when he had become frustrated with the demands of Hayley’s patronage; hence, the sacrifice of the daughter and the instruments which demonstrate her creative energy, can be seen as an allegory for Hayley’s stifling of Blake’s Imaginative work with more mundane commissions.67

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

129

The third depiction of musical instruments in the Old Testament watercolours is By the Waters of Babylon (c.1806, B466, Figure 34), which depicts Psalm 137. This Psalm is a song of lamentation in exile, in which the Israelites cry: ‘How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?’ (137:4), and so hang their harps in the willows (137:2). Babylon is a recurring trope in Blake’s writings, representing cruelty, imprisonment and the destruction of Imaginative art.68 As its New Testament counterpart, The Hymn of Christ represents a delivery from that captivity, and from the stifling of Imagination seen in The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter, through Christ, of art. The pairing of By the Waters of Babylon and The Hymn of Christ is reinforced by comparing these watercolours to the first and last designs in Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job, first executed in watercolour (c.1805–6, B550.21), probably soon after The Hymn. In the first design in that series, musical instruments hang in the tree (B550.1), recalling the act of the captive Israelites in Psalm 137, but in the final design (B550.21), which closely echoes the composition The Hymn of Christ, Job and his family are playing them. Blake’s version of Job recasts him as a figure in need of spiritual transformation; he has put aside music, but through the trials he experiences, he learns to make Imaginative activity his way of life, taking up the instruments, echoing the activity of Christ and his Apostles in The Hymn. Blake’s depiction of The Hymn of Christ emphasises the infinite scope of the event, not only by including the female disciples, but also setting the event outside, rather than in the upper room, as implied in Mark, thereby indicating that this Divine Body of disciples is open to anyone. The setting also emphasises the contrast between the convivial community in this scene, and the chaos and betrayal in Judas Betrays Him, which also takes place on the Mount of Olives (specifically in the Garden of Gethsemane, at the foot of that hill) as seen in the similar trees in both designs. This juxtaposition would have been striking when the designs were viewed together in the Butts collection. Before this moment of division, which represents an abuse of Divinity Humanity, in his image of the completion of Christ’s ministry in The Hymn of Christ, Blake invites the viewer into the community of Apostles, to participate in the hymn, and to be members of the Divine Body of Imagination.

130

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 34 By the Waters of Babylon (1806). 40.3 £ 37.7 cm. Watercolour, ink and graphite on paper. Harvard Art Museums/ Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.404. Photo: Imaging Department. q President and Fellows of Harvard College. Within the biblical watercolours, this design is a fitting end to Blake’s depictions of Jesus’ public ministry, representing a community of Imagination engendered through Christ and into which the viewer is invited. This is the central aim of Blake’s art: Jesus who lived, died and rose again is the ultimate type of the Human Form Divine, which is the true state that each of us should embody and thereby become a Divine Body of individuals, as seen here in the friends and followers of Jesus. Their ministry continues in scenes such as the

Community-Building in the Biblical Watercolours

131

sepulchre series and the Ascension, which have been mentioned in this chapter; their legacy is continued by St Paul, who experiences a dramatic visionary conversion in Blake’s The Conversion of Saul (c.1800, B506) and whose own Christ-like ministry is seen in a further four subjects taken from the Book of Acts (B507 – 10). CONCLUSION The biblical watercolours are Blake’s most extensive pictorial engagement with the public ministry of Jesus. Other subjects in this series, such as Jesus’ appearances in three designs related to the Psalms (c.1803/c.1805, B462 – 4), and the remarkable Resurrection sequence in the sepulchre series (c.1805, B501 – 4) leave the viewer in no doubt that Christ is the supremely divine figure seen in the designs discussed from Night Thoughts and the biblical temperas. The scenes from Jesus’ public ministry seen here depict him in situations more recognisable to the life of the viewer (although miracles are not familiar occurrences, the viewer can identify with some of the responses of those involved, such as the pain of loss seen in the scenes of raisings). Thus, they show in more perceptible ways how the viewer can internalise the processes of regeneration and inspiration seen in the previous chapters in order to become part of the community of Imagination. As seen in comparative examples such as The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter, Blake also depicted figures from beyond the Gospel narratives embodying that state; other such figures not discussed here include St Paul in Blake’s depictions of his conversion and preaching (as mentioned above), and Jesus’ parents in images of their deaths as visionary events (1803, B511– 2).69 Blake’s depictions of episodes from Jesus’ public ministry discussed here include activity that is ‘artistic’ in the common understanding of the term – in particular, the musical celebration of The Hymn of Christ – but also other sorts of activity that recognise the Human Form Divine in others, that transform the way that we see the world, and which build the community of the Divine Body. In the next chapter, we see how Blake showed the universal scope of this community in various projects from the years following the creation of the biblical watercolours.

This World of Imagination is Infinite & Eternal whereas the world of Generation or Vegetation is Finite & Temporal There Exist in that Eternal World the Permanent Realities of Every Thing which we see are reflected in this Vegetable Glass of Nature A Vision of the Last Judgment (1810, E555)

Of the Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awaking to Eternal Life. This theme calls me in sleep night after night, & ev’ry morn Awakes me at sun-rise, then I see the Saviour over me Spreading his beams of love, & dictating the words of this mild song. Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine: Fibres of love from man to man thro Albions pleasant land. Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion 4:1–8 (c.1804–20, E146)

R

EMBLEM . n. . [ἔmblhma.]

2. An occult repreſentation; an alluſive picture; a typical deſignation. ETE ’RNAL . adj. [aeternus, Latin.]

1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Without beginning or end. Without beginning. Without end; endleſs; immortal. Perpetual; conſtant; unintermitting. Unchangeable. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1799)

CHAPTER 4

Eternal Christ as Universal Human Form Divine (Works of 1805 – c.1811)

In the decade after the return to London, Blake was busy with a variety of projects.1 Thomas Butts continued to be a loyal patron. He commissioned several series of watercolour designs for Milton’s poems; Blake was also producing such pictures for Revd Joseph Thomas of Epsom, Surrey, and later, for his last important patron John Linnell (B527 – 46). Butts also bought one of a number of elaborate designs of the Last Judgement (B639 – 48), a theme that Blake first tackled in a design for Robert Blair’s The Grave as one of a series of designs for that poem commissioned by the publisher Robert Cromek in 1805 and returned to several times throughout the rest of his life. Other work for Butts in this period included a series of watercolours of the Book of Job (c.1805 – 6, B550), and several religious tempera paintings (1810 – c.1811, B667 – 73). As discussed in previous chapters, in 1809, Blake hosted a one-man show, accompanied by a catalogue that set out his artistic manifesto; this was an attempt to tap into the success of private exhibitions in London in the period. The exhibition had grand ideals, announcing that it would showcase ‘real Art [. . .] stripped from the Ignorances of Rubens and Rembrandt, Titian and Correggio’, an endeavour that Blake described as ‘the greatest of Duties to [his] Country’ (E528). He invited ‘those Noblemen and Gentlem[e]n’ who had rejected his works from the Royal Academy and British Institution exhibitions to

134

The Visionary Art of William Blake

inspect his display (DC, E527 –8). His ambition then, was to reform the art world through his exhibition, echoing James Barry’s ambitions in his Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (1775), and in the Adelphi murals and accompanying catalogue (1783).2 Blake’s hopes were disappointed: the exhibition was poorly attended and the only review was highly critical (BR 282 – 6).3 Many of the 16 works in the exhibition deal with notions of character, depicting a variety of literary, historical and biblical figures through which Blake represents states of error and truth; they are presented as types of the ‘lineaments of universal human life’ (E533).4 At first reading, the Descriptive Catalogue is unlikely to give the impression that its aims are to be understood in Christological terms. ‘Jesus’ is mentioned just twice, and the catalogue entry for the four biblical watercolours (two of which feature Christ: The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garment (1800, B495) and Angels Hovering over the Body of Jesus in the Sepulchre (c.1805, B500)) says nothing about the subject of these designs (E549). However, in the two passages in the catalogue that do mention Jesus, we see that Blake conceives of Christ as the source of that which the exhibition seeks to restore. First, in the description of The Canterbury Pilgrims, discussed at the beginning of Chapter 3, Blake identifies Jesus as the vine – one who unites many in his Divine Body. The second time Jesus is mentioned is in the description of The Ancient Britons, the largest (now lost) painting in the exhibition. Here, Blake reasserts an idea first put forward in All Religions Are One (1788, E1 – 2) that ‘the religion of Jesus’ is the true religion and the source of all religions (E543). Thus, whilst Christ (or Jesus) does not dominate Blake’s discourse in the catalogue, the two references to Jesus confirm that Blake regards Christ as eternal Divine Body in whom the various figures represented in the exhibition have their apotheoses (the clearest example of Christ-like apotheosis is Pitt (1805?, B651), whom Blake identifies with the Angel of Revelation (E530) but is depicted in Christ-like form).5 It was also in this period that Blake worked on his two longest illuminated books, Milton, A Poem (1804 –c.1811) and Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804 – c.1820); and he continued working on the manuscript poem Vala/The Four Zoas (begun c.1797)

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

135

until about 1807. These three long poems are closely related, and large portions of text in Milton and Jerusalem are the same as passages in Vala/The Four Zoas (it has often been assumed that the borrowing was one-way, from The Four Zoas into the illuminated poems, but the recycling could have occurred in both directions). All three poems are essentially accounts of the spiritual transformation of the individual, told through the trials experienced by the respective protagonists. In short, then, the penultimate decade of Blake’s life was full of work in which Blake was deeply engaged in questions of the nature of art and religion – not only in the works from the 1809 exhibition and the writings that I have mentioned, but also in his pictorial works from this period, which I discuss here. In the previous chapter, we saw how Blake represented a variety of figures from Jesus’ public ministry as archetypal embodiments of the Human Form Divine. Here, I explore how Blake showed Christ himself as the ultimate emblematic figure of that state – the eternal Human Form Divine. Such a vision of Christ is particularly prominent in subjects from beyond the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; I will examine four such themes from projects from the penultimate decade of Blake’s life, namely: Christ active in cosmic history in the Paradise Lost watercolours (1807, 1808; 1822); as judge in depictions of the Last Judgement (1805, 1806, 1808, c.1809); as a timeless icon-like figure in the tempera Christ Blessing and its three companion pictures (c.1810); and as a typological presence in the multi-scene composition An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man (c.1811). In these subjects, like a figure in an emblem book, or one of Blake’s own mythological figures, Christ is represented as an eternal symbolic figure – a universal type for the individual artist-Christian.

CHRIST IN COSMIC HISTORY IN PARADISE LOST Paradise Lost is Milton’s reimagining of the Creation and Fall narratives in Genesis 2– 3. Christ appears in the poem as the ‘Son’ and ‘Saviour’, but the emphasis is on the Father as the agent of the cosmological events. Blake’s designs Christologise Milton’s narrative as his Night Thoughts designs had for Young’s paternalistic poem.

136

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Blake’s first set of designs for Paradise Lost was created for Joseph Thomas in 1807 (B529). These 12 watercolours were the second of several series of Milton designs produced for Thomas, the first being eight designs for Comus of c.1801 (B527).6 The following year, he produced a second set of 12 designs for Butts, 11 of which rework the Thomas designs, and one of which depicts a different moment in Milton’s poem (B529.4, 536.5). Later, in 1822, Blake reworked three or four of the designs from the Butts series for John Linnell (B537), which are presumed to be the beginning of another set of 12 that was never completed.7 Christ appears five times in the series of 12 designs – an unprecedented proportion compared to previous illustrations of the poem.8 These subjects are: Christ Offers to Redeem Man (B529.3, 536.3), The Rout of the Rebel Angels (B529.7, B536.7), The Creation of Eve (B529.8, B536.8, B537.2), The Judgment of Adam and Eve (B529.10, 536.10) and Michael Foretells the Crucifixion (B529.11, 536.11, 537.3). I focus particularly on the first three of these designs here, as I will be discussing The Judgment of Adam and Eve and Michael Foretells the Crucifixion later in this chapter, and in Chapter 5, respectively; but I will indicate here how these subjects fit into the vision of Christ in the series as a whole. Christ’s appearances in the Paradise Lost designs all take place at the beginning of cosmic history – long before the birth of Jesus. The notion that Christ was involved in Creation and other aspects of cosmic history prior to his birth as Jesus is by no means peculiar to Blake, but the visual depiction of Christ in such roles, while not unprecedented, is relatively unusual. As I have already noted, the prominence of Christ in Blake’s Paradise Lost designs ‘corrects’ the paternalistic emphases of the poem with an expression of Blake’s own vision of Christ as ‘the only God’ (BR 421), who is eternally active in the world. Blake had previously depicted Christ as Creator in Night Thoughts (NT IX.64 –5, IX.111; B330.482 – 3, 330.529),9 and as the divine agency in three of the biblical watercolours depicting the Psalms (c.1803/c.1805, B462– 4).10 In these various subjects, Blake presents Christ inaugurating and sustaining a world that reflects his own nature – giving and enabling the restoration of the Human Form Divine to individuals and to the world as whole. These are acts that are inherently creative. This giving of himself is not a one-time event,

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

137

but a continual process, for every act of an individual who embodies the Human Form Divine is an act of creation, a participation in Christ’s essence. Christ’s first appearance in the series is in Christ Offers to Redeem Man (Plate 12). This is the third design in the series, following Satan Calling Up His Legions and Satan, Sin and Death, and therefore represents Christ’s intervention into the state of chaos depicted in the first two designs. Previous illustrators of this subject depicted Christ enthroned in heaven alongside a cross, but Blake depicts Christ as the cross, leaping into the Father’s arms in an effortless, gravity-defying, cruciform gesture (this effect is stronger in the Butts version than in the less linear Thomas design). This emphasis on Christ himself, rather than on the cross, is consistent with Blake’s ambivalent attitude to the Crucifixion (a matter I discuss in Chapter 5) and emphasises his self-giving. As J.M.Q. Davies argues, the design draws on the tradition of images of the Father supporting the dead body of ¨ rer’s The Holy Trinity (1511), making it a visual pun Christ, such as Du which replaces the dead body of Christ with his living form.11 Contrasting with the openness of Christ’s gesture, the Father is hunched on his throne and his face is hidden (but so is Christ’s in the Thomas version);12 this contrast is further reinforced by the Christlike elegance of the four swooping angelic figures (and even of Satan, although he is excluded from the heavenly portion of the design by a strip of clouds). The figure of Christ is also almost a mirror of Satan in the first design in the series, Satan Calling up his Legions, creating a further contrast between Satan’s Hell-bound pretence as Saviour and Christ’s elegant Heavenly redemptive pose.13 Christ’s offer is made before the Fall and hence is not contingent on it; the act is an utterly freely made manifestation of the Human Form Divine. In short then, Blake makes clear that the agency here is Christ’s alone. Blake goes further to show that Christ is a universal and eternal figure in the composition of the design: he arranges the figures of Christ and the angels to form the shape of a lower-case Omega (v). At a stretch, we might also see the figure of the Father as a smaller upper-case Alpha (A), but the point I make does not depend on this latter comparison. There is a precedent for Blake making figures form letters in the sketch Hebrew Characters Using the Human Form

138

The Visionary Art of William Blake

(B199 verso), and a related arrangement to that of Christ Offers to Redeem Man has been noted in Christ Being Ministered to by Angels in the later Paradise Regained watercolours (c.1816 – 20, B544.11) by Bette Charlene Werner: there, the configuration of Christ and the angels form an upper case Alpha (A) and Omega (V).14 This parallel creates an iconographic link between Christ’s offer of and achievement of redemption in Milton’s pair of poems.15 Thus, by representing Christ’s self-giving at the beginning of cosmic history in Christ Offers to Redeem Man, Blake emphasises that he is its Omega (end). Hence, in his first appearance in the series, Blake establishes that Christ is the eternal – ‘without beginning or end’, ‘perpetual; constant; unintermitting’ – cosmic human. As I argue elsewhere, Blake would reinforce this notion of Christ as a constant, sustaining presence in the world in his designs for Paradise Regained, which represent Christ as immanent Imagination.16 Christ next appears in The Rout of the Rebel Angels (Figure 35). This subject relates to a passage in Book VI of Milton’s poem about ‘War in Heaven’ (l. 265), an event which is mentioned in Revelation 12:7 and is reimagined by Milton. Specifically, the lines depicted describe the Son waging war on ‘his Enemies’ (ll. 824– 66). This was a popular subject for illustrators of Milton’s poem, and is ripe with dramatic potential. Blake makes the subject his own, incorporating motifs that appear elsewhere in his work, exemplifying his practice of creating images that participate in a Blakean universe of symbols (such connections probably were not known to Thomas, but at least some could have been recognised by Butts). Blake shows Christ routing the rebel angels by firing an arrow towards them. This weapon is mentioned by Milton (l. 845) and had appeared in Christ’s hands in one of Blake’s Night Thoughts watercolours (NT VII.53, B330.325), depicting a line from Young’s reimagining of ‘War in Heav’n’ (l. 1071) in which ‘Th’ Almighty’s outstretcht Arms took down his Bow’ (l. 1072). Arrows, of course, also appear in Blake’s famous lyric from the Preface to Milton, which had probably been composed during or soon after Blake’s time in Sussex. There, Blake articulates a desire to restore England as the New Jerusalem, where Christ, the ‘Countenance Divine’, is embodied; ‘Arrows of desire’ are among the weapons rallied in this endeavour (E95), although they are wielded in the service of,

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

139

FIGURE 35 The Rout of the Rebel Angels, illustration 7 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 28.8 £ 20.8 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. rather than by, the ‘Countenance Divine’. In Paradise Lost, the Son is presented as the agent of the Father’s wrath, and is described as himself having a ‘count’nance too severe to be beheld’ (l. 825). Such a Christ is at odds with Blake’s conception of the Human Form Divine, and he modifies the character of Milton’s Son in his design. Although Christ is drawing a bow, his expression – particularly in the Butts version – is

140

The Visionary Art of William Blake

mild, and rather than acting as the Father’s emissary, Blake suggests that Christ is displacing the Father by placing him within a red circular sun, recalling The Ancient of Days (Plate 1). Whereas the Father of The Ancient of Days is imposing a tyrannical order on the world with his dividers, Christ’s action expunges the tyranny of error represented by the rebel angels. As encountered elsewhere, Blake rejects the worldview represented in The Ancient of Days for a Christocentric understanding of Creation and the world; in particular, light and the heavenly bodies are identified with Christ’s prophetic inspiration.17 The still light of the sun is contrasted with the flickering flames surrounding the falling angels; these flames are destructive, but purgative, for they are consuming the error represented by the falling angels. Blake’s diagrammatic composition with flattened perspective makes Christ more dominant than in most versions of this subject, which tended to give most space to the dramatically falling angels with Christ set back and aloft in the design (for instance, Francis Hayman’s version for Thomas Newton’s 1749 edition of the poem, Figure 36).18 Moreover, as Pointon notes, Blake’s framing of Christ in the sun delineates a clear distinction between the heavenly company and the falling angels, and becomes a sort of force-field from which the rebel angels are being ejected.19 The heavenly and fallen are also contrasted in the juxtaposition of the graceful heavenly host and the grotesque, contorted figures of the rebel angels.20 The design recalls one of Blake’s illustrations to Thomas Gray’s Progress of Poesy, which depicts Hyperion (father of the Sun-god Helios) as a figure who, like the Christ of Rout of the Rebel Angels, is wielding a bow and arrow and is encircled in the sun (c.1797 – 8, B335.46; the Gray designs are in the same format as the Night Thoughts watercolours, and were commissioned by John Flaxman as a gift for his wife, Nancy). This is Hyperion in his fiery chariot dispersing the fleeing ‘spectres wan’ in the shadows below with his ‘glitt’ring shafts of war’ – a similar mission to Christ’s act of eradicating the rebel angels, thus making him a kind of avatar of Christ, pointing back to NT VII.53 and anticipating the Milton illustration.21 The Rout of the Rebel Angels is at the mid-point in Blake’s sequence, and thus Blake situates Christ’s redemptive action as central to the visual narrative that he composed in response to Milton’s poem.

¨ ller after Francis Hayman, Paradise Lost, FIGURE 36 J.S. Mu frontispiece to Book 4 (1757). 21.0 £ 13.0 cm. Engraving. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester.

142

The Visionary Art of William Blake

The following design is The Creation of Eve, which appears in all three Paradise Lost series (B529.8 (Figure 37), B536.8, B537.2). We have seen Blake’s view of the doctrine of the Father as Creator in The Ancient of Days, which expresses a vision of that traditional, paternalistic doctrine as troubling. The notion that the Father is the preeminent person of the deity, and that he imposes order upon the

FIGURE 37 The Creation of Eve, illustration 8 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 25.3 £ 20.8 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens.

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

143

world through the act of Creation, is in Blake’s view, the invention of organised religion, fabricated to exert control over society. Instead, Blake envisions Christ as Creator and source of all things, and the very spiritus of the cosmos.22 This is one of four key projects in which Christ appears as Creator in Blake’s works; the others are: as Creator of light and of Adam in Night Thoughts (c.1795 – 7, B330.482 – 3, 330.529); as Creator of Eve in Jerusalem (plate 35, 1804 – c.1820);23 and as Creator of the cosmos and of Adam in the Genesis manuscript (c.1826 – 7, B828.1 – 2). As noted above, the notion that Christ was involved in Creation is not in itself innovative, but the visual depiction of Christ in this role is relatively unusual, although not unprecedented. In contrast to the shadowy world seen in The Ancient of Days, Blake’s Creator-Christ inaugurates a world that reflects the Human Form Divine, and gives that form to every individual. Elsewhere in Blake’s work, the Creation of Eve specifically has negative implications. In The First Book of Urizen (1794) and Vala/The Four Zoas (c.1797 – c.1807), the separation of male and female is the beginning of the Fall and must ultimately be overcome. Similarly in Blake’s Genesis manuscript, the figure creating Eve in Leaf 7 (c.1826 – 7, B828.7) is depicted in a manner like that of the violent Elohim Creating Adam (1795/c.1805, B289 – 90).24 However, Blake’s Paradise Lost designs present the event as positive.25 This Eve is not ‘in tears & cries imbodied’ (Urizen 18:6, E78) but serene, with her hands together in prayer, looking towards Christ as he brings her into being; thus, Blake mirrors Creator and created.26 Eve is hovering above the sleeping Adam and is apparently simply summoned into being by Christ’s outstretched arm. This gesture echoes that of earlier images of Christ raising Lazarus (c.1805, B487, discussed in Chapter 3) and healing Bartimaeus (c.1799 – 1800, B420), which supports the arguments of Bindman and J.M.Q. Davies that the Creation of Eve is an act of mercy or redemption.27 That Blake’s Creator-Christ is a benevolent figure is reinforced by comparison with his friend, Henry Fuseli’s painting of the subject (1791 – 3): Fuseli seems to be the only artist to have previously depicted this scene for Paradise Lost and the painting was exhibited at his Milton Gallery in 1799, which Blake must have seen.28 Fuseli’s Creator is a spectral figure, oddly distant from the scene; he

144

The Visionary Art of William Blake

apparently intended the figure to be ambiguous, telling his friend Thomas Roscoe that he did not aim at making the figure ‘a representation of the Supreme Being’ and that ‘for believers, let it be the Son, the visible agent of the Father; for others it is merely a superior Being entrusted with her creation, and looking for approbation of this work to the inspiring power above’.29 Blake’s Christ, by contrast, is directly engaged in the act of creation; he has a strong physical presence (particularly in the later two versions), which is emphasised by his standing on a leaf, indicating his materiality, and by his active, redemptive gesture. As Jennifer Davis Michael observes, although this is an act of separation of man and woman, Christ’s body also connects the figures, forming opposite sides of a rectangular frame with their bodies, thus implying that he unites male and female in his Human Form Divine.30 This giving of himself is not a one-time event, but a continual process, for every act of an individual who embodies the Human Form Divine is an act of creation, a participation in Christ’s essence. The next design in the series is The Temptation and Fall of Eve, followed by the remaining two scenes in which Christ appears: The Judgment of Adam and Eve (B529.10 (Figure 38), B536.10) and Michael Foretells the Crucifixion (B529.11 (Figure 39), B536.11, B537.3 (Plate 13)). As mentioned above, these designs will be discussed in more detail in the following section and in Chapter 5, respectively. Briefly, in the context of Christ’s role in the Paradise Lost series, The Judgment of Adam and Eve shows him as a mild judge, contrasting with the grotesque figures of Satan, Sin and Death that have been released from the sky above; he defeats these violent forces, as seen in Michael Foretells the Crucifixion, where they are sprawled at the foot of the cross. That image depicts Adam being shown a vision of the crucified Christ – the ultimate emblem of Christ’s self-giving Divine Humanity, which is shown here as a timeless event. Although Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise (by Michael) in the next and final design in the series, it is with the promise of redemption in Christ having been established in the preceding designs: it is freely and eternally given in Christ Offers to Redeem Man and reinforced in his roles eradicating evil in The Rout of the Rebel Angels, as benevolent judge in The Judgment of Adam and Eve and eternal Saviour in Michael Foretells

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

145

FIGURE 38 The Judgment of Adam and Eve, illustration 10 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 25.0 £ 20.2 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. the Crucifixion. The roles assumed by Christ in these designs all symbolise that he facilitates the individual’s realisation of the Human Form Divine, which he gives to us as eternal Creator, as seen in The Creation of Eve. In short, the five designs in which Christ appears in the Paradise Lost series present him as active in cosmic history, as the eternal maker and sustainer of the Human Form Divine.

146

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 39 Michael Foretells the Crucifixion, illustration 11 to Milton’s Paradise Lost (1807). 25.2 £ 20.3 cm. Pen and watercolour on paper. The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. EMBLEMS OF JUDGEMENT All Things are comprehended in their Eternal Forms in the Divine body of the Saviour the True Vine of Eternity The Human Imagination who appeard to Me as Coming to Judgment. among his Saints & throwing off the Temporal that the Eternal might be Establishd. around him were

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

147

seen the Images of Existences according to a certain order suited to my Imaginative Eye Jesus is surrounded by Beams of Glory in which are seen all around him Infants emanating from him these represent the Eternal Births of Intellect from the divine Humanity A Vision of the Last Judgment, 1810 (E555, 562)

From 1805 to the end of his life, Blake produced several versions of an elaborate composition depicting the Last Judgement (B639– 48): three extant watercolours (The Day of Judgment from The Grave, 1805, Plate 14;31 B639, 1806, known as the Glasgow version, Plate 15; B642, 1808, known as the Petworth version, Figure 40); two sketches (c.1809, B643 – 4); a finished drawing (c.1809, B645); a tracing which may be by Blake (B646) and another possible lost tracing (B647); and up to two lost versions (c.1806(?), B640; c.1810 – 27(?), B648). Blake also wrote two descriptions of this subject – one for Ozias Humphry (1808, E552 – 4) on whose recommendation the Petworth Last Judgment watercolour was commissioned by the Countess of Egremont, the other in Blake’s notebook as ‘For the Year 1810. Additions to Blakes Catalogue of Pictures &c’ (E554 – 66) which describes a lost monumental painting that Blake worked on until the end of his life (B648). The latter text expands upon the ideas presented in the Descriptive Catalogue, and indicates an (apparently unrealised) ambition to exhibit the work, perhaps as part of another or expanded version of the 1809 show. In short, although judgement is a subject that did not sit easily with Blake’s vision of Christ as a benevolent figure, it is one which he depicted multiple times and, in doing so, he reconfigured its meaning. As mentioned in the Introduction, the 1810 text, from which I quote above, is simultaneously a description of a painting of the Last Judgement, and an account of Blake’s theory of art. Hence, his ‘Vision of the Last Judgment’ is an expression of art as apocalypse, transforming the way the viewer sees the world; and Christ is at the centre of that vision. The Last Judgement works should be seen within Blake’s wider interest in apocalyptic subject-matter as a means of expressing his religious and artistic vision, and the prevalence of apocalyptic themes in contemporaneous culture, as seen in Chapter 1. Indeed, the fact that Blake received multiple commissions for this

148

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 40 The Last Judgement (1808). 50.3 £ 40.0 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink and pencil on paper. q National Trust Images / John Hammond. composition probably partly reflects the popularity of apocalyptic subjects in the period, although the Last Judgement itself does not seem to have been widely depicted by Blake’s contemporaries. The design was among those praised by an anonymous writer giving Blake’s horoscope in the astrologer’s chronicle, Urania in 1825, as ‘really wonderful for the spirit in which they are delineated’ (BR 407).

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

149

The 1810 text develops the notion of ‘types’ of humanity representing spiritual states that Blake expounded in the 1809 Descriptive Catalogue – especially in his description of The Canterbury Pilgrims (E532 – 40; cf. E567 – 70). In the 1810 description, Blake explains that his representations of Moses and Abraham are not meant to signify those persons, but rather ‘the States Signified by those Names’ (E556); in other words, they are (like the figures seen in Chapter 3), paradigmatic figures, universal types. These ‘types’ are figured in relation to Christ, who is at the centre of these compositions and descriptions as the locus on which the vision turns; Blake describes him as the Vine in whom all things have the ‘Eternal Forms’ – their archetypes – and the Glory from whom Divine Humanity in individuals is engendered. The timeless nature of the vision is reinforced by Blake’s statement: ‘whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes upon that Individual’ (E562). The Last Judgement, then, is not a one-time, end-of-the-world event, but a process that can happen to any individual at any time, when, like the ‘types’ in Blake’s Last Judgements, they embody Divine humanity by rejecting error and embracing truth. Blake’s first version of the design was The Day of Judgment (1805, Plate 14), one of a series of designs commissioned by the publisher Robert Cromek, for Robert Blair’s 1743 poem, The Grave. In 1805, Blake prepared 40 designs, from which Cromek selected 20 for publication. Blake was initially promised the work of engraving the designs, but Cromek rejected the sample plate that Blake produced, and instead gave the job to the more fashionable engraver Louis Schiavonetti; Cromek’s Grave was published in 1808, with 12 of Blake’s designs engraved by Schiavonetti.32 Cromek also included descriptions ‘Of the Designs’, which, like the ‘Explanations of the Engravings’ for Night Thoughts are thought to be by Fuseli and give an insight into how the designs were read by a contemporary – although that for The Day of Jugdment is a fairly straightforward description of the elements in this complex picture.33 This design represents a passage in the poem that describes the Last Judgement, and shows Blake’s attentive reading of the text by including details such as the ‘brazen trump’ and the rousing of ‘sleepers into life’.34

150

The Visionary Art of William Blake

The composition is loosely based on Michelangelo’s Last Judgement fresco in the Sistine Chapel (which Blake knew through engravings), being arranged in three horizontal sections: Christ in Heaven at the top, Hell below, and figures rising to and falling from Christ in the central portion. Blake also follows Michelangelo in depicting the figures naked, stripped of rank, but many of the individual figures are Blake’s own inventions, including his depiction of Christ enthroned with a book on his lap (identified as the Book of Life in the description)35 rather than standing, as in Michelangelo’s fresco. Blake does not include Mary at Jesus’ right hand, nor the saints that are in Michelangelo’s design. The figures rising include men, women and children of all ages – a device frequently used by Blake, which, as seen elsewhere, represents the all-encompassing nature of this vision. Their graceful rising contrasts with the grotesque, contorted figures of those falling. In the context of The Grave designs, the image can be read as a summation of other subjects in the series which depict the differing fates of various figures, including the family who meet in Heaven,36 the ‘strong wicked man’,37 and the ‘good old man’.38 By synopsising these related subjects and putting Christ at the centre, The Day of Judgment presents him as the one through whom these various fates are engendered, pointing back to the frontispiece to the poem, which depicts Christ Descending into the Grave. Thus, Christ is presented here as leading individuals through the passage of death, and according to their various states, they will rise to meet him or fall away from him. The design exemplifies the notion of the Last Judgement as the great leveller; here, we see all types of humanity – from members of the Divine Body to Trusler-like figures who fail to embody the Human Form Divine. The position of Christ enthroned in Heaven is not suggested by Blair’s description of ‘the Son of God’ as ‘Deliverer of mankind’;39 he is described in more peripatetic activity: Twice twenty days he sojourn’d here on earth, And shewed himself alive to chosen witnesses [. . .] He mounted up to Heaven. Methinks I see him Climb the aerial heights, and glide along Athwart the severing clouds40

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

151

This voyage culminates in ‘Heaven’s portals wide expand[ing] to let him in’, which Blake depicted in one of the Grave designs (not selected for publication by Cromek) that is similar to The Ascension in the biblical watercolours (c.1803–5, B505).41 Blake’s choice in The Last Judgement to depict Christ enthroned in what Blake later calls ‘the Throne of Judgment’ (E552) and ‘Judgment Seat’ (E556) – particularly since it is not demanded in the text – seems to be in conflict with Blake’s emphasis on Jesus’ acting from ‘impulse not from rules’ (MHH 23–4, E43) and on mercy rather than vengeance. A similar motif occurs in the roughly contemporaneous biblical watercolour, Christ Girding Himself with Strength (c.1805, B464), which depicts Psalm 93. As Johnson highlights, this image should be read alongside Mercy and Truth are Met Together from the same series (c.1805, B463), which depicts Psalm 85:10;42 there, it is the Father in the Judgement Seat, presented as a stern figure, looking down from his throne at Christ as the personification of Mercy, who embraces a figure who must be the personification of Truth. The Christ of Girding Himself with Strength by contrast, has a gentle facial expression, and he is framed by a pair of angels, implying that his is a Mercy Seat (a reading reinforced by his identification with Mercy in Mercy and Truth).43 The Christ of The Day of Judgment is not quite the mild figure of Christ Girding Himself, but nor is he as formidable as the Father who appears as judge in Blake’s designs such as the Large Colour Print God Judging Adam (1795, B294 – 6) (N.B. Schiavonetti’s engraving makes him more severe than in the watercolour).44 This Christ was criticised in an article on the designs in the Antijacobin Review of November 1808: There is impressive vigour in the general management and plan of the composition that demands approbation, but the figure of the SAVIOUR, who is seated on the throne of judgment, with the book of life open on his knees, is deficient in dignity and power; and the action of some of the groups is much too familiar. (BR 273)

The reviewer made similar comments about the figure in Christ’s other appearance in the engraved series, the frontispiece, Christ Descending into the Grave (BR 268) (the watercolours also included ‘Heaven’s Portals Wide Expand’, mentioned above). The viewer contends that Christ should be depicted as a more active and majestic

152

The Visionary Art of William Blake

figure; Blake apparently had different aims, which is evidenced in his framing of Christ with a pair of angels, as also seen in Christ Girding Himself. The motif of a pair of angels framing a figure appears numerous times in Blake’s pictorial works and refers to the cherubim that were built for the Mercy Seat, which was placed over the Ark of the Covenant (the sanctuary which represented the presence of God in the world), as described in Exodus 25. Thus, the Christ of The Day of Judgment is sitting in a Mercy Seat, which represents both his divinity and his benevolence, rather than emphasising his power and majesty. He is not looking at the figures rising and falling before him, nor at the book, nor at the viewer, but slightly away to the right of the design. As seen in some of the depictions of Jesus’ public ministry discussed in Chapter 3, in Blake’s designs, such apparent impassivity on Christ’s part indicates that he is not dictating the action around him, but is that which allows human activity to take its course. The figures rising and falling are not being saved and condemned by Christ; rather, the good are rising to union with him and the wicked are falling away from him. This point is further reinforced in Blake’s depiction of the saved embracing one another as they ascend and the damned wrestling each other as they fall, demonstrating that they have effected their respective fates. The impression that the figures are effecting their own rising and falling is more striking in the later versions of The Last Judgment, in which Christ is similarly impassive, and to which Blake adds successively more Figures (compare Plates 14 – 15 and Figure 40; according to J.T. Smith, the lost tempera contained over 1,000 figures (BR 617)). The accretion of figures creates a greater sense of movement in the composition, and an ever-expanding community of life in the Divine Body. The effect of this contrast between the dynamic, moving circle of figures and the static figure of Christ is that, as Kathleen Raine puts it, ‘[a]ll mankind is shown as if cells flowing and circulating within the one life of the cosmic Christ, the one in many and many in one’.45 The visual effect of the figures circling Christ is echoed in Blake’s descriptions of the scene, which both begin with the figure of Christ, and refer back to him multiple times as the central reference point in the picture.

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

153

Another important aspect of the design is the shapes formed by the composition of the figures. As several scholars have noted, the diamond shape formed by the trumpeting angels in the Petworth picture (Figure 40) resembles a vulva, and the entire heavenly portion in the upper and central portion of this design is also womb-like; these resemblances reinforce a reading of the design as depicting a kind of re-birth into the Divine Body.46 It is notable that children are prominent among those rising, and as seen above, are mentioned in Blake’s 1810 description as emanating from the Glory of Christ; none are seen falling. This special status reflects Blake’s conception of celebration of child-like vision as a state of Imagination (discussed in Chapter 3). Blake’s placing Christ in a ‘Throne of Judgment’ does not make him a formidable law-maker, but subverts such a conception of God: that throne becomes the Mercy Seat and the book of Law becomes the Book of Life (Revelation 20:15). The association with the Mercy Seat is further reinforced in the later versions of the design by adding, above Christ enthroned, the menorah and shewbread, which God commanded to be situated in His presence in the sanctuary in the Temple (Exodus 25:23 – 40) (E562). In his notebook description of the composition, Blake refers not only to the Temple paraphernalia but also apparently to the Temple itself, standing ‘on the Mount of God’ from which the River of Life flows. None of the extant versions of the subject feature a Temple building (although the Washington drawing depicts the menorah and shewbread within a gothic niche), which raises the question of whether or not the lost version described by Blake did. Alternatively, Blake might intend the whole area surrounding Christ to be read as the Temple, thus emphasising Christ as the Divine Human, rather than the rituals and material of religion (the menorah and shewbread then are emblematic of divine presence, rather than performing a ritual function in Blake’s image). Regardless of the detail of the lost painting, together with the cherubim, the presence of the Temple paraphernalia around Christ once again present him, rather than the Father, as the site of God’s presence and, unlike the Father, Christ is not enclosed in the Holy of Holies, but is at the centre of this vision that is opened up before the viewer in these designs. This vision is, as Blake highlights in his

154

The Visionary Art of William Blake

notebook description, a result of Christ’s tearing the curtains that enclosed the sanctuary (Mark 14:28, Matthew 27:51). The Divine presence is opened up in Blake’s vision and the whole world – including that of the viewer, who is invited to ‘Enter into these Images in his Imagination’ (E560) – is transformed by the radical presence of Christ. The universal potentiality of Christ’s transforming mercy is reinforced in later versions of the design by the inclusion of Adam and Eve, the archetypal sinners, before the throne of Christ. This point would have been particularly evident in Butts’ collection, which included The Fall of Man (1807, B641, Figure 41) as a pair to his copy of The Last Judgment (the Glasgow version, Plate 15). On the verso of The Fall of Man is the inscription: The Father indignant at the Fall – the Saviour, while the Evil Angels are driven, gently conducts our first parents out of Eden through a Guard of weeping Angels – Satan now awakes Sin, Death, & Hell, to celebrate with him the birth of War & Misery: while the Lion seizes the Bull, the Tiger the Horse, the Vulture and the Eagle contend for the Lamb. (transcribed in B641)

According to this description, the design depicts Christ showing Adam and Eve the terrible consequences of their Fall, and the Father enthroned above points towards a scene of Judgement. Although Butlin states that the inscription is in Blake’s hand, John E. Grant has highlighted that it is inaccurate in a number of details and argues that it is by an explicator who wanted to make the design correlate with traditional theological tropes, consequently presenting a distorted description. The inaccuracies that Grant identifies are: the Father is not ‘indignant’; the moment depicted is not ‘at the Fall’ but after it; the Saviour is being led by the Holy Spirit, rather than himself being the conductor of ‘our first parents’; only two of ‘Sin, Death, & Hell’ are awake. Grant proposes the more optimistic title ‘Prospects of Divine Humanity’, which is a reasonable suggestion, although it does not make clear that Christ, Adam and Eve are the central subjects of the design.47 Like Blake’s Last Judgment paintings, the design comprises three horizontal sections: the Father in Heaven directing his attendants to prepare for the Crucifixion; Christ, with the dove hovering above,

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

155

FIGURE 41 The Fall of Man (1807). 49.5 £ 39.4 cm. Pen and watercolour on thin card. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London. leading Adam and Eve away from Eden (depicted in the distance); the pit of Hell below. Although Blake does not depict a route for Adam and Eve other than towards Hell, as Grant argues, the viewer can ‘imagine that an unforeseen way out [. . .] will present itself’.48 I read the ‘way out’ as over the pit, because Christ is not looking down into Hell, but out of the picture, as if leading Adam and Eve directly into

156

The Visionary Art of William Blake

the viewer’s space. Thus, I disagree with Grant’s reading that Christ is being led by the Holy Spirit (see above): he is not looking to the dove for guidance, and, even considering Blake’s eccentric use of scale and perspective, the dove is tiny relative to Christ’s head and therefore if anything appears to be further away from the viewer. This reading can be supported with reference to The Judgment of Adam and Eve in the Paradise Lost series, mentioned in the previous section (B529.10 (Figure 38), B536.10), a subject which, as J.M.Q. Davies notes, is thematically related to the so-called Fall of Man.49 The episode follows the Fall and precedes the Expulsion but, in Blake’s rendering, is, as Davies proposes, ‘less concerned with the consequences of the Fall than with their resolution’.50 Whilst Sin and Death rain down destruction from above, Christ, Adam and Eve are protected by a band of cloud that separates them from these forces unleashed by the Father. Thus, this Christ is redeemer rather than judge, in a similar role to his leading Adam and Eve away from the fires of Hell in The Fall of Man. The shared theme of these two subjects for different projects in the same period is characteristic of the crossfertilisation that constantly occurs in Blake’s works, wherein his designs participate in a world of emblematic types. To return to the Butts pair of watercolours, the benevolent Christ of The Fall of Man is contrasted with what Grant calls the ‘twin’ figures of the Father in Heaven and Death in Hell who sit enthroned, directing their attendants with outstretched arms.51 Sitting alongside this image, The Last Judgment presents Christ, rather than the Father, in the throne of Heaven, thus reasserting his more merciful Judgement. The pairing also presents a contrast between Adam and Eve kneeling before the throne in The Last Judgment and being led by Christ in The Fall of Man, a juxtaposition which cautions the viewer against complacency that we will be blindly led to union with Christ; it also requires self-recognition – to reject error and embrace truth. Blake wants the viewer to ‘Enter into these Images in his Imagination’ (E560). His visions of the Last Judgement invite the viewer to be swept up in the dynamic, regenerative process represented in them. The Last Judgement becomes, for Blake, not an eschatological episode of fire and brimstone, but a timeless emblem of the process of embodying the Human Form Divine.

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

157

The ‘judgement’ that takes place is really on the part of the individual in recognising error to be rejected and truth to be embraced in order to engender that process and become like Christ himself, the ultimate archetype of Divine Humanity. ICONS OF DIVINE HUMANITY Another group of works that Blake produced for Butts in this period is a group of four temperas depicting Adam Naming the Beasts (B667), Eve Naming the Birds (B668), The Virgin and Child in Egypt (B669, Figure 42), and Christ Blessing (B670, Plate 16). The Adam and the Virgin and Child pictures are dated 1810; Rossetti lists Eve as 1802, but no date is now visible (the picture is damaged and over-painted). Since the four pictures are of the same style, colour palette, size and format (half-length, frontal figures), Butlin suggests that the Eve and Christ pictures are also c.1810. The four pictures can be read as a group of interrelated pairs: Adam and Eve as the first man and woman; Christ as infant and adult; Eve and the Virgin, and Adam and Christ, as Old and New Testament counterparts. These figures are universal types for humankind: Adam and Eve, the first man and woman are shown before the Fall (although details such as the serpent wound around Adam’s arm point towards the Fall), and the ‘new Adam’ and ‘new Eve’ are represented in the figures of Christ and his mother. Whereas the biblical temperas are a narrative sequence, these icon-like portraits, with stylised features, are almost timeless – especially Christ Blessing, which is not obviously linked to any specific biblical passage. The style of this group of temperas, as well as the later, smaller Byzantine-like Virgin and Child: ‘Black Madonna’ (1825?, B674), indicate that Blake had probably seen orthodox icons, but there is no specific evidence of how he came into contact with such pieces.52 There are intriguing parallels between the theology of icons and Blake’s own viewer-response aesthetic, but it seems unlikely that Blake was familiar with such theology.53 Christ Blessing also resembles fifteenth-century Netherlandish paintings of this subject in a tradition after Jan van Eyck’s lost picture of The Holy Face; Blake probably saw such pictures in sales of European paintings in

158

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 42 The Virgin and Child in Egypt (1810). 76.5 £ 63.5 cm. Tempera on canvas. q Victoria and Albert Museum, London. London.54 I have not encountered any comparable pictures by Blake’s contemporaries. Echoing the idea in the roughly contemporaneous description of the Last Judgment that the depictions of Moses and Abraham are not included to mean those ‘Persons [. . .] but the States Signified by those Names’ (E556), the tempera group places Adam, Eve, the infant Christ, Mary, and the adult Christ in an eternal world of types, rather

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

159

than presenting them as historical persons. Christ and his companions are placed in a timeless plane, as types of the individual embodying the Human Form Divine. Their stylised facial features represent that they are to be viewed as universal rather than specific figures. However, Blake simultaneously made these pictures as allegorical self-portraits; as Essick highlights, both Adam and the infant Christ closely resemble a portrait of Blake previously attributed to Linnell but which Essick has proposed is a self-portrait (c.1802 – 4, Figure 43).55 The adult Christ too has similar facial features, although this resemblance is less immediately obvious because of his beard and long hair. What is striking about the latter work is the vivid blue-grey of Christ’s eyes (lost in reproduction) – the same colour as Blake’s, assuming that Thomas Phillips’ portrait of the painter is a reliable guide (1807).56 Blake’s move to depict his own features in the faces of universal types of the Human Form ¨ rer’s Christ-like self-portrait Divine could have been inspired by Du of 1529 (itself indebted to the Netherlandish ‘Holy Face’ tradition, mentioned above), which Blake could have known from an ¨ rer, so such an imitation engraving; Blake admired the work of Du of the German artist’s work is very plausible.57 Blake would later depict his own features in The Man Who Taught Blake Painting in His Dreams (c.1819 – 20, B753; cf. B754 – 5) – one of the ‘Visionary Heads’ that Blake produced for John Varley – which seems to be another allegorical self-portrait. The theories of the Swiss physiognomist Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741 – 1801) must also have influenced Blake’s depictions of Adam and Christ with his own features. Blake had produced engravings for Henry Hunter’s English edition of Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (1788 – 98), and had read and annotated Lavater’s Aphorisms on Man (E583 – 601).58 As Sibylle Erle has discussed, part of Lavater’s ambition was to find the ‘lost original’ face of Christ;59 conversely, Blake thinks that the Human Form Divine is manifest in every individual, and wrote: The Vision of Christ that thou dost see Is my Visions Greatest Enemy Thine has a great hook nose like thine Mine has a snub nose like to mine (EG e:1–4, E524)

160

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 43 William Blake?, Portrait of William Blake (c.1802 – 4). 24.3 £ 20.1 cm. Pencil and wash on paper. Collection of Robert N. Essick: Copyright q 2017 William Blake Archive. Used with permission. By representing Adam and Christ in his own likeness, Blake implies that he himself embodies the ideal state – the Human Form Divine, which each individual can, like Jesus, incarnate. This is made manifest in Jesus at his birth, as represented in the infant Christ in The Virgin and Child in Egypt, and is seen throughout his life, as seen in the timeless Christ Blessing. And, as the archetypal human, Adam as Blake-Christ reinforces the notion that any individual can embody the Human Form Divine. Thus, to paraphrase Blake’s statement about the biblical persons in his Last Judgement design, the self-portraits of Blake as Adam and Christ do not represent Blake, but the state signified by Blake-as-Adam and Blake-as-Christ; and this is a state that any individual can embody. AN ALLEGORY OF THE SPIRITUAL CONDITION OF MAN Perhaps forming part of the same scheme in Butts’ collection as the four temperas of Divine Humanity, another picture apparently

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

161

painted for Butts in this period is known as An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man (B673, Plate 17; the picture was owned by Butts, but there is no record of the commission) – a title given by Rossetti. It is a similar colour palette to the group of four, but it is a larger and more complex composition (Blake’s largest surviving picture); it is dated 181(1?) – the last digit is difficult to read. This is not ostensibly an image of Christ, although he does appear as a tiny figure in the top right-hand corner. The dominant players in the composition are three groups of figures in the central column: three female figures standing at the bottom; (the same?) three women floating above, surrounded by children; above them, a woman kneeling, flanked by angels and a male and a female figure; at the top border of the composition is a sun, from which the Holy Spirit is descending as a dove and which casts light on all the figures below. Running down and up the left and right sides of the composition are a series of vignettes depicting biblical episodes, beginning with Creation and culminating with Christ in glory. The setting (visible only in the lower portion of the design) is dwarfed by the giant figures standing in it: on the right is a rural scene, with trees, a river, hills and a flock of sheep tended by a shepherd; on the left is a city with a domed church resembling St Paul’s Cathedral. It is possible that, like the similarly composed Epitome of James Hervey’s Meditations Among the Tombs (c.1820 – 5, B770), Allegory relates to a specific text, but such a source has not been identified, and it could be an idea of Blake’s own invention. I read it as representing the spiritual apotheosis of humanity, as brought about by the biblical salvation history depicted in the scenes at either side of the picture. The female figures at the base of the design represent the theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity; the central group appear to be the same figures, accompanied by male and female children; in the uppermost group, I read the kneeling female figure as the apotheosis of humankind, and the flanking figures as Adam and Eve.60 The multiplicity of figures forming the composition can be read as a depiction of the Divine Body containing many individuals, and the biblical scenes surrounding the design indicate that it is through Christ that the apotheosis represented in the central column is engendered: scenes of Jesus’ life, Resurrection, Ascension and

162

The Visionary Art of William Blake

return in glory (in vignettes on the right) are presented as counterpoints to the Old Testament scenes of Fall (in vignettes on the left). The series of vignettes gives the design a narrative theme in a form recalling Blake’s own illuminated books, where vignettes and text share the same plates. Blake’s arrangement of vignettes on either side of the picture resembles a format sometimes used in broadsides in the period, where the central portion would be text, surrounded by vignettes. For example, J. Bell’s print for Henry Reynell’s Bellman’s verses for the New Year 1806 depicts 18 New Testament scenes surrounding verses relating to several days of the year, and about the Battle of Trafalgar.61 It is possible that such publications informed the composition of Allegory. The setting is also important: Blake juxtaposes a rural idyll on the right, with buildings representing organised religion on the left. As noted above, St Paul’s Cathedral is clearly recognisable; this building appears a number of times in Blake’s images: in an image of the temptation of Christ on the mount in NT VI.40 (B330.261), in The Day of Judgment in The Grave designs (bottom right; the detail is more obvious in the watercolour than in the engraving), and in three plates in Jerusalem (32, 57, 84) where its dome is juxtaposed with a Gothic church, presumably intended to allude to Westminster Abbey. It is also mentioned in ‘Holy Thursday’ in Songs of Innocence as the place where the charity school children are marched to give enforced thanks (E13). In short, it is a building that symbolises, for Blake, the worst aspects of organised religion. In the corresponding right-hand portion of the design is a pastoral scene of a shepherd with his flock – the kind of idyll celebrated in Songs of Innocence. Hence, these contrasting settings reinforce the themes of the biblical narratives above them. The bringing together of scenes of Christ’s overturning of the Fall and allegorical figures for the traditional Christian virtues presents Christ’s own spiritual regeneration through resurrection and return in glory as the archetype for all humankind to embody the elevated state of the Human Form Divine. As such, the design brings together many of the themes explored throughout this book, and in Blake’s oeuvre as a whole, in a single frame. In the Paradise Lost series, we saw that Blake depicts Christ as Creator of, and active in cosmic history – a cosmology that embodies

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

163

the Human Form Divine, in contrast to the tyrannical, rule-bound universe of The Ancient of Days. In Allegory, the Creator is a Urizenic figure, hovering over the world and turned away from the viewer in the top-left vignette. Opposite this scene is Christ in glory, in the same pose as the Creator, but facing the viewer (top right). The intervening scenes on the left are associated with fall and captivity, culminating (at the bottom) in the Crucifixion seen from behind, representing mankind’s assault on the Human Form Divine (I discuss Blake’s attitude to the Crucifixion in Chapter 5). On the right are scenes of redemption, as represented by Christ, from the Resurrection to the Last Trump and Christ in Glory. These scenes relate to Blake’s idea of regeneration that was examined in Chapter 1. In short, in this complex design, the life of Jesus, the supreme embodiment of the Human Form Divine, provides a series of emblems or types for the individual embodying that state as a member of Christ’s Divine Body. The groups in the central column of the painting represent the individual achieving that state (as also seen in figures from Jesus’ public ministry in Chapter 3). At the bottom, Faith, Hope and Charity appear in formal poses; as David Bindman notes, Faith (left) and Hope (right) are contrasted, the former looking down at her book and the latter up to Heaven, whilst Charity (centre) looks towards the viewer, making a gesture of blessing. However, again as noted by Bindman, this crowned figure does not correspond to the traditional representation of Charity attending to young children, as represented by Blake in one of the Butts temperas (1799, B428, 1 Corinthians 13:13) and seen in the middle group of figures in Allegory.62 As John Beer suggests, the three tiers can be read in terms of ‘levels of vision’ or a hierarchy of states of being.63 Thus, the lowest group can be read as the virtues as enshrined in institutional Christianity (thus the formal poses) and the middle and upper groups as higher states of mankind’s ‘Spiritual Condition’. The hierarchy of these groups can be read in terms of Paul’s statement in 2 Corinthians 3:6: ‘the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life’ – a phrase that reflected Blake’s own engagement with the Bible and other Christian texts, and which he later used in the marginal inscriptions of the first design in his Job engravings (1825/6). In Allegory, that phrase can be seen embodied in the central groups of

164

The Visionary Art of William Blake

figures, with the lowest trio representing the ‘letter’ which must be transcended by the ‘spirit’.64 The lowest figures are not simply to be rejected – they are our starting point for rising to the higher states. Thus, the gaze and gesture of the central figure invite the viewer into the picture, and the children (who, as seen in Chapter 3, represent a Christ-like state for Blake) in the middle tier are emerging from her radiance. The uppermost group cannot simply be read as the same trio of figures, for here there are a male and a female figure flanking the kneeling female. The latter can be read as a realisation and union of the attributes represented by the figures below, here represented in the highest state, kneeling over a pair of angels, evoking the Mercy Seat and thus indicating that this is the highest spiritual state. The flanking figures can be read as Adam and Eve redeemed, as seen in Blake’s depictions of the Last Judgement, in which the archetypal sinners are first before the throne of Christ. And yet, the rather formal figure, kneeling, with her hands together in a gesture of conventional piety, is not what we would expect a Blakean figure in a state of spiritual apotheosis to look like. Perhaps this has to do with Butts’ preferences or an unknown text on which the painting is based. On the other hand, I have already discussed various images in which Blake used seemingly conventional iconography in the manner of emblems that act as pictorial shorthand even where he is expressing unconventional ideas. Allegory epitomises Blake’s religious aesthetic. The life of Jesus represents the Blakean spiritual state of the Human Form Divine both abused (as in the Old Testament scenes and the Crucifixion on the left), and redeemed (as in the scenes of resurrection and apocalypse on the right). This theme of oppression versus flourishing of the Human Form Divine can be found throughout Blake’s works, from the Songs (1789, 1794) to Jerusalem (1804 –c.1820). The figures in the central portion are another representation of the individual embodying the Human Form Divine, and as viewers we are invited into the complex world of emblems depicted here to participate in that state. CONCLUSION In the penultimate decade of his life, Blake was intensely engaged with fundamental questions related to art and Christianity. In this

Christ as Universal Human Form Divine

165

period, Christ appears in Blake’s pictorial works in a variety of subjects, and particularly in roles that extend his ministry beyond the events of the New Testament. Here, Christ is depicted as an eternally active figure who exists in a timeless world of archetypes, and in which he is the ultimate archetype, the Human Form Divine, and the spiritus that engenders the possibility of any individual to embody that state. This is a process that the individual him/herself must enact; it involves the rejection of error and the embracing of truth. In the Paradise Lost designs, Christ bestows this perfect state on humanity (as seen in The Creation of Eve), and is active in cosmic history to sustain and restore that state (as seen in Christ Offers to Redeem Man and The Rout of the Rebel Angels) when individuals fall short of that ideal (as seen in The Judgment of Adam and Eve). As mentioned in my discussion of the Paradise Lost designs, the notion of Christ as sustainer was a theme that Blake would go on to explore further in his Paradise Regained watercolours (c.1816 – 20, B544). Elsewhere, in his Last Judgment works, Blake explored the theme of individuals embodying or falling short of the Human Form Divine by depicting, in a single frame, the differing fates of individuals rising and falling centred on Christ, according to their fates. And Blake used this image to express his theory of art as an apocalyptic process by which error is expunged and truth is revealed. In the four icon-like tempera portraits, Blake represents himself embodying the role of the Human Form Divine by depicting his own features in the faces of Adam and Christ; and in An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man the narrative of biblical salvation history, culminating in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, becomes an eternal typology for the process by which that state is achieved. As seen in the works discussed here, and in previous chapters, this is a process that engenders a state of eternal union in the Divine Body, but which involves the division of error from truth and is therefore iconoclastic. This iconoclastic impulse drives Blake’s work as an artist in a variety of ways, as I discuss in the next and final chapter, where I focus on Blake’s depiction of Christ’s own act of self-iconoclasm in the self-sacrifice of the Crucifixion.

The Modern Church Crucifies Christ with the Head Downwards. A Vision of the Last Judgment (1810, E564)

Milton stood & said Satan! my Spectre! I know my power thee to annihilate [. . .] Such are the Laws of Eternity that each shall mutually Annihilate himself for others good, as I for thee Thy purpose & the purpose of thy Priests & of thy Churches Is to impress on men the fear of death; to teach Trembling & fear, terror, constriction; abject selfishness Mine is to teach Men to despise death & to go on In fearless majesty annihilating Self, laughing to scorn Thy Laws & terrors, shaking down thy Synagogues as webs I come to discover before Heavn & Hell the Self righteousness In all its Hypocritic turpitude, opening to every eye These wonders of Satans holiness shewing to the Earth The Idol Virtues of the Natural Heart, & Satans Seat Explore in all its Selfish Natural Virtue & put off In Self annihilation all that is not of God alone: To put off Self & all I have ever & ever Amen Milton, A Prophecy 38:28 –9, 34 –49 (1804–c.1811, E139)

Speaking of the Atonement in the ordinary Calvinistic Sense, he [Blake] said ‘It is a horrible doctrine; If another pay your debt, I do not forgive it’ Conversation with Henry Crabb Robinson (1826, BR 705, cf. BR 453)

R

ICO ’NOCLAST . n. . [iconoclaſ te, French; ἔikonoklazh6.] A breaker of

images. Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (1799)

CHAPTER 5

Iconoclasm Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation in Late Works (1804 – 27)

Blake was an iconoclastic thinker and artist. We saw in the last chapter that he conceived of the Last Judgement as a process that took place ‘whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth’ (1810, E562). That endeavour permeated every aspect of his work. He rejected fashionable styles of painting and engraving in favour of his own methods, even when this uncompromising attitude cost him work (as seen, for example, in The Grave incident, where Blake’s sample engraving was rejected by Cromek). Technique and ideology coalesced in the method of relief etching that he developed for his illuminated books: to make a plate, Blake drew his design directly onto the metal in an acid-resistant solution; he then applied acid to the plate so that the unprotected parts were eaten away, leaving the design raised on the surface of the plate. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790 –c.1792), Blake described this process as analogous to rejecting false ideas: 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. (MHH 14, E39)

168

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Blake’s works denounce political and religious ideologies that he regarded as erroneous, and express his own vision through a highly personal world of myths and symbols – sometimes reinventing and redeploying tropes from sources such as the Bible and works of literature, and elsewhere summoning figures and symbols from his own imagination. We saw, for example, in Chapter 1, how Blake engaged in creative conflict with Edward Young’s Night Thoughts, critiquing some of its doctrines in his designs for the text. Jesus himself was an iconoclast, challenging social and religious conventions. Blake celebrated these antinomian (rejection of the moral law) aspects of Jesus’ ministry. An example is his depiction of The Woman Taken in Adultery, discussed in Chapter 3, where Christ shows compassion to a woman accused by the religious establishment; Blake returned to this narrative in the manuscript poem The Everlasting Gospel (c.1818), which presents Jesus as dissident rebel. Blake’s Christ encompasses both this radical Jesus and the gentler aspects of Jesus seen in previous chapters. This chapter examines the correspondence between Blake’s iconoclastic methods in his art and his notion of Christ’s death as an act of self-annihilation. As expressed in a conversation with Henry Crabb Robinson, quoted above, Blake regarded the doctrine of the Crucifixion as Atonement (the Son being offered as a ransom for humankind’s erring from the Father’s Law) as abhorrent, symptomatic of the worldview embodied in The Ancient of Days: it oppresses the Human Form Divine embodied in Christ and is re-enacted by the ‘Modern Church’ and other institutions which oppress Divine Humanity. Instead, Blake understood the Crucifixion as Christ’s self-giving, a supremely generous, apocalyptic act, which, when repeated in an individual annihilating his/her self-hood, transforms that individual into the perfect embodiment of the Human Form Divine.1 Self-annihilation is a concept that emerges in Blake’s later thought, first appearing in his later revisions to The Four Zoas, and in Milton and Jerusalem. As described in the passage from Milton, above, self-annihilation involves the rejection of false ‘Laws & terrors’, ‘Hypocritic turpitude’ and all ‘wonders of Satans holiness’. By envisioning Christ’s death as an act of self-annihilation Blake overcomes the difficulty he had with the doctrine of the Crucifixion

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

169

as Atonement. Rather than a sacrifice paid to the Father, the Crucifixion becomes an act of self-iconoclasm, the supreme emblem of surrender of the selfish selfhood and the eradication of error. The Crucifixion, then, does not itself have the same soteriological significance (effecting salvation) for Blake as in orthodox theology; rather, it is emblematic of the iconoclastic ideology that Blake invokes the individual to emulate in every aspect of his/her life. Such a vision of the Crucifixion is most powerfully expressed in pictorial terms in Jerusalem 76, Copy E (1804 – c.1820/c.1821); in this chapter I discuss that image alongside Michael Foretells the Crucifixion from the Paradise Lost series, which exists in three versions, composed towards the beginning and not long after the completion of Jerusalem’s production (1807, 1808, 1822). I also examine parallels in the Crucifixion’s appearance in other late works: the illustrations to Pilgrim’s Progress and The Divine Comedy. I conclude by discussing why this subject apparently had a particular personal appeal for Blake towards the end of his life, and parallels with his engraved Illustrations to the Book of Job (1825/6). I begin by contextualising Blake’s late crucifixions with a brief survey of the subject’s role in religious visual culture, particularly in the Romantic period, and a summary account of Blake’s engagements with crucifixion iconography in projects throughout his career.

THE CRUCIFIXION IN ART Blake’s crucifixions participate in a long tradition of artists expressing particular theologies of the Crucifixion in visual form. Early depictions represented Christ alive on the cross, robed in priestly garments, a type known as Christus triumphans. From the second half of the eighth century there was a shift to depicting Christ dead, influenced by the controversy surrounding the Monophysite heresy’s denial of the humanity of Jesus; showing Christ dead refuted monophysitism by emphasising his physical mortality. It was not until the mid-thirteenth century that artists emphasised the suffering of Christ.2 Blake would have been familiar with a variety of images of the Crucifixion through Old Master sales and exhibitions (there were examples at both the Orleans and Truchsessian galleries, for

170

The Visionary Art of William Blake

instance), engravings, and popular prints. He may also have seen examples by eighteenth-century Moravian artists such as Johann Valentin Haidt; as mentioned in the Introduction, Marsha Keith Schuchard has proposed that Blake might have visited Count von Zinzendorf’s art collection at the Fetter Lane chapel and Lindsey House, Chelsea.3 The Moravians had a special spiritual devotion to the wounds of Christ and a distinctive iconography of the Crucifixion, and both Schuchard and Elisabeth Jessen have shown that there could be Moravian influence in some of Blake’s crucifixion iconography.4 However, as I have already noted, it is important to bear in mind that the extent of Blake’s contact with Moravianism remains an open question. The Crucifixion was not a popular subject with eighteenth-century British painters, a lacuna that probably reflects a concern that the subject was too popish: by focusing the viewer’s attention on Christ’s body, the subject risked becoming an object of idolatry (as mentioned previously, narrative subjects were generally considered to be ‘safer’ because they discouraged the viewer’s attention from stilling on a single figure). However, it did appear widely in engravings and popular prints, and in his discussion of New Testament subjects having become hackneyed in art, James Barry wrote of the Crucifixion: though a subject often painted, yet, in the hands of a Poussin, it acquires an important novelty in the rising of the Ghosts, the darkness, &c. this, however, is not always practicable; and where it is not, such subjects will naturally be thrown aside by a great man, as barren and unproductive. It is not by evading the difficulties of the art, by furbishing up old inventions, or by putting figures together without any invention at all, that we can rival the great works.5

In other words, Barry considers the Crucifixion to have become so cliche´d by its popularity with (European) painters, that it requires great mastery to depict it in an inventive way. The subject was also considered important enough by Benjamin West, Richard Cosway and Thomas Banks to commission, in 1801, an anatomical cast of a crucified cadaver in order to study the anatomy of crucifixion, because they believed that most depictions of the Crucifixion were inaccurate.6 West himself had been working on the subject for a

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

171

design for one of the windows in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797. The design is lost and the window was never completed, but a drawing of the unfinished window survives, as well as two sketches for parts of the composition by West himself.7 In the majority of depictions of the Crucifixion that I have encountered from Blake’s milieu – of which popular prints are the most prevalent genre – Christ is depicted dead on the cross, whilst the glory of the cross is emphasised with a halo around Christ’s head; Carington Bowles’ mezzotint based on one of Van Dyck’s crucifixions is a typical example (Figure 44). West’s window, by contrast, shows Christ alive in glory, in a mode anticipating the Resurrection. We will see that some of Blake’s crucifixions also point to the Resurrection, but without the glorification of the cross of West’s image; this difference in tone reflects Blake’s distaste for celebration of the event, which haunted his engagements with the subject throughout his career. Broadly speaking, a progression can be observed from a wholly negative attitude to the cross in Blake’s earliest engagements with crucifixion iconography in mythological works of the mid-1790s, to a more positive conception of the Crucifixion as Christ’s self-giving in later works, as epitomised in Jerusalem 76. THE CRUCIFIXION IN BLAKE’S OEUVRE Blake’s resistance to the doctrine of the Atonement and to the celebration of the Crucifixion was the focus of the critical attitude to the event in his earliest engagements with crucifixion iconography.8 His first uses of such motifs are not depictions of Christ crucified, but parodies of the Crucifixion inflicted upon the figures of Orc in America, plate 3 (1793) and Fuzon in The Book of Ahania, plate 6 (1795).9 In these prophecies relating to the turbulent political events of the 1790s, Blake alludes to the Crucifixion in representing acts of violence and repression inflicted upon humanity. For Blake, Christ’s crucifixion represents the supreme act of violence upon the Human Form Divine, and which is repeated in any act that abuses the Divine Image in any individual (thus his statement that ‘The Modern Church Crucifies Christ with the Head Downwards’). The agency of the event is crucial to understanding Blake’s crucifixion imagery: in these political

172

The Visionary Art of William Blake

FIGURE 44 Anon., published by Carington Bowles, The Crucifixion (c.1766 – 84). 35.5 £ 25.3 cm. Hand-coloured mezzotint and etching. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved. prophecies of the mid-1790s, the crucified is the victim of repressive regimes, but Blake subsequently developed a positive understanding of Christ’s crucifixion as an offering of himself. Blake’s next engagement with crucifixion iconography was in Night Thoughts. As seen in Chapter 1, Night IV of the poem is

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

173

‘The Christian Triumph’, which for Young is the cross, and Christ plays a more prominent role here than in other Nights, with the poet reflecting at length upon the glory of the cross. However, only one of Blake’s designs for this Night ostensibly depicts Christ’s Passion, NT IV.12 (B330.121; also engraved for the Edwards edition), which shows Christ as the Man of Sorrows – so even this image avoids depicting the Crucifixion itself. Blake found various ways of negotiating the problem of depicting Young’s pro-Crucifixion text, in some cases modifying Young’s crucifixion imagery, in others avoiding it altogether.10 In his Night Thoughts designs, Blake is struggling to come to terms with this central event for Christianity, but he begins to express a more positive understanding of it. In Vala/The Four Zoas, he recycled three of the proofs of the Night Thoughts Man of Sorrows design.11 Christ is not mentioned in the first draft of the manuscript, Vala, but is central to the salvific scheme in Blake’s later revisions. Whereas in the Night Thoughts designs Blake resists Young’s crucifixion imagery, in the text of The Four Zoas the Crucifixion emerges as an important trope, representing the sacrifice of the selfhood, and Christ is frequently given the sacrificial title ‘the Lamb’. However, Blake still does not include an image of Christ crucified; as well as recycling the Man of Sorrows proofs, Blake includes a drawing of the nailing of Orc – the crucifixion-like event that had appeared in America – but elsewhere, the images which accompany references to the Crucifixion in the text are less direct.12 Nevertheless, The Four Zoas is important in the development of Blake’s attitude to the Crucifixion in shifting attention from Christ’s death itself to the transformative, apocalyptic implications that it engenders. The Crucifixion appears in different ways in the two Butts biblical series. In the tempera designs, there is no representation of the Crucifixion itself but, as mentioned in Chapter 2, there are four proleptic images of the Christ Child that foreshadow the Crucifixion (B406, 409– 11); and there are three subjects associated with the Passion narratives (B423– 5).13 In the watercolour series, there are four designs depicting different moments of the Crucifixion (B494 – 7), as well as another proleptic image of the Christ Child (B474). This difference in focus could indicate a shift in Blake’s ideas about the Crucifixion between creating the two series, although one of the

174

The Visionary Art of William Blake

watercolours depicting the Crucifixion, The Soldiers Casting Lots (B495), is dated 1800, the same year that Blake completed work on the tempera series (and Butts’ influence on the subjects depicted cannot be discounted). As seen in Chapter 2, the proleptic images of the Christ Child in the temperas (and the same applies to Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop, B474) represent Christ’s willingness to offer himself even from his childhood. Later in the tempera series, The Agony in the Garden (B425) also shows Christ in a pose of self-surrender. In the watercolours, the four designs focus on different moments in the Crucifixion accounts: Christ Nailed to the Cross: The Third Hour (c.1803, B496), Christ Crucified Between Two Thieves (c.1800 – 3, B494), The Crucifixion: ‘Behold Thy Mother!’ (c.1805, B497) and The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garment (mentioned above). There is a stronger sense of narrative in each subject than is usual in images of the Crucifixion, reflecting Blake’s distaste for the celebration of the Crucifixion as an emblem to be celebrated. None of Blake’s subjects depict Christ dead on the cross, nor as suffering. These characteristics of Blake’s crucifixions also reflect the broader resistance in the period to depictions of the Crucifixion that were too susceptible to be viewed in idolatrous terms, and perhaps specifically with Butts’ preferences in mind. Common to all of Blake’s crucifixions for Butts is a resistance to glorifying the Crucifixion as a sacrificial offering given by the Father, which is in keeping with Blake’s statements rejecting a penal doctrine of the Atonement. Indeed, one of the themes that emerges in many of these works is a critique of various forms of institutional and patriarchal authority that Blake implicates as contemporary crucifiers of the Human Form Divine. In these works, Blake articulates a vision of the Crucifixion as at-one-ment not rendered to the Father but engendered through Christ himself, a notion that reaches its fullest expression in Jerusalem 76.

JERUSALEM 76 AND MICHAEL FORETELLS THE CRUCIFIXION It is unclear exactly when Blake created the full-page design that is plate 76 to the illuminated poem Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion. As has already been mentioned, the poem was composed over an extended period, between 1804 and about 1820, when Blake

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

175

printed three copies of the book (A, C, D). In the summer of 1807, George Cumberland mentioned seeing ‘60 Plates of a new Prophecy’ (BR 246), which was probably Jerusalem, and G.E. Bentley, Jr identified 37 plates that owing to various eccentricities are likely to have been produced after 1807. These do not include plate 76, but it remains impossible to be certain if this design was among the early plates.14 In 1821 he printed another copy (E) and a part copy (B), and another in 1827 (F). Outstanding among the six copies printed by Blake (a further three copies, H – J, were printed posthumously), is copy E – the only full copy of the poem that Blake coloured (the part copy B, is also coloured, but does not include plate 76), and the finest of all his illuminated works. It was apparently produced speculatively, rather than for a specific patron, and remained unsold at his death. It is plate 76 from this copy that is my central focus. I discuss this plate alongside Blake’s three watercolours depicting Michael Foretells the Crucifixion (1807, B529.11; 1808, B536.11; 1822, B537.3) from the Paradise Lost series, which belong roughly to the two ends of the period of Jerusalem’s production. Jerusalem is composed of 100 plates, with four books of roughly equal length, each framed by full-page designs, namely plates 1 (a frontispiece, which is followed by the title page), 26, 51, 76, 100. Each book is addressed to a specific audience: ‘To the Public’, ‘To the Jews’, ‘To the Deists’ and ‘To the Christians’. Jerusalem is a highly complex work, which baffles many of its reader-viewers, with its multifaceted symbolism, overlapping narratives, and shifting characters. To simplify matters for the purposes of examining plate 76, the following summary should suffice: at a basic level, the poem is about the symbolic figure of Albion, who is both a personification of Britain, and of universal humanity; Albion has fallen from his true state of Divine Humanity, and the poem is an account of his return to that condition.15 It begins, pictorially, with a full-page design depicting a pilgrim stepping over the threshold of a part-open door. The figure is stepping into the picture, and hence into the world of the poem. He can be read as Albion, beginning his journey to inhabit Divine Humanity; as Blake, the prophetic traveller and guide through this process; as the reader-viewer, participating in the visionary journey of the poem. Jerusalem is a place of transformation for all three travellers.

176

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Situated three-quarters of the way through the poem, between Books 3, ‘To the Deists’, and 4, ‘To the Christians’, plate 76 depicts Albion before a vision of the crucified Christ. I read this design as a key turning point in Albion’s spiritual journey to inhabiting Divine Humanity, representing his recognition of true Christianity not as bound by reason (as represented by Deism), but by being Christ-like; for Blake, that involves surrendering the selfhood, as epitomised by Christ in the Crucifixion, and emulated by Albion in this image. The plate has been discussed extensively in studies of Jerusalem and elsewhere and therefore my aim is not to offer a detailed exposition of the plate in the context of the illuminated poem, but rather to consider how the design develops and brings to fruition Blake’s understanding of the Crucifixion as an emblem of the selfannihilation or self-iconoclasm of Jesus. There are two principal schools of thought on how to interpret this image: one reads it as a positive emblem of Albion’s self-annihilation and thus as a key moment in Divine Image;16 the other representation of Albion as As I have already made clear,

his personal transformation into the regards the image as a negative worshipping a vegetated Christ.17 I subscribe to the former reading of

the design, but I will first briefly explain why the alternative reading of the design is sometimes presented because it is also relevant to understanding a positive interpretation of the design. One of the meanings of ‘to vegetate’ given by Johnson was ‘to grow without ſenſation’; and ‘vegetative’ was defined as ‘having the quality of growing without life’. It is a concept that appears in Blake’s later writings (especially The Four Zoas, A Vision of the Last Judgment, Milton and Jerusalem) to refer to that which stagnates in the mere material, without living, spiritual form. If the crucified Christ in Jerusalem 76 is read as vegetative, then Albion is worshipping a figure who embodies lifelessness and is a mere victim of an act of tyranny. It is true that Blake has depicted Christ as dead on the cross here, something which he had resisted in most of his previous engagements with crucifixion imagery; having variously avoided depicting Jesus on the cross, or depicted him crucified but before he dies, as seen above. However, there is sufficient other evidence to indicate that he is not a vegetated victim but a self-giving saviour.

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

177

The figure of Christ himself is depicted in a blaze of light, which emanates from him and shines onto the figure of Albion below, indicating that, even though his material body is dead, he is still living and life-giving. His emblazoned figure appears to be hovering before the tree, giving the impression that rather than being pinned to it, he is bursting forth from it, towards Albion and the viewer, so that we too can be illuminated by his light. The impression of Christ bursting from the cross and the strength of the glow emanating from him is most powerful in Copy E, with its dramatic use of yelloworange and touches of gold against inky darkness, but the effect is nevertheless present in the monochrome copies of the plate.18 In order to explore the design as an emblem of self-annihilation, I will discuss it alongside Michael Foretells the Crucifixion from the Paradise Lost series, which, as seen in Chapter 4, was first designed by Blake in 1807 and then reworked in 1808 and 1822. Hence, roughly speaking, the Paradise Lost design is of the same period as Jerusalem 76, given that we do not know exactly when plate 76 was designed in the development of Jerusalem. Michael Foretells the Crucifixion is the penultimate design in the Paradise Lost series, following the judgement of Adam and Eve and before their expulsion from the Garden of Eden; in the context of the series, it reiterates the promise seen in Christ Offers to Redeem Man that Christ freely offers himself on the cross in the service of Divine Humanity. Before Michael expels them from Paradise in the final design, Adam and Eve are comforted by Michael prophesying that Christ will overcome the Fall through the Crucifixion.19 This subject comes from a long passage in Books XI and XII in which Michael foretells the events of human history to Adam. In depicting the Crucifixion, which is described in PL XII.411 – 19,20 Blake departs from his pattern in the first ten designs of representing one subject for each book (there is no design for Book XI and two for Book XII, although the sleeping figure of Eve here refers back to XI.367 – 8); he was also the first designer to depict this part of the prophecy, a lacuna which may reflect the broader suspicion of depiction of the Crucifixion. Blake depicts Michael and Adam on either side of the crucified Christ, with Eve sleeping below. The figures of Satan, Sin and Death, who had been unleashed on the world by the wrathful Father in

178

The Visionary Art of William Blake

The Judgment of Adam and Eve are now overthrown at the base of the cross (PL XII.430–1).21 They are defeated and thus redemption is accomplished through the triumph of self-annihilation and iconoclasm of error. In the poem, Michael and Adam’s viewpoint is: a hill Of Paradise the highest, from whose top The hemisphere of earth in cleerest ken Stretcht out to amplest reach of prospect lay (PL XI.377–80)22

Previous illustrators of other parts of Michael’s prophecy accordingly placed Michael and Adam in a lofty position, looking down at the events described by Michael, but in Blake’s design – in keeping with the tradition that the site of the Crucifixion, Golgotha, was a hill – they are standing on a small hill, immediately below the cross, looking up at it. Thus, Blake creates a more intimate encounter with the vision, which here focuses on Christ crucified. The composition of the design is similar to Jerusalem 76 in placing Christ in an elevated position in the frame, with a viewer, Adam, standing below. In all three Paradise Lost designs, the body of Christ resembles that of Jerusalem 76, with his eyes closed and his head resting on his shoulder; in the 1822 version, he is also surrounded by a blaze of light, as in the Jerusalem plate. There is some development in the depiction of the body of Christ between the three versions: in the 1807 version, the figure of Christ strains somewhat under the weight of his body (although not to a realistic extent; Werner exaggerates in describing him as a ‘gaunt and anguished victim’);23 in the 1808 version, Christ is supporting his own weight, and he has a bleeding side wound, with blood also seeping from his hands and feet – a detail not seen in Jerusalem 76;24 in the 1822 version, the wounds are clean again and, as noted above, Blake has added a dramatic blast of light emanating from Christ. This emblazoned figure of Christ is identical to that in Jerusalem 76, which could be an indication that that was one of the later-designed plates of the illuminated book.25 Each version of Michael Foretells represents a more positive vision of the Crucifixion, which in the case of the first two versions corresponds with the change in Christ Offers to Redeem Man from Christ’s face being turned away from the viewer to being shown in profile.26

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

179

Without any clear supporting evidence to indicate shifts in Blake’s theology over this period, one possibility is that Blake was adapting to the sympathies of the respective patrons. It is notable that the cross features prominently in John Thurston’s Religious Emblems (1809) for which Revd Joseph Thomas, patron of the first set of Paradise Lost watercolours, wrote descriptions that celebrate the crucified Christ as triumphant redeemer. This book post-dates the Paradise Lost watercolours but nevertheless gives an insight into Thomas’ theology, and it is possible that he influenced the emphasis on the cross in Blake’s designs. Blake must have been generally sufficiently content with the subjects of the Thomas set to repeat them for Butts (apart from the substitution of Satan Spying on Adam and Eve and Raphael’s Descent into Paradise (B529.4) for Adam and Eve Asleep (B536.5)), but the modifications might just indicate a move away from Thomas’ preferences.27 However, more striking are the differences between the first two versions and the design for Linnell; this shift from the 1807 – 8 versions to the 1822 picture, and the latter’s similarity to Jerusalem 76, do also suggest that Blake came to adopt a more positive vision of the Crucifixion in the later years of his life. Commentary on Michael Foretells has raised some similar interpretative issues as for Albion’s vision of Christ: here too, scholars debate whether the design should be read positively, as a redemptive vision of self-annihilation,28 or negatively, as a vision fabricated by Michael, whose military dress suggests that he is an agent of justice.29 I contend that the issue of reading the Crucifixion in both Jerusalem 76 and Michael Foretells as positive or negative is a matter of perception (a solution which has already been explored in relation to Jerusalem 76 by numerous commentators):30 not only Adam and Albion, but also the viewer, is confronted with the choice of whether to worship the crucified Christ as a vegetated victim of justice or to recognise that he is a self-annihilating saviour who invites emulation rather than adoration. The choice is like that presented to Trusler in the letter discussed in the Introduction: the viewer who sees through a ‘vegetative’ eye will see a vegetated Christ; the one who sees with the eye of Imagination will see a vision of a saviour who enables our transformation into his image (cf. E702 – 3).

180

The Visionary Art of William Blake

This reading can be strengthened by Bindman’s demonstration that a probable source for Jerusalem 76 is a popular Methodist print, The Tree of Life (Figure 45). The print depicts Christ nailed to the Tree of Life, below which is a representation of Matthew 7:13– 14: a straight gate and narrow way leading to life, depicted here as the New Jerusalem within whose walls the Tree of Life stands, and a wide gate and broad way leading to destruction, depicted as a flaming, bottomless pit. In the foreground, John Wesley and George Whitefield guide people to the narrow way.31 The image presents the viewer with a choice to follow the narrow or the wide path, and thus, as a probable source for Jerusalem 76, supports an analogous reading of Blake’s plate (Bindman himself does not explicate this implication of the apparent influence). Indeed, Blake frames Jerusalem with a reference to another biblical passage about ‘two ways’, the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25:31 – 46), by inserting the words SHEEP and GOATS hovering above the title to the first plate ‘To the Public’ (Jerusalem 3, E145). Albion’s response to the crucified Christ shows that he has chosen the way of the sheep: he stands immediately in front of the cross in a dynamic, open-armed gesture that mirrors the cruciform figure of Christ, but transforms it into a dance-like pose which resembles that of Blake’s famous print Albion Rose or Glad Day (1780/c.1794, B262.1), although in Jerusalem he faces into the picture rather than towards the viewer as in the earlier design. While the pose of Albion indicates that he not only recognises Jesus’ self-annihilation but also emulates it, Adam’s pose in Michael Foretells is more guarded. In all three versions of the design, Adam’s response to the vision of the crucified Christ is a deferent pose, with his hands together in a gesture of conventional piety, looking up at Christ with an expression of surprise and wonderment; he is stood at the very foot and to the right (from the viewer’s perspective) of the cross. Whereas Albion responds confidently to the vision of the crucified Christ, Adam’s somewhat startled expression and restrained pose suggest that he is unsure of how to respond to the crucified Christ. This inadequate response reflects the moment in salvation history at which this event takes place; Adam does not fully comprehend the significance of the crucified Christ.

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

181

FIGURE 45 Anon., The Tree of Life (c.1770). 32.3 £ 24.8 cm. Engraving. The John Rylands Library. Copyright of The University of Manchester. In Michael Foretells, there is the additional ‘viewer’ of Eve, who is depicted asleep across the bottom of the design. Her role here has usually been interpreted in negative ways, associating her with the ‘vegetated’ earth, or her sleep with failure of vision or annihilation of

182

The Visionary Art of William Blake

the female Emanation (relating to an idea in Blake’s personal mythology that the division of gender that occurred in the Creation of Eve is a corrupt state that should be overturned).32 However, I read her role in the design as a figure who sees the alternative perspectives on the vision of Christ. In the poem, Michael tells Adam that he has ‘drenched her eyes’ in sleep (PL XI.367).33 Blake depicts the vision as her dream, which, while not precluded by Milton’s account, is an extrapolation from the text. In her dream, she sees the vision of the crucified Christ, and Adam’s ambivalent response to it, although her recumbent state indicates that she too has yet to realise the significance of the crucified Christ. Nevertheless, she is a surrogate viewer of the scene, such that there are at least three levels of encounter with the crucified Christ in this design: Michael showing this vision to Adam, Eve witnessing the vision in a dream, and the viewer of Blake’s watercolour(s). While Michael Foretells the Crucifixion prefigures future redemption for Adam and Eve, for Albion, as noted above, the vision of the crucified Christ itself is a turning point in his personal journey to embodiment of the Human Form Divine, marking his rejection of rational religion (as represented in Book 3, addressed ‘To the Deists’) and embrace of true Christianity, as takes place in Book 4 (addressed ‘To the Christians’), which follows plate 76. This point is further reinforced by considering the plate alongside the other full-page designs in Jerusalem. The open, cruciform postures of Christ and Albion in plate 76 contrast with the enclosed figures of Vala, Hyle and Skofeld on plate 51 (between Books 2 and 3).34 Conversely, Albion’s cruciform figure recalls that of Hand on plate 26 (between Books 1 and 2), who, as Paley argues, is ‘a demonic parody of Christ (and of the Albion of 76)’.35 Albion’s pose also anticipates that of Enitharmon spinning in the final plate, 100, where, as Leo Damrosch suggests, she (together with Los and his Spectre) is a worker, not of the heavenly Jerusalem, but doing ‘the best that the fallen imagination can do’.36 Thus, Blake establishes a pattern of correspondences, parodies and contrasts between the figures on the full-page plates which frame the books of Jerusalem, with Albion of 76 as the positive counterpart to the fallen figures on the other plates.37

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

183

Albion’s open-armed gesture is also echoed in that of the androgynous figure on plate 99, immediately below the final words of Jerusalem, who is being embraced by an old male figure (probably representing Jehovah redeemed) in an encounter that recalls that of the return of the Prodigal Son.38 This image in turn echoes the similar embrace between Albion and Britannia on plate 96, which is when Albion learns from Jesus the necessity of sacrificing the selfhood for his redemption, and that this process, as embodied in Christ, is the epitome of God’s love for Man (Jerusalem 96:20 – 8, E256). Thus, sitting between Books 3 and 4, plate 76 represents the sacrifice of the selfhood as the means by which the individual is taken from error, as represented in plates 26 and 51, into the final embrace of the Divine Body, as narrated and depicted in plates 96 and 99. This image of Albion before the crucified Christ is Blake’s most powerful expression of the crucifixion as an emblem of transformative, iconoclastic, self-annihilation; facing into the picture and mirroring Christ, Albion is also a surrogate spectator (analogous to the inclusion of donor portraits among the attendant figures in Renaissance religious paintings). Both in this image, and in Michael Foretells, the positioning of the crucified Christ in an elevated position makes not only Albion and Adam, but also the viewer, supplicant before him. Thus, while Adam and Eve represent inadequate responses to Christ, Albion, who shares the viewer’s perspective of the figure of Christ, is the model for the viewer’s engagement with him so that we too, are invited to reject the error of selfhood and embrace the truth of the Human Form Divine.

ENVISIONING THE CRUCIFIXION IN BUNYAN AND DANTE Having devised the motif of depicting the Crucifixion being seen by an attendant figure by 1807 (i.e. the first Michael Foretells; the Jerusalem 76 design could also have been devised or begun by this time), the pictorial idea clearly remained relevant for Blake through the development of Jerusalem to c.1820, and in the 1822 Paradise Lost designs. Although it is not clear why there are only three designs in the late Paradise Lost set, the non-consecutive selection may indicate that Blake chose those subjects that most interested him, quite

184

The Visionary Art of William Blake

possibly as the start of a full 12 subjects that were not completed for reasons that are unknown. The motif of the surrogate viewer of the Crucifixion also became the model for Blake’s last visual engagements with the subject in his designs for Bunyan and Dante. In the final years of his life, Blake began two series of designs of literary subjects, both of which remained incomplete at his death – 28 watercolours depicting Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (1824–7, B829), the intended patron of which is not clear (Frederick Tatham was the first owner), and over 100 designs for Dante’s Divine Comedy for Linnell (1824–7, B812), which were to be engraved, although only seven plates had been etched before Blake’s death. Both series, following the poems that they depict, feature, at a key moment, a vision of the crucified Christ, which Blake depicts in a manner reminiscent of Jerusalem 76. Blake’s Pilgrim’s Progress watercolours (B829) are rarely discussed in Blake scholarship, a lacuna owing partly to the fact that they have been in a private collection for the past two decades, but more fundamentally has to do with the problematic status of the works: they were unfinished at Blake’s death and appear to have been coloured by another hand – perhaps, as Rossetti stated, Catherine Blake.39 There is one monograph on these works by Gerda Norvig, which regrettably goes too far in attempting a systematised reading of this unfinished series.40 Nevertheless, Christian Before the Cross (B829.14, Plate 19) deserves consideration in relation to Blake’s depictions of the Crucifixion, because the general conception of the designs is his, and according to Butlin, this design seems to be almost entirely by Blake’s hand. Echoing the arrangement of Michael Foretells and Jerusalem 76, Blake depicts Christian with his back to the viewer, looking up at a vision of Christ crucified. Only the upper part of Christ’s body is depicted, which appears within a cloud-like space in the upper branches of a mass of vines growing on top of a tomb. The figure of Christ himself is only faintly sketched and it is therefore difficult to determine much about the depiction of his body and features, but he does appear to be dead because his head is resting on his shoulder. However, the fact that the vision emerges from the vines growing from the tomb, and its cloudy form has a womb-like shape, indicates that the crucified Christ represents life emerging from death.

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

185

In Bunyan’s text, it is the cross, rather than Christ’s body, which Christian sees; rather, he hopes to subsequently ‘see him alive that did hang dead on the cross’ by going to Mount Zion.41 Previous illustrations of this episode such as those of John Sturt (1741) and Thomas Stothard (1788) faithfully depicted Christian before a bare cross.42 In showing Christ hanging on a tree, Blake is drawing on Christian’s later recollection of this episode: ‘I saw one, as I thought in my mind, hang bleeding upon the Tree; and the very sight of him made my burden fall off my back.’43 As indicated in this last quotation, the vision of the cross makes Christian shed the burden that he has been carrying on his back until this point, which is pictured at his feet in Blake’s design. This casting off is analogous to Blake’s own iconoclastic notion of the sacrifice of the selfhood. However, Christian’s reaction to the life-giving figure suggests only partial recognition of the significance of the vision at this point: like Adam, he appears to be startled, and his gesture, hands-raised, but not fully outstretched, is somewhere between that of Adam in Michael Foretells and Albion in Jerusalem 76. This episode must be seen within Bunyan’s narrative of Christian’s gradual spiritual ‘progress’, not as a dramatic, once-and-for-all event. The drawing is the 14th of Blake’s 28 sketches for Pilgrim’s Progress; since the sketches cover the entire span of Bunyan’s narrative, we can infer that these are probably all the subjects Blake intended to produce. It is therefore significant that Christian Before the Cross occupies a central position in the series because, as previous commentators have highlighted, the arrangement shifts the balance of Bunyan’s narrative sequence dramatically, for this episode comes just a fifth of the way through the text.44 The central place given to this design in Blake’s series makes this subject, with its resonance with Blake’s doctrine of self-annihilation, a key turning point in the pictorial narrative – not quite as radical an experience for Bunyan as plate 76 was for Albion, but analogous to the significance of that moment in Blake’s own myth. The roughly contemporaneous Dante Adoring Christ (B812.90, Plate 20) in Blake’s designs for Dante’s Divine Comedy occupies a similarly prominent place in its series: it is the first design for Paradiso, although it depicts a scene from the 14th canto

186

The Visionary Art of William Blake

(although we cannot exclude the possibility that Blake might have added more designs had the project continued). As in Christian Before the Cross, Blake omits the cross itself: where Dante describes Christ ‘Beam’d on that cross’ (Canto XIV, l. 97),45 Blake simply depicts Christ cruciform, thereby focusing on the human form of Christ. Again, the format is Christ in an elevated, central position, with the figure of Dante immediately below. Here, Christ is seen full-length, emerging from a blaze of colours, and Dante is kneeling, looking up at Christ, with his arms open, mirroring the cruciform of Christ. As has been well documented in studies of Blake’s Dante designs, Dante’ soteriology is at odds with Blake’s: whereas Dante presents a salvific schema in which retribution is brought upon the sinful, Blake rejects the notion of sin in favour of a vision of eternal forgiveness.46 It is probably owing to such differences in opinion that Blake described Dante as an atheist in his conversations with Crabb Robinson, while simultaneously expressing ‘the highest admiration’ for Dante as a poet (c.1826, BR 697). Blake depicts a retributive crucifixion earlier in the series in The Hypocrites with Caiaphas (B812.44) from Inferno. As described in Canto XXIII, lines 112– 29,47 and following Flaxman’s version of the subject, Blake depicts Caiaphas nailed to a cross on the ground, being walked over by a line of hypocrites – the implication being that Caiaphas is being crucified by hypocrisy. Caiaphas was the high priest who counselled that Jesus be crucified (John 11:47 – 57) and as such is a malign figure for Blake, who is called ‘the dark Preacher of Death’ opposite ‘Jesus [. . .] the bright Preacher of Life’ (Jerusalem 77:18, 21, E232; cf. EG k:53– 62, i:21– 5; E519 – 20, 523). This episode in Dante resonates with Blake’s idea in his notebook description of the Last Judgement that the Crucifixion is an act of hypocrisy, where he follows a rebuke to ‘Hypocrites’ with the statement quoted at the beginning of the chapter that ‘The Modern Church Crucifies Christ with the Head Downwards’ (VLJ, E564). Thus, Caiaphas here has become bound by his own hypocrisy – in Inferno a warning to Dante on his journey through Hell, and in Blake’s design, a warning to the viewer against perpetrating such violence against the Human Form Divine. The Christ whom Dante encounters in Paradiso is a counterpoint to the crucified hypocrite: he is triumphant rather than suffering; not

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

187

crucified on a cross but offering himself in an open-armed gesture of love.48 The implication of this design’s place as the first for Paradiso is that this is Dante’s means of entering Paradise; significantly, he is encountering Christ without the mediation of Beatrice (who is present in the text, and represents the church) or his first guide Virgil – in other words, without the intervention of the church or other external authority. The Christ of the Paradiso image is an apocalyptic saviour, emerging from a blaze of flames, as if being born from them in an iconoclastic process of regeneration (such an interpretation of the flames in Blake’s Day of Judgment was made by the commentator on The Grave designs: ‘A sea of fire issues from beneath the throne of Christ, destructive to the wicked, but salutary to the righteous’).49 Further rays of light seem to emanate from Christ himself, shining on to Dante who mirrors his gesture. Thus, Dante too is being reborn – this can be read as Dante’s own self-iconoclasm, purging his erroneous doctrines to embody his true Poetic Genius. The reading that Christ and Dante are being re-born here is strengthened by the similarity of this Christ to that of the contemporaneous second title page of the Genesis manuscript (c.1826–7, B828.2), also created for Linnell, where Christ is depicted as Creator, giving life to Adam. That design also points to the Crucifixion, not only in Christ’s cruciform pose, but also, as Piloo Nanavutty has shown, because among the flowers around this CreatorChrist is a lily of Calvary.50 This parallel in another work produced for Linnell, indicates that Dante, like Christ himself, and Adam in the Genesis design, is in a sense being (re-)born in the Divine Comedy Design; and that the viewer can be like-wise by taking up his perspective and emulating his self-annihilation. As Bindman highlights, this is not the final redemption of Dante, and his fate is left undetermined in the last plates for Paradiso that Blake produced.51 Nevertheless, the design reaffirms Blake’s vision of the Crucifixion not as ‘horrible’ but as Christ’s freely given and transformative act of self-annihilation.

CONCLUSION We have seen, then, that Blake re-cast the Crucifixion as a site not of suffering and oppression, but of self-annihilation and regeneration.

188

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Reflecting the iconoclastic methods of his art that rejected both ideological and technical errors (as Blake saw things), Blake reimagined the Crucifixion as a symbol of the rejection of error and falsehood. It is significant that Blake adopted a more positive conception of the Crucifixion in the later years of his life. This attitude is related to Blake’s doctrine of self-annihilation, which emerges in The Four Zoas, Milton and Jerusalem. In the same period, Blake was working on his depictions and descriptions of the Last Judgement, which similarly concern the expurgation of that which is obstructive or damaging to the Human Form Divine. Meanwhile, his attempts to publicise his own iconoclastic artistic vision through his 1809 exhibition and the prospectus for his Canterbury Pilgrims of the same year had attracted little interest, and commissions commercial engraving work began to wane. Nevertheless, continued to expound his personal vision that railed against establishments of the art world and organised religion through

for he the the

three long prophetic poems, and in the commissions from his loyal patrons that allowed him to express his iconoclastic ideas. It can hardly be a coincidence that it was in this period when he was beset by rejection, poverty and, in the final years, ill-health, that he developed his central doctrine of self-annihilation.52 His uncompromising artistic vision had cost him work; he had made material sacrifices for the sake of spiritual integrity. In short, Blake must have identified with the figure of the crucified Christ as emblematic of self-sacrifice. A similar point has been made about Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job from the final years of his life: focusing on the sufferings of the righteous man Job, the poverty and illness-stricken Blake must have empathised with the protagonist.53 As has been mentioned previously, the Job engravings were published in 1826, with the support of Linnell, based on watercolours produced for Butts c.1805 – 6, which Blake had adapted and expanded for Linnell in 1821. There are 21 plates, plus a title page. The designs are Blake’s retelling of the biblical story of Job, a God-fearing man who is subjected to a series of personal tragedies and torments at the hands of Satan. Blake may well have identified with the suffering of Job, but Blake’s Job is not an avatar for Blake. While the biblical narrative was (and is) commonly

Crucifixion as Self-Annihilation

189

read as a meditation on the problem of suffering, Blake recasts Job’s story, presenting him as a self-righteous man who follows the letter of organised religion rather than embodying Divine Humanity in Blakean terms. Thus, Blake’s Job is the un-Blakean, the representative of conventional piety who needs to reject the error of his rote religion and to embrace genuine Divine Humanity. Like Albion in Jerusalem, Blake’s Job does see the error of his ways, and the series culminates in plate 21 with Job and his family gathered together, playing music – an expression of creative, Divine Humanity. The moment when Job’s conversion is manifest is in plate 18, when he is depicted making a sacrifice at an altar. Rather than another act of conventional piety, Job adopts a cruciform gesture and upward gaze, echoing Albion in Jerusalem 76, and expressing his relinquishing of his former errors. Job, like Albion, Adam, Christian and Dante, is an avatar for Blake’s audience; Blake wants us to annihilate that which obstructs Divine Humanity in us, which is the very purpose of his whole artistic project.

on my asking [Blake] in what light he viewed the great question concerning the Divinity of Christ He said – ‘He is the only God’ – But then he added – ‘And so am I and so are you’. Conversation with Henry Crabb Robinson (1825, BR 421)

The whole Business of Man Is The Arts & All Things Common Practise is Art If you leave off you are Lost Laocoo¨n (c.1826–7, E273, E274)

Conclusion

The plate of aphorisms known as the Laocoo¨n that Blake produced in the final years of his life contains some of his most pithy statements about subjects that were of enduring interest throughout his career – not least, as seen in aphorisms quoted at various points in this book, about his beliefs concerning Christianity and art (and Christianity as art). Other themes that are interwoven in the nexus of ideas addressed in this plate include science, money and empire; these various topics are mutually interrelated and illuminating. These aphorisms swirl around an image of the ancient Laocoo¨n sculpture, which Blake had engraved for Abraham Rees’s encyclopaedia a decade earlier (cf. B679), hence the name commonly given to the plate; however, as Morton Paley has shown, Blake himself titled it ‘‫ & הי‬His Two Sons Satan & Adam’, thus reimagining the symbolism of the ancient sculpture to incorporate it into his own mythos.1 Above all, the plate is a manifesto for the primacy of art and its power to reform and regenerate the various spheres addressed in its aphorisms. Blake espouses a vision of art as a transformative process whereby artist and viewer coexist as members of the Divine Body. This model of art is epitomised in the life of Jesus, who is the archetypal artist in Blake’s mythos. When Blake states in the so-called Laocoo¨n plate that the works of ‘Jesus & his Apostles & Disciples [. . .] were destroyd by the Seven Angels of the Seven Churches in Asia’ (E274) he was not referring to a lost cache of fine art, but rather to what he regarded as the genuine message of Jesus that he believed had been corrupted by

192

The Visionary Art of William Blake

organised religion. The seven churches of Asia appear in Chapters 2– 3 of the Book of Revelation; each is addressed with a proclamation that accuses or warns against an error or lapse in their faith; each is offered a reward for their repentance. In Blake’s aphorism, the seven churches symbolise the errors and inadequacies of organised religion, and its role in obscuring the vision of Jesus as the archetypal artist. In a sense, the historical person Jesus is not particularly important for Blake; it is what he typifies that matters: namely, the Human Form Divine, which any individual can embody as a member of the Divine Body, a participant in the ontological reality of Imagination. To paraphrase the conversation with Crabb Robinson quoted above, Jesus is the archetypal artist, and so is Blake, and so is his (ideal) viewer. For Blake himself, inhabiting this way of being involved the production of poetry and designs that are works of art in the common understanding of the term; in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, Blake saw artistic qualities in his actions and interactions with his audience. This book has shown how Blake’s own artistic productions and his idea of Christ as the archetypal artist coalesce by examining how Blake used his depictions of Christ as a medium to express his vision of art. Blake’s depictions of Christ reveal a multifaceted vision of Jesus as the archetypal artist, reflecting the diversity of Blake’s numerous names for the central figure of Christianity. Blake’s Christ epitomises the regenerative, prophetic and iconoclastic qualities of Blake’s aesthetic, and is presented as an eternal type for the artist, and for the artist’s interaction with his/her audience. Blake depicts Christ both simply being the Human Form Divine, and performing acts that embody that ideal, as well as in roles that extend his ministry beyond the events of the New Testament, representing him as a perpetual emblem of the Human Form Divine. At the same time, Blake presents various other figures from the public ministry of Jesus as similarly exemplary models of the Human Form Divine – as well as others who are antitypes of Christ. Blake represents Christ as the one who engenders the understanding of the distinction between error and truth, and hence which figures belong within and apart from the Divine Body (‘whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth a Last Judgment passes

Conclusion

193

upon that Individual’ (VLJ, E562)). As mentioned at several points, Blake’s concept of the Divine Body as the corporate identity of the Human Form Divine also extends to various figures in his personal mythology who act as avatars of Christ – and likewise excludes his mythological figures who fail to embody that ideal. The relationships between Blake’s personal mythology and his engagement with the more traditional Christian subjects examined here could be a fruitful topic for further investigation. Blake’s depictions of Old Testament figures could also be studied further in this way. The works that I have examined here were created for a variety of different purposes and audiences. While many were produced for private patrons and therefore had a limited audience in Blake’s lifetime, others, such as the Night Thoughts and Grave designs, circulated more widely. Blake attempted to promote his artistic theories through his 1809 exhibition and its accompanying catalogue, and wrote several other texts that extended his artistic manifesto, including the prospectuses for his print of Chaucer’s pilgrims after the painting that was exhibited in the 1809 exhibition (1809, E567–70), the Last Judgement texts (1808, 1810), and a draft essay known as the Public Address (1809–10, E571–82), which explores similar themes to the other texts (the state of the arts in England, art as public duty, and Blake’s opinions about artistic methods). Blake also had ambitions to produce large-scale public works ‘to make England like Italy, respected by respectable men of other countries on account of Art’ (E549; cf. 527). These various efforts to promote his work and ideas met with limited success during his lifetime. Although we know in general terms something of how some of Blake’s works were regarded, we have less evidence about how the meanings of his works were interpreted by his contemporaries. For example, apart from one scathing review (BR 282 – 6), we do not know what visitors to the 1809 exhibition made of Blake’s work and manifesto; the lack of wider press coverage, as well as Blake’s apparently desperate move of extending the exhibition, itself speaks of the limited impact that the show had (cf. BR 286). Even from his loyal patrons, we know fairly little about what they made of Blake’s works. In the absence of such evidence, Blake’s own writings, his textual and visual sources, and the pictorial language that weaves

194

The Visionary Art of William Blake

through his visual works have enabled us to investigate how he used pictorial works of different types as vehicles for his theology of art. There have been numerous attempts in the almost two centuries following Blake’s death to champion his religious and artistic theories in a variety of contexts.2 My own aims in this book have been historical rather than evangelistic, demonstrating how Blake expressed his theology of art in his depictions of Christ, and how these works relate to the culture of Blake’s day. As I indicated in the Introduction, there remains work to be done in understanding the religious visual culture of the period more broadly. Further work in this area would enrich the reading of Blake’s theory and imagery of Christ presented here. For example, we might consider whether any of the changes in emphases in Blake’s work over the course of his career seen here can be related to developments in religious art in his day. Although my aims have been primarily to understand, rather than to promote Blake’s religious aesthetic, given the growing interest in theological aesthetics in theological discourse today, I would nevertheless like to point to how the ideas presented here might speak to that field. Blake did not think of himself as a theologian; he rejected the notion of organised religion, and believed that codification of religious doctrine led to a perversion of religious truth. But in Jesus, Blake saw an archetypal figure that transcended the doctrines promoted by institutional Christianity; whose ministry and message he admired, and in whom he saw embodied qualities that characterise great art. Blake is not unique in celebrating the figure Christ in such terms. To give an example from a contemporary of Blake, in his ‘Essay on Christianity’ (1817) Percy Bysshe Shelley referred to Jesus as a poet, and wrote that Jesus was ‘[t]he being who has influenced in the most memorable manner the opinions and the fortunes of the human species’.3 Like Blake, Shelley was critical of organised religion, and famously wrote on ‘The Necessity of Atheism’ (1811),4 but he recognised in Jesus a figure of ‘extraordinary Genius’.5 At the end of the nineteenth century, Oscar Wilde would also characterise Jesus as an artist in the 1897 letter from Reading Prison known as De Profundis.6 However, I am not aware of a serious attempt within the field of theology to develop a ‘Christology of art’;7 Blake’s vision of Christ as artist could inform and enrich such a

Conclusion

195

theology. A Christology of art, grounded in the idea of Jesus’ ministry as changing the way that we see the world, could have particular value for religious engagement with modern and contemporary artforms such as conceptual and performance art (although such work is far removed from the union of technique and concept that existed in Blake’s art, especially as seen in relation to his method of illuminated printing). At the same time, I would like to suggest how the methodology adopted here might offer a note of caution to the field of theological aesthetics. There have been various efforts to develop theologies of art that consider art as a source for theological inquiry and reflection. Within this field there is often a tendency to consider works of art as objects that acquire their own independent status, sometimes paying little attention to the circumstances in which a work of art was created (such an approach is not of course unique to this field; comparable appropriation of Blake’s work is widespread in any number of contexts and indeed the pursuit of the ideas that I sketch out in the previous paragraph would be such an appropriation). Whilst this approach has its own internal coherence, a figure such as Blake, who expressed his own theology of art through his works, and which responded to the art of his time, demonstrates the value of taking a more historically grounded approach to art in a theological context. Blake invited a particular way of engaging with his work, which should be attended to by the modern viewer who is interested in the meanings of his mythos – not least his religious and aesthetic ideas. Theological aesthetics could no doubt find similarly rich theologies of art inherent in the work of other artists. In Blake’s religious artistic vision, the idea of Christ as the archetypal artist, the notion of art as a transformative process, and above all a belief in the divinity of humanity coincide in a singular and intense way. Blake’s idea of imaginative, interactional engagement is not merely a mode for viewing his works; it is also a way of viewing and experiencing the world. In this respect, his visionary aesthetics can have a wider, non-religious, value in the image-laden world of today, by teaching us about attentive viewing, about the power of the symbol, and about pictorial Imagination.

Notes

INTRODUCTION 1. Morris Eaves, William Blake’s Theory of Art (Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 195–6. 2. Keri Davies and Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Recovering the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 38.1 (2004), pp. 36– 43. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/38.1.davies (accessed 06/10/2017); Christopher Rowland, Blake and the Bible (New Haven, CT, 2010); Susanne Sklar, Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ as Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body (Oxford, 2011); Jennifer G. Jesse, William Blake’s Religious Vision: There’s a Methodism in His Madness (Lanham, MD, 2013); Michael Farrell, Blake and the Methodists (Basingstoke, 2014). 3. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton, NJ, 1947); Harold Bloom, Blake’s Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument (London, 1963); W.J.T. Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry (Princeton, NJ, 1978); Eaves, Blake’s Theory of Art; idem., The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (London, 1992); John Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’ (New Haven, CT, 1986). 4. Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake (New York, NY, 1959); David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (Oxford, 1977); Martin Myrone, The Blake Book (London, 2007). 5. Pamela Dunbar, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton (Oxford, 1980); Bette Charlene Werner, Blake’s Vision of the Poetry of Milton: Illustrations to Six Poems (London, 1986); J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs: The Dynamics of Meaning (West Cornwall, CT, 1993); John E. Grant, ‘Jesus and the Powers That Be in Blake’s Designs for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 71 –115 (see Bibliography for other work

Notes to Pages 4 – 9

6.

7. 8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

197

on Night Thoughts by Grant); Christopher Heppner, Reading Blake’s Designs (Cambridge, 1995). The literary and oeuvre-surveying studies are those cited above; the exhibition catalogues mentioned are: David Bindman, Mind-Forg’d Manacles (London, 2009); Martin Myrone, Gothic Nightmares (London, 2006); Michael Phillips, William Blake: Apprentice and Master (Oxford, 2014). S. Foster Damon; ed. Morris Eaves, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbolism of William Blake (London, 1979), p. 82. ‘Search’ for ‘Christ’ and ‘Jesus’ via http://erdman.blakearchive.org/ (accessed: 17/05/2017). Rowland, Blake and the Bible, p. 210. J.G. Davies, The Theology of William Blake (Oxford, 1948), pp. 110–1, 116; Thomas J.J. Altizer, The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (East Lansing, MI, 1967), pp. 63 –75. Blake’s idea of Christ as the preeminent person of the Godhead echoes the theology of Emmanuel Swedenborg, a Swedish polymath and mystic whose ideas were the basis for the New Church, a movement that emerged in the late eighteenth century, and with which Blake had some contact, as mentioned in Chapter 3. Blake also read and annotated some of Swedenborg’s writings. Although Blake and Swedenborg both believed in the pre-eminence of Christ, Blake’s idea of the essential unity of Humanity and Divinity as Human Form Divine distinguishes his theology from Swedenborg’s. A detailed summary of Swedenborg’s ideas about Christ can be found under ‘Lord’ in the Swedenborg Society’s Index to Swedenborg’s Arcana Cœlestia or Heavenly Mysteries Contained in the Holy Scripture (London, 1865), Vol. 1/2. Cf. Anthony Blunt, ‘Blake’s “Ancient of Days”: The Symbolism of the Compasses’, Journal of the Warburg Institute 2.1 (1938), pp. 53 –63; Detlef ¨ rrbecker (ed.), William Blake: The Continental Prophecies (Princeton, W. Do NJ, 1998), pp. 161–8; Martin K. Nurmi, ‘Blake’s “Ancient of Days” and Motte’s Frontispiece to Newton’s Principia’, in Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.), The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake (London, 1957), pp. 207– 16; Colin Trodd, Visions of Blake: William Blake and the Art World 1830–1930 (Liverpool, 2012), p. 262. Frye, Fearful Symmetry, pp. 89 –90; p. 32 (not ‘a god’, as Gleckner stated after Frye (Robert F. Gleckner, ‘Blake’s Religion of Imagination’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 14.3 (1956), pp. 359–69: p. 362)). Bloom, Blake’s Apocalypse, pp. 9, 24. Ibid., pp. 36, 41 –50. Ibid., p. 433. Eaves, Blake’s Theory of Art, pp. 195, 196; cf. idem., ‘Romantic Expressive Theory and Blake’s Idea of the Audience’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 95.5 (1980), pp. 784– 801: p. 795. The present book essentially picks up where Eaves left off in his account

198

18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

29.

30.

Notes to Pages 9 – 12 of Blake’s idea of audience as modelled on Jesus’ public ministry in this concluding section of Blake’s Theory of Art; I develop Eaves’ theory in two directions: first, by focusing on Blake’s visual works; second, by examining other aspects of Jesus’ life and ministry represented by Blake. Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting, pp. 222 – 57. There is an important distinction between Eaves’ and Barrell’s concepts of Blake’s theory of art: while Eaves reads Blake as an individualist, Barrell’s civic humanist account makes a distinction between individuality and character, arguing that Blake associates individualism with commerce and hence it is a damaging principle, motivated by selfinterest rather than community; instead, in Barrell’s reading, Blake believes that each person belongs to one of the ‘classes of men’ (E533), according to his/her character. Simplifying a complex matter, however, Eaves and Barrell do agree that a person’s true identity exists in the community of the Divine Body. My own view is that this common idea is the essential point for understanding Blake’s idea of the individual and the public, and that Blake’s writings on this topic are too messy to say definitively that individualism or civic humanism is the model. The debate can be found in: Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting, pp. 223 – 4, 353 – 4 n. 2; Morris Eaves, ‘Review: John Barrell, Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: “The Body of the Public”’, Studies in Romanticism 27.3 (1988): pp. 429 – 42; idem., Counter-Arts Conspiracy, p. 150, fn. 26. Clare Haynes, ‘In the Shadow of the Idol. Religion in British Art Theory 1600– 1800’, Art History 35.1 (2012), pp. 62 –85. Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy, pp. 107– 52; p. 133. Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting, pp. 236–7, 255–7; William L. Pressly, James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (Cork, 2014), esp. pp. 283–90. James Barry, An Account of a Series of Pictures, in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi (London, 1783), p. 24. Idem., An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (London, 1775), p. 65; cf. pp. 121–4. Idem., An Account of a Series of Pictures at the Adelphi, p. 22. Ibid., p. 23. G.E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Blake Books (Oxford, rev. edn. 2000), p. 683. Pressly, Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts, pp. 284–6. Idem., ‘Benjamin West’s Royal Chapel at Windsor: Who’s in Charge, the Patron of the Painter?’, in Andrew Hemmingway and Alan Wallach (eds), Transatlantic Romanticism: British and American Art and Literature, 1790– 1860 (Amherst, MA, 2015), pp. 102–21. Benjamin West, Christ Rejected: Catalogue of the Picture, Representing the Above Subject [. . .] (London, 1814), p. 12. West also expresses his ‘gratitude to the SUPREME BEING ’ for his life and health (p. 15). Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art, pp. 216–7.

Notes to Pages 12 – 16

199

31. Ibid., p. 19. See also Mitchell’s comparison with Flaxman in ‘Style as Epistemology’, pp. 150–3; cf. idem., ‘Style as Epistemology: Blake and the Movement Toward Abstraction in Romantic Art’, Studies in Romanticism 16.2 (1977), pp. 145–64: esp. pp. 153–4. 32. For such a reading of Friedrich’s work, and comparative discussions of Turner, see: Robert Rosenblum, Modern Painting and the Northern Romantic Tradition: Friedrich to Rothko (London, 1975), pp. 10–40. 33. Sklar, Jerusalem as Visionary Theatre. 34. Joseph Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ, 1993), p. 339. 35. For a history of attempts to resist the viewer-response nature of Blake’s art, see Trodd, Visions of Blake, pp. 1–229. 36. Clare Haynes, ‘Anglicanism and Art’ in Jeremy Gregory (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II: Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829 (Oxford, 2017), pp. 371–91; Nigel Aston, Art and Religion in EighteenthCentury Europe (London, 2009). 37. On West’s ecclesiastical commissions, see: Nicholas Grindle, ‘Sublime and Fall: Benjamin West and the Politics of the Sublime in Early NineteenthCentury Marylebone’, in Andrew Hemmingway and Alan Wallach (eds), Transatlantic Romanticism: British and American Art and Literature, 1790– 1860 (Amherst, MA, 2015), pp. 83–101; on West’s biblical paintings more broadly, see: John Dillenberger, Benjamin West: the Context of his Life’s Work, with Particular Attention to Paintings with Religious Subject Matter (San Antonio, TX, 1977); Nancy L. Pressly, Revealed Religion: Benjamin West’s Commissions for Windsor Castle and Fonthill Abbey (San Antonio, TX, 1983); Thomas Ardill, ‘Between God, Art and Mammon: Religious Painting as a Public Spectacle in Britain, c.1800–1832’, Courtauld Institute PhD Thesis, 2016, pp. 30 –83. 38. Benjamin Robert Haydon also campaigned for increased patronage of painting from the Church, writing a tract on the subject: New Churches: Considered with Respect to the Opportunities they Offer for the Encouragement of Painting (London, 1818). 39. On biblical painting in the early nineteenth century, see: Ardill, ‘Between God, Art and Mammon’. 40. On art in Anglican churches in the eighteenth century, see: Haynes, ‘Anglicanism and Art’, pp. 376 – 7; in fn. 15, Haynes mentions a forthcoming book dealing with this topic, provisionally entitled In the Idol’s Shadow: Art in the Church of England 1660 –1839, which will be an important addition to the literature on this topic; Aston, Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe. 41. Thomas Newton, The Works of the Right Reverend Thomas Newton (London, 1787), Vol. 1/6, p. 142; cf. pp. 140–6. For Barry’s account of the project, see: An Account of a Series of Pictures at the Adelphi, pp. 207– 9. 42. On the impact of concerns to avoid popery in British art in a slightly earlier period, see: Clare Haynes, Pictures and Popery: Art and AntiCatholicism c.1660–c.1760 (Aldershot, 2006).

200

Notes to Pages 16 – 19

43. Ibid., p. 135. 44. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757). 45. Haynes, ‘Anglicanism and Art’, p. 375. 46. [Orleans Gallery], The Orleans Gallery now Exhibiting at the Great Rooms [. . .] (London, 1793); [idem.], A Catalogue of the Orleans’ Italian Pictures [. . .] (London, 1798). 47. [Orleans Gallery], Catalogue of the Italian Pictures, p. 11, no. 77. 48. Count Truchsess, Catalogue of the Truchsessian Picture Gallery [. . .]; [idem.], Summary Catalogue of the Pictures now Exhibiting and on Sale at the Truchsessian Gallery (London, 1804). 49. Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Young William Blake and the Moravian Tradition of Visionary Art’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 40.3 (2006–7), pp. 84– 100: pp. 92 –3, 95. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3. schuchard (accessed 06/10/2017). 50. The collection included works by the Moravian artist Johann Valentin Haidt, who was based in London 1724 –40 and subsequently moved to America. Most of Haidt’s surviving paintings are in the collection of the Moravian Historical Society (Nazareth, PA); these may give some idea of the kind of works Blake could have encountered. For example, Schuchard notes a striking similarity in the soldiers in Blake’s Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garments (1800, B495) and Haidt’s painting of the crucifixion in the Moravian Historical Society, but the latter was painted after Haidt’s emigration to America (‘Blake and the Moravian Tradition of Visionary Art’, p. 95). 51. Keri Davies, ‘Jonathan Spilsbury and the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 40.3 (2006– 7), pp. 100–9. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.davies (accessed 06/10/2017). 52. For details of these engravings, see: Robert N. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake after Designs by Other Artists (Oxford, 1991), cat. V. 53. Ibid., cat. VI. 54. Ibid., cat. III. 55. Macklin, Thomas (ed.), The Holy Bible: Embellished by the Most Eminent British Artists (London, 1800), 7 Vols; T. Cadell and W. Davies (eds), The Apocrypha, Embellished with Engravings from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists (London, 1816); T. Cadell and Edward Nares (eds), The Holy Bible, Embellished by the Most Eminent British Artists with Historical Prefaces by the Rev. Edward Nares (London, 1824). 56. On the Macklin Bible, see: G.E. Bentley, Jr, Thomas Macklin (1752–1800), Picture-Publisher and Patron: Creator of the Macklin Bible (1791– 1800) (Lewiston, NY, 2016). 57. Essick, Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, cat. III.5; cf. Blake’s intermediary drawing, B120 verso.

Notes to Pages 19 – 29

201

58. Michael Phillips gives an account of Blake’s method of illuminated printing in: Apprentice & Master, pp. 89–101. 59. Martin Butlin’s catalogue raisonne´ lists three subjects: Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve, The Creation of Eve and Michael Foretelling the Crucifixion; however, he recently reported the discovery of a fourth watercolour, Adam and Eve Asleep, apparently belonging to the Linnell set, although it appears to have been modified by another hand, and its provenance is unknown (‘Blake’s Unfinished Series of Illustrations to Paradise Lost for John Linnell: An Addition’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 51.1 (2017). Available at http://blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/butlin511/pdf (accessed 06/10/2017)). 60. Naomi Billingsley, ‘Re-viewing William Blake’s Paradise Regained (c.1816– 20)’, in Religion and the Arts 22.1–2 (2018); cf. ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 68– 83. 61. For a biographical account of the exhibition, see G.E. Bentley Jr, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 325–33. 62. Blake himself used ‘judgment’, which is retained in the titles ascribed to his representations of this subject. Accordingly, I use this spelling when referring to the titles of these works, and ‘judgement’ elsewhere.

CHAPTER 1 REGENERATION: RESURRECTION AND APOCALYPSE IN NIGHT THOUGHTS (1795 – 7) 1. Denise Gigante’s study of vitalism in Romantic poetry gives a helpful account of Blake’s Jerusalem (including its designs) in light of this topic (Life: Organic Form and Romanticism (New Haven, CT, 2009)). 2. Cf. Morton D. Paley, The Continuing City: William Blake’s Jerusalem (Oxford, 1983), pp. 142–70. 3. On poetry, see: Morton D. Paley, The Apocalypse and the Romantic Imagination (Oxford, 1999); idem., Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford, 1999). On art, see: David Bindman, ‘The English Apocalypse’, in Frances Carey (ed.), The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (London, 1999), pp. 208–69. 4. On Brothers, see: Clarke Garrett, Respectable Folly: Millenarians in the French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore, 1973), pp. 179–223; J.F.C. Harrison, The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780 – 1850 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1979), pp. 57 –85; Susan Juster, Doomsayers: AngloAmerican Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, PA, 2003), pp. 179–96. On Southcott, see: Garrett, Respectable Folly, pp. 210–23; Harrison, The Second Coming, pp. 86–134; Juster, Doomsayers, pp. 239–59. 5. Cf. Kenneth G.C. Newport, Apocalypse and Millennium: Studies in Biblical Eisegesis (Cambridge, 2000).

202

Notes to Pages 29 – 43

6. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1757). Blake rejected Burke’s thesis: ‘Burke’s Treatise on the Sublime & Beautiful is founded on the Opinions of Newton & Locke’ (Reynolds, E660). 7. The most recent work on the dating of the Large Colour Prints is: Joseph Viscomi, ‘Signing Large Color Prints: The Significance of Blake’s Signatures,’ Huntington Library Quarterly 80.3 (2017), pp. 365–402. 8. Idem., ‘Blake’s Night Thoughts: An Exploration of the Fallen World’, in Alvin H. Rosenfeld (ed.), William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon (Providence, RI, 1969), pp. 131–57; Thomas H. Helmstadter, ‘Blake’s Night Thoughts: Interpretations of Edward Young’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 12 (1970), pp. 27 –54; idem., ‘Blake and Religion: Iconographical Themes in the “Night Thoughts”’, Studies in Romanticism 10.3 (1971), pp. 199–212; John E. Grant, ‘Envisioning the first Night Thoughts’, in David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (eds), Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 304–35; idem., ‘Jesus and the Powers That Be in Blake’s Designs for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 71– 115; John E. Grant, Edward J. Rose, Michael J. Tolley and David Erdman (eds), William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition (Oxford, 1980). 2 Vols. 9. W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘Review: William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition by David V. Erdman; John E. Grant; Edward J. Rose; Michael J. Tolley; Edward Young’, Modern Philology 80.2 (1982), pp. 198–205: pp. 201– 5; idem., ‘Reply to John Grant’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 18.3 (1984– 5), pp. 181– 3. Available at http://bq.blakearchive. ¨ rrbecker, ‘Review: org/18.3.mitchell (accessed 06/10/2017); Detlef W. Do David V. Erdman, John E. Grant, Edward J. Rose, and Michael J. Tolley (eds), William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 16.2 (1982), pp. 130–9: pp. 132 – 7. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/16.2.dorrbecker (accessed 06/10/2017); John E. Grant, ‘A Re-View of Some Problems in Understanding Blake’s Night Thoughts’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 18.3 (1984–5), pp. 155–81. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/18.3.grant (accessed 06/10/2017). 10. Christopher Heppner, Reading Blake’s Designs (Cambridge, 1995), p. 170. 11. Grant, ‘Jesus and the Powers that Be’, p. 84. 12. Grant et al., Blake’s Designs for Night Thoughts, Vol. 1, pp. 12 –3. 13. Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake (New York, NY, 1959), p. 58. 14. Martin Butlin, William Blake 1757–1827, Tate Gallery Collections, V (London, 1990), pp. 83 –106; Robin Hamlyn and Michael Phillips, William Blake (London, 2000), pp. 194–221; David Lindsay, ‘The Order of Blake’s Large Color Prints’, Huntington Library Quarterly 52.1 (1989), pp. 19 –41. 15. Heppner, Reading Blake’s Designs, p. 105, citing Butlin, Blake, Tate Gallery, p. 84. Martin Myrone also cautions against ‘elaborating a

Notes to Pages 43 – 54

16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

26.

27.

203

too-comprehensive symbolic scheme for these works’ (The Blake Book (London, 2007), pp. 81; 80–7). David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (Oxford, 1977), p. 100. W.M. Rossetti, ‘Annotated Catalogue of Blake’s Pictures and Drawings’, in Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (London, new edn., 1880), Vol. 2/2, pp. 205– 77: p. 241, no. 189. Previously it was thought that the Yale and Washington versions were, like some of the other Large Colour Prints that are dateable from watermarks, printed after 1804. Viscomi’s new research, mentioned above, demonstrates the earlier date for all three impressions (‘Signing Large Color Prints’). W. Graham Robertson; Kerrison Preston (ed.), The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson (London, 1952), p. 39. Edward Young, The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality. To Which is Added, a Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job. Adorned with Elegant Copperplates (London, 1779), opp. p. 59. Edward Young, Night Thoughts; With the Life of the Author and Notes Critical & Explanatory (London, 1798), opp. p. 68. Edward Young; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (London, 1797), p. 65. Coloured Copy O of the Edwards edition (said to be the work of William and Catherine Blake), in the collection of the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, can be viewed in full at https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/z44u51 (accessed 06/10/2017). Several other copies of the plates from Edwards’ edition have also been digitised by repositories including the Blake Archive and the Yale Center for British Art. For details of the coloured copies, see: G.E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Blake Books (Oxford, rev. edn. 2000), pp. 642–6. All of the Night Thoughts watercolours can be viewed via the British Museum’s online collections; the easiest way to locate a specific design is by searching for the Butlin catalogue number in the format “B330(XXX)” via http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search. aspx (accessed 06/10/2017). Grant et al., Blake’s Designs for Night Thoughts, Vol. 1, p. 13. Anon. [¼Henry Fuseli?], ‘Explanation of the Engravings’, in Edward Young; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (London, 1797), pp. [ix–x ¼ 2 unnumbered pages following p. viii]: p. [x]. G.E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Vala; or The Four Zoas: A Facsimile Manuscript, a Transcript of the Poem, and a Study of its Growth and Significance (Oxford, 1963), p. 183 n.1; cf. Luisa Cale`, ‘Blake and the Literary Galleries’, in Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee (eds), Blake and Conflict (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 185– 209: p. 204. The plate is in: John Milton, William Hayley, The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a Life of the Author, by William Hayley (London, 1794–7), Vol. 1/3, before p. 85. Grant et al., Blake’s Designs for Night Thoughts, Vol. 1, p. 39.

204

Notes to Pages 55 – 64

28. Blake reuses this phrase in The Four Zoas (125:20, 24, E394; 131:29, 39 –40, E400), Milton (41:33, 36, E144) and Jerusalem (48:34, E197). 29. Butlin, after Helmstadter, read the design as the burial of Moses (B330.532, citing Helmstadter, ‘Blake and Religion’, pp. 207–8), owing to its similarity to the Butts watercolour of this subject (c.1805, B449), but as Grant argues, the context of the poem indicates the poet as subject (‘Jesus and the Powers that Be’, pp. 108 – 10); it can of course, simultaneously allude to the Moses episode. 30. Andrew Lincoln (ed.), William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Princeton, NJ, 1998), p. 12. 31. Rossetti’s catalogue of Blake’s pictures also describes a now lost painting: ‘Samson occupies almost the entire composition. The only other figure is a boy crouched in the corner, horror-struck at his impending fate: an excellent figure this’ (Rossetti, ‘Annotated Catalogue’, p. 237, no. 146; B388).

CHAPTER 2 INSPIRATION: ILLUMINATION AND PROPHECY IN THE BIBLICAL TEMPERAS (1799 – 1800) 1. John Wesley, The Complete English Dictionary, Explaining Most of those Hard Words, which are Found in the Best English Writers (London, 1790). 2. Christopher Rowland, Blake and the Bible (New Haven, CT, 2010), p. 120. 3. Rowland has written helpfully on Blake and prophecy, including an explanation of how Blake as prophet can be seen in relation to contemporaries such as Richard Brothers and Joanna Southcott (ibid., pp. 120–56). 4. See also, for example: ‘The following Discourse is particularly Interesting to Blockheads. as it Endeavours to prove That there is No such thing as Inspiration [. . .]’ (Reynolds, E646); ‘I see in Wordsworth the Natural Man rising up against the Spiritual Man Continually & then he is No Poet but a Heathen Philosopher at Enmity against all true Poetry or Inspiration’ (Annotations to Wordsworth, E665). 5. Joseph Viscomi, ‘A “Green House” for Butts? New Information on Thomas Butts, His Residences, and Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 30.1 (1996), pp. 4–21: p. 15. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/30.1. viscomi (accessed 06/10/2017). 6. Cf. Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘More on Blake’s (and Bentley’s) “White Collar Maecenas”: Thomas Butts, His Wife’s Family of Artisans, and the Methodist Withams of St. Bartholomew the Great’, in Karen Mulhallen (ed.), Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G. E. Bentley Jr. (Toronto, 2010), pp. 131–64; idem., ‘Newfound Particulars of Blake’s Patrons, Thomas and Elizabeth Butts, 1767–1806’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 47.4 (2014). Available at http://blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/ johnson474/johnson474html (accessed 06/10/2017).

Notes to Pages 64 – 71

205

7. David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (Oxford, 1977), p. 130. 8. Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘Human Consciousness and the Divine Image in Blake’s Watercolor Designs for the Bible: Genesis Through Psalms’, in Beverly Taylor and Robert Bain (eds), The Cast of Consciousness: Concepts of the Mind in British and American Romanticism (New York, NY, 1987), pp. 20 –43: p. 39 n. 10). 9. Raymond Lister, The Paintings of William Blake (Cambridge, 1986), cat. 26. 10. Cf. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford, rev. edn. 2006), pp. 37 –8. 11. Other Nativity works were: NT IX Title page (c.1795 –7, B330.417); the four extant and one lost biblical temperas (c.1799–1800, B401–5); three biblical watercolours: (c.1803 –6, B470– 2); two temperas: The Virgin and Child in Egypt (1810, B669) and The Holy Family: ‘Christ in the Lap of Truth’ (c.1810, B671). Blake gave a painting of the Holy Family to Cumberland in 1808 (B672) which Butlin speculates could ‘just possibly’ be The Black Madonna or may have been a separate work. 12. For an alternative reading of Europe, see: David Fallon, Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment: The Politics of Apotheosis (London, 2017), pp. 123–62. 13. Cf. Rowland, Blake and the Bible, pp. 196–9. 14. Macklin’s printed Bible also included a design by Thomas Stothard for The Angels Appearing to the Shepherds, engraved by William Skelton (1796). An impression of the print is in the collection of the British Museum (1859,0312.237) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx? objectId¼ 3506548&partId¼ 1&searchText¼ stothardþ macklin&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). 15. An impression of a print (c.1790–1838) after Ghirlanadio’s Apparizione dell’angelo Zaccaria by Carlo Lasinio is in the collection of the British Museum (1865,1209.22) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId¼ 3066375&partId¼ 1&searchText¼ Apparizioneþ þ Zaccariaþ &page¼ 1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). 16. David V. Erdman, The Illuminated Blake (Garden City, NY, 1974), p. 24. 17. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 121. 18. Idem., William Blake his Art and His Times (New Haven, CT, 1982), p. 134. ¨ rer, Melancholia I, engraving, 1514. An impression of this 19. Albrecht Du plate, in the collection of the British Museum (1910,0212.303) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_ object_details.aspx?objectId¼ 1352449&partId¼ 1&searchText¼ 19 10,0212.303&page¼ 1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). 20. James Barry, An Account of a Series of Pictures, in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi (London, 1783), p. 22. 21. Protoevangelium XIX, in Jeremiah Jones, A New and Full Method of Settling Canonical Authority of the New Testament (Oxford, 1798), Vol. 2/3, p. 122; cf. Rowland, Blake and the Bible, p. 219.

206

Notes to Pages 71 – 75

22. J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs: The Dynamics of Meaning (West Cornwall, CT, 1993), p. 92. 23. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, pp. 121–2; Rowland, Blake and the Bible, p. 218. 24. Archibald G.B. Russell, Catalogue of Loan Exhibition of Works by William Blake (London, 1913), p. 17. 25. Rowland, Blake and the Bible, p. 219. 26. Rogier van der Weyden, Der Middelburger-Altar can be viewed on the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin’s online collections database at http://www.smb-digital.de/eMuseumPlus?service¼ ExternalInterface& module¼ collection&objectId¼ 871762&viewType¼ detailView (accessed 06/10/2017). 27. John Milton; John Carey and Alastair Fowler (eds), The Poems of John Milton (London, 2nd imp., 1980), p. 101. 28. The similarity between The Nativity and the Butts Descent of Peace has been cited as evidence for an early date for this undated Milton set, before the Thomas set in which The Descent of Peace is a more conventional Nativity scene. However, Butlin argues that ‘Blake could equally well have reverted to the earlier composition after showing the Nativity in a more conventional way in the Thomas version’ (B538). Crucially (but apparently not explicated by previous commentators), the Butts designs, like the Nativity tempera, were made for Butts, which raises the possibilities that the innovative composition was conceived for (if Blake sought to curate Butts’ collection as he created new works) or by Butts. 29. At the beginning of the poem, Milton describes the child ‘All meanly wrapt in the rude manger’ (l.31), and thus the Thomas Descent of Peace has usually been read as more faithful to Milton’s text (Stephen C. Behrendt, ‘Blake’s Illustrations to Milton’s “Nativity Ode”’, Philological Quarterly 55:1 (1976), pp. 65 –95: p. 84; Bette Charlene Werner, Blake’s Vision of the Poetry of Milton: Illustrations to Six Poems (London, 1986), p. 119), but the variant designs could be depicting different verses. 30. Cf. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 121. 31. Rowland, Blake and the Bible, p. 218. 32. Cf. Ibid., p. 222. 33. Cf. Janet A. Warner, ‘Blake’s Use of Gesture’, in David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (eds), Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 175–95: pp. 189–90. 34. Bindman argues that this is Enitharmon giving birth to Orc, as narrated in Urizen (19:39–20:7, E79–80), The Four Zoas (58:16– 25, E339) and Milton (4:40 –1, E97) (Blake as an Artist, p. 99). 35. William Shakespeare; ed. Harry Rowe, Macbeth: A Tragedy (York, 1797), p. 26. 36. Christopher Heppner, Reading Blake’s Designs (Cambridge, 1995), p. 115. 37. Ibid.

Notes to Pages 75 – 81

207

38. On the birth of Christ as redemptive, see J.M.Q. Davies’ idea that the figure of Apollo in the Nativity Ode series is ‘a macrocosmic image of the renovated fourfold Man’ (‘Apollo’s “Naked Human Form Divine”: The Dynamics of Meaning in Blake’s Nativity Ode Designs’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 3–40: p. 23). 39. An example of the Christ Child lying in a cruciform pose can be seen in a popular print published by Robert Sayer, called The Birth of Christ. An impression of this print is in the collection of the British Museum (2010,7081.653) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/ research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId¼ 3340388&partId¼1&searchText¼2010%2c7081.653&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). 40. [Orleans Gallery], Catalogue of the Italian Pictures, p. 11, no. 77. 41. W.M. Rossetti lists three versions (‘Annotated Catalogue of Blake’s Pictures and Drawings’, in Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (London, new edn., 1880), Vol. 2/2, pp. 205– 77: p. 244, nos. 213– 5), although Butlin argues that Blake is unlikely to have produced three such similar subjects for Butts and suggests confusion on Rossetti’s part. 42. Elsewhere in the biblical temperas, her lamentation over the figure of Christ in both versions of The Christ Child Asleep on a Wooden Cross, mentioned above, is also an inadequate response to that event; briefly, I contend that these designs show Christ as a self-giving saviour rather than a suffering victim and hence her sorrow is inappropriate. I discuss this matter in: Naomi A.I. Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, University of Manchester PhD Thesis, 2016, pp. 100– 3. 43. Bindman notes this point in: Blake as an Artist, p. 122. An impression of Blake’s engraving The Hiding of Moses (1824) in the Tate collection, T06585, can be viewed online at http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ blake-the-hiding-of-moses-t06585 (accessed 06/10/2017). 44. Rossetti, ‘Annotated Catalogue’, p. 235, no. 137. 45. Ibid., p. 121. 46. In his retelling of the Nativity narrative in Jerusalem (1804–c.1820), Blake casts Joseph as a paragon of forgiveness, who accepts Mary as his wife in spite of her adultery (in Blake’s account). However, in Blake’s work in this earlier period, Joseph is a more ambiguous figure; notably, in the Fitzwilliam Christ Child Asleep on a Wooden Cross, he holds a pair of dividers over the sleeping Christ child, hence associating Joseph with the deity of division in The Ancient of Days. 47. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 122. 48. W. Graham Robertson; Kerrison Preston (ed.), The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson (London, 1952), p. 146. 49. Russell, Catalogue of Loan Exhibition of William Blake, p. 18. 50. Hunt painted three versions of The Triumph of the Innocents; that in Harvard Art Museums (1943.195) was the first (viewable at

208

51. 52. 53.

54. 55.

56.

Notes to Pages 81 – 91 http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/230456 (accessed 06/10/2017)). The others are in the Tate and the Walker Art Gallery. Rossetti, ‘Annotated Catalogue’, p. 238, no. 161. Pamela Dunbar, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton (Oxford, 1980), p. 104. C.H. Collins Baker identified the source of the donkey in an image of the same subject in Alexander Brown’s 1675 Ars Pictorial (‘The Sources of Blake’s Pictorial Expression’, Huntington Library Quarterly 4.3 (1941), pp. 359–67: p. 360). Martin Butlin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner (New Haven, CT, rev. edn., 1984), cat. 49. Richard Dorment, British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: From the Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA, 1986), p. 34. I discuss how Abraham and Isaac and The Healing of Bartimaeus express Blake’s notion of imaginative sight in: Naomi Billingsley, ‘“As the Eye is formed”: seeing as Christ in Blake’s Bartimaeus’, in Elizabeth Ludlow, The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century (London, forthcoming).

CHAPTER 3 FACILITATOR: MINISTRY AS COMMUNITY-BUILDING IN THE BIBLICAL WATERCOLOURS (1800 – 6) 1. Joseph Viscomi, ‘A “Green House” for Butts? New Information on Thomas Butts, His Residences, and Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 30.1 (1996), pp. 4–21: p. 4. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/30.1. viscomi (accessed 06/10/2017). 2. Both Butlin and Myrone argue that the subject can be read as an allegory of the Church (B419; Martin Myrone, The Blake Book (London, 2007), p. 88). 3. Morris Eaves, William Blake’s Theory of Art (Princeton, NJ, 1982), pp. 195–6. 4. Ibid., pp. 3–4. 5. Edward Young; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (London, 1797), p. 37. A copy of this plate from coloured Copy O of Edwards’ edition in the collection of the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, can be viewed at https://luna.manchester.ac. uk/luna/servlet/s/48rqj0 (accessed 06/10/2017). The identification of this subject as the Good Samaritan has been debated: Margoliouth, Essick and La Belle, and Grant are all troubled by supposedly sinister aspects to Christ’s appearance and the cup that he proffers; Heppner challenges these readings, offering an interpretation, which is more consistent with the positive vision of Christ which prevails in Blake’s works (H.M. Margoliouth, ‘Blake’s Drawings for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.), The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of

Notes to Pages 91 – 95

6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

209

William Blake (London, 1957), pp. 193–204; Robert Essick and Jenijoy La Belle (eds), Night Thoughts, or, The Complaint and the Consolation: Illustrated by William Blake (New York, NY, 1975), p. 37; John E. Grant, ‘Jesus and the Powers That Be in Blake’s Designs for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 71–115: p. 79; Christopher Heppner, ‘The Good (In Spite of What You May Have Heard) Samaritan’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 25.2 (1991), pp. 64 – 70. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/25.2.heppner (accessed 06/10/2017); idem., Reading Blake’s Designs (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 161–70). Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton, NJ, 1947), pp. 89 –90. Viscomi, ‘A “Green House” for Butts?’, p. 4. David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (Oxford, 1977), p. 144; Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘Human Consciousness and the Divine Image in Blake’s Watercolor Designs for the Bible: Genesis Through Psalms’, in Beverly Taylor and Robert Bain (eds), The Cast of Consciousness: Concepts of the Mind in British and American Romanticism (New York, NY, 1987), pp. 20 –43: p. 25. Cf. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, pp. 130–1, 136–44; Robert N. Essick, ‘Review: Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake’, Blake/ An Illustrated Quarterly 61.16 (1982), pp. 22–65: p. 40. Available at http:// bq.blakearchive.org/16.1.essick (accessed 06/10/2017); Johnson, ‘The Divine Image in Blake’s Designs’, p. 21. Essick, ‘Review: Butlin, Paintings and Drawings’, p. 40; Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 144. Jean H. Hagstrum’s ‘“The Wrath of the Lamb”: A Study of William Blake’s Conversions’ (in Frederick W. Hilles and Harold Bloom (eds), From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick A. Pottle (New York, NY, 1965), pp. 311– 30) is the foremost account of Blake’s ‘conversion’. The date given by Butlin is c.1805, but others have assigned it various dates within the period that Blake was working on the watercolours. Morton Paley discusses this matter in ‘William Blake and Chichester’, in Karen Mulhallen (ed.), Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G.E. Bentley, Jr. (Toronto, 2010), pp. 215–32. Blake explains his differences with Hayley in a letter to his brother James (30 January 1803, E725–6). For an account of the altercation with Scholfield, and the ensuring events, see: G.E. Bentley Jr, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 250–66. Seven of the biblical watercolours were definitely produced in Felpham because Blake mentions them in a letter to Butts on 6 July 1803; these are: The Angel of the Divine Presence Clothing Adam & Eve with Coats of Skins (B436), Jephthah Sacrificing his Daughter (B452), Ruth & her Mother in Law & Sister (B456), The Three Maries at the Sepulchre (B503), The Death of Joseph

210

17.

18. 19.

20. 21.

22.

23.

24.

Notes to Pages 95 – 101 (B511), The Death of the Virgin Mary (B512), and St Paul Preaching (B507). Only the extra-biblical The Death of St Joseph depicts Christ, and he is conspicuous by his absence in The Three Maries at the Sepulchre. These subjects lie beyond the scope of this chapter (although I mention Jephthah Sacrificing his Daughter); I discuss them in: Naomi Billingsley, ‘“On the stocks”: Biblical watercolours from the Felpham period’, in Andrew Loukes (ed.), William Blake in Sussex: Visions of Albion (London, 2018), pp. 33–45. Such a Baptism print is a mezzotint after Carlo Maratti, published by Haines & Sons, in 1796; a copy in the British Museum (2010,7081.674) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_ object_details.aspx?objectId¼3340562&partId¼1&searchText¼2010, 7081.674&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). John Milton; John Carey and Alastair Fowler (eds), The Poems of John Milton (London, 2nd imp. 1980), p. 1163. As Bindman argues, these angels indicate the influence of Flaxman’s drawing Get Thee Behind Me, Satan (c.1783–7), which is from the period when Blake and Flaxman were closest (William Blake his Art and His Times (New Haven, CT, 1982), p. 81). Scott Wilcox argues that Flaxman’s depictions of Christ and Satan, respectively, influenced the figure of Christ in Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection, and that of the evil angel in The Good and Evil Angels (both 1795/c.1805) (‘Curatorial Comment: John Flaxman, Get Thee Behind Me, Satan’, The Yale Center for British Art. Available at http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/ Record/1671715 (accessed 06/10/2017)). I discuss The River of Life in: Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 175–7. An impression of this print is in the collection of the British Museum (2010,7081.2555) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId¼3369970& partId¼1&searchText¼2010,7081.2555&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). See for example: Charles Bulkley, Discourses on the Parables of Our Blessed Saviour [. . .] (London, 1771), Vol. 1/4, pp. 303–10; William Dodd, Discourses on the Miracles and Parables of Our Blessed Lord [. . .] (London, 1757), Vol. 4/4, pp. 238–9. Blake first produced a series of 19 watercolours retelling the story Job for Butts in c.1805 –6 (B550); in 1821 Linnell commissioned a similar set, for which Blake produced 21 designs (B551), and subsequently added versions of the additional two designs to the Butts set. These designs were the basis for the engraved Illustrations to the Book of Job, privately published with the assistance of Linnell in 1826 (the plates bear the date 1825). There are numerous studies of Blake’s Job series; among the strongest on their visual content is: Bo Lindberg, William Blake’s ˚ bo, 1973). Illustrations to the Book of Job (A The drawing was not known to Butlin; it came to light in 2000 and is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2011.448) (viewable at https://www.

Notes to Pages 101 – 104

25.

26.

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

211

metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/398714 (accessed 06/10/2017)). On the discovery, see: Martin Butlin, ‘A Blake Drawing Rediscovered and Redated’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 34.1 (2000), pp. 22 – 4. Available online at http://bq.blakearchive.org/34.1.butlin (accessed 06/10/2017). I discuss this design in the context of Blake’s apocalyptic imagery, and comparing its pictorial logic to other Blake designs in: Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 161–4. I present a more detailed reading of this image in: Naomi Billingsley, ‘Citizens of “London” as Members of Christ’s Divine Body in William Blake’s Biblical Illustrations’, in Ben Quash, Aaron Rosen and Chloe¨ Reddaway (eds), Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion (London, 2017), pp. 89 –101: pp. 93 –6. This notion of childhood as a sacred state is paralleled in the work of Blake’s German contemporary, Philipp Otto Runge (1777–1810), who, as Rosenblum puts it, elevates the child ‘to Blake-like realms of heavenly, quasi-religious innocence, a creature as unpolluted as the ambient vision of nature’ (Robert Rosenblum, The Romantic Child: From Runge to Sendak (London, 1988), p. 21). Matthew Grenby, The Child Reader: 1700 –1840 (Cambridge, 2011), p. 1; cf. Rosenblum, The Romantic Child, pp. 9 –10; James Christien Steward, The New Child: British Arts and the Origins of Modern Childhood, 1730–1830 (Berkeley, CA, 1995). J.J. Rousseau; tr. ‘The Translator of Eloisa’, Emilius and Sophia, or A New System of Education (London, 1762). 2 Vols.; cf. Steward, The New Child: 16. Cf. Dennis M. Welch, ‘Blake and Rousseau on Children’s Reading, Pleasure, and Imagination’, The Lion and the Unicorn 35.3 (2011), pp. 199–226. Isaac Watts, Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (London, 1715); ‘A.L.B.’ [Anna Laetitia Barbauld], Hymns in Prose for Children (London, 1781). Blake might have met Barbauld at Mrs Mathews’ ‘cultural conversaziones’ in about 1783; according to J.T. Smith, Blake sang his own poems at these occasions (BR 29– 30). Cf. Stanley Gardner, The Tyger, The Lamb and the Terrible Desart: Songs of Innocence and of Experience in its Times and Circumstance (London, 1998); Zachary Leader, Reading Blake’s Songs (Boston, London and Henley, 1981), pp. 1–36; Andrew Lincoln (ed.), William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Princeton, NJ, 1998), pp. 9– 24, 141–203; Vivian de Sola Pinto, ‘William Blake, Isaac Watts, and Mrs. Barbauld’ in Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.), The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake (London, 1957), pp. 67–87. Connections have also been noted between the Songs and John and Charles Wesley’s Hymns and Sacred Poems (London, 1742), although these were not specifically addressed to children. Multiple copies of the Songs can be viewed via the Blake Archive at http:// www.blakearchive.org/work/songsie (accessed 06/10/2017).

212

Notes to Pages 104 – 110

33. W. Graham Robertson; Kerrison Preston (ed.), The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson (London, 1952), p. 149. 34. Ibid. 35. I discuss these designs in: Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 203–5 and fn. 486. Butlin also notes a lost tempera of the healing of the lame man at the pool of Bethesda (B419). 36. Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason. Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (‘Paris’ (i.e. London?), 1794); idem., The Age of Reason. Part the Second. [. . .] (London, 1795). A third part was published in 1807. 37. Thomas Woolston, Moderator Between an Infidel and an Apostate (London, 1725); A Discourse on the Miracles of our Saviour (London, 1727); the Second Discourse was published the same year, the third to fifth in 1728 and the sixth in 1729. Cf. William H. Trapnell, Thomas Woolston: Madman and Deist? (Bristol, 1994), pp. 100–31. 38. David Hume, Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1748), Section X. Cf. Stephen Buckle, Hume’s Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, 2001), pp. 238–72; John Earman, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford, 2003). Earman provides a useful account of the eighteenth-century debates on miracles (pp. 7 –11, 14–30). 39. John Wesley, The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explain’d (London, 1746), esp. p. 54. 40. Conyers Middleton, A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (London, 1749). Cf. Ted A. Campbell, ‘John Wesley and Conyers Middleton on Divine Intervention in History’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 55.1 (1986), pp. 39 –49. Wesley’s letter is reproduced in John Telford (ed.), The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley; Vol. 2, May 17, 1742 to January 4, 1749 (London, 1931), pp. 312–88. 41. Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christian Religion (London, 1781), Vol. 2, p. 123 (#501). 42. On hospitals as public art spaces, see: Nigel Aston, Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London, 2009), pp. 144–52. 43. Ronald Paulson, Hogarth, Vol. 2 High Art and Low, 1732 –1750 (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 89 –91. 44. West’s painting for Windsor is thought to have been destroyed following damage in the Second World War, but there is an oil study in the Fitzwilliam Museum, and an engraving by Benjamin Smith (Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, CT, 1986), cat. 334–5). The 1811 picture is now in the Tate (ibid., cat. 336; cat. 337 is a study for this picture). The 1815 picture remains at the Pennsylvania Hospital (ibid., cat. 338). 45. Cf. Cettina Tramontano Magno and David V. Erdman (eds), ‘The Four Zoas’ by William Blake: A Photographic Facsimile of the Manuscript with Commentary on the Illuminations (Lewisberg, PA, 1987), pp. 50, 75; cf. Peter

Notes to Pages 110 – 120

46.

47.

48.

49.

50.

51. 52.

53.

54.

213

Otto, ‘From the Religious to the Psychological Sublime: The Fate of Young’s Night Thoughts in Blake’s The Four Zoas’, in Alexander S. Gourlay (ed.), Prophetic Character: Essays on William Blake in Honor of John E. Grant (West Cornwall, CT, 2002), pp. 225– 62: pp. 254–61. The Getty Provenance Indexw records such lots in sales in 1783, 1784, 1791, 1795 and 1798 (search of ‘Sales Catalogs’ for ‘(Artist Name: Rembrandt) AND (Description: Lazarus)’ via http://piprod.getty.edu/ starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path¼ pi/pi.web (accessed 03/04/2017)). Cf. Abbe´ Winkelmann; tr. Henry Fusseli, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks [. . .] (London, 1765), pp. 267–8 (Blake was among the subscribers to this book); Henry Fuseli, Lectures on Painting [. . .] (London, 1801), pp. 148–51; idem., Lectures on Painting [. . .] (London, 1820), pp. 37–8. Joseph Constantine Stadler, after Robert Smirke, The Transfiguration, 1791. An impression of this plate in the British Museum (1859,0312.233) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/ collection_object_details.aspx?objectId ¼ 3122362&partId ¼ 1&search Text¼1859,0312.233&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). I argue in my PhD thesis that Blake’s Agony in the Garden can be read as a manifestation of the Trinity and hence what the Apostles fail to witness is, like The Transfiguration, a moment of the revelation of an aspect of the divine (Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 104–6). The composition of The Transfiguration is paralleled in David Delivered out of Many Waters (c.1805, B462), which depicts Psalm 18, in which Christ delivers David a state of error; in The Transfiguration it is the viewer whom Christ faces and will rescue from a state of inadequate vision. The transfigured Christ reappears in Epitome of James Hervey’s Meditations among the Tombs (c.1820–5, B770), where he is at the centre of a vision that includes numerous figures from the Bible, and acts as the means through which elevated spiritual states represented in the image are achieved. I discuss these parallels in: Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 123–5. I discuss The Woman Taken in Adultery in: Billingsley, ‘Citizens of “London” as Members of Christ’s Divine Body’, pp. 96– 100. Cf. Jeanne Moskal, ‘Forgiveness, Love, and Pride in Blake’s “The Everlasting Gospel”’, Religion & Literature, 20.2 (1988), pp. 19–39; idem., Blake, Ethics, and Forgiveness (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1994), pp. 32–42. In Matthew 28:1–9 and Mark 16:1–10 Mary Magdalene is among a group of women sharing this encounter; in Luke 24:1–10, the three Marys are the first to learn of the Resurrection, but it is two of the disciples who first see him, at Emmaus (24:13–31). It is significant that Blake chose John’s version of the narrative. On the figure of the Magdalen in late eighteenth-century discourse, see: Katherine Binhammer, The Seduction Narrative in Britain, 1747–1800 (Cambridge, 2009), esp. pp. 40–71.

214

Notes to Pages 120 – 129

55. Cf. Susan Matthews, ‘Impurity of Diction: The “Harlots Curse” and Dirty Words’, Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee (eds), Blake and Conflict (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 65 –83. 56. Billingsley, ‘Citizens of “London” as Members of Christ’s Divine Body’, pp. 98 –9. 57. Jonathan Richardson, An Essay on the Theory of Painting. The Second Edition, Enlarg’d and Corrected (London, 1725), pp. 53 –5; cf. Heppner, ‘The Woman Taken in Adultery’, p. 47. Cf. Christopher Heppner, ‘The Woman Taken in Adultery: An Essay on Blake’s “Style of Designing”’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 17.2 (1983), pp. 44–60: esp. p. 47. Available at http://bq. blakearchive.org/17.2.heppner (accessed 06/10/2017). Richardson’s essay was readily available, and Blake’s friend George Cumberland owned a copy of the 1773 edition (‘Catalogue of the Library of George Cumberland, collated in 1793’. Manuscript. GB 133 Eng. MS 420. The John Rylands Library). 58. Richardson, Theory of Painting, pp. 53, 55. 59. Ibid., p. 54. 60. Rowland, Blake and the Bible, pp. 182, 190. 61. Ibid., pp. 181–2. 62. Martin Butlin, ‘The Blake Collection of Mrs William T. Tonner’, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 67.307 (1972), pp. 5– 31: p. 21. 63. The only previous representation of this subject that I have identified is in a tiny scene in a composite image of events after the Last Supper in Jerome Nadal’s Evangelicae Historiae Imagines (Antwerp, 1593), a volume of 153 biblical engravings. It is possible that Blake knew this image, but the detail of this event is too small and pedestrian to be of much interest to any viewer. It can be viewed on the website ‘Catholic Resources’ at http://catholic-resources.org/Nadal/103.jpg (accessed 06/10/2017). 64. Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘Blake’s Mary and Martha on the Mount of Olives: Questions on the Watercolour Illustrations of the Gospels’, in Helen P. Bruder (ed.), Women Reading Blake (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 100–8: pp. 100–1. 65. Thomas E. Butts (ed.), Harmonia-Sacra, or, A Choice Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (London, c.1753). Cf. Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘Newfound Particulars of Blake’s Patrons, Thomas and Elizabeth Butts, 1767 –1806’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 47.4 (2014), fn. 2. Available at http:// blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/johnson474/johnson 474html (accessed 06/10/2017). 66. Cf. Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Young William Blake and the Moravian Tradition of Visionary Art’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 40.3 (2006–7), pp. 84 – 100. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.schuchard (accessed 06/10/2017). 67. I make this argument in: Billingsley, ‘“On the stocks”’. 68. Blake makes this point numerous times: Milton (9[10]:51, 18[20]:41, 33 [36]:4– 23, 38[43]:15 –27; E104, 112, 132–3, 139); Jerusalem (24:23–35, 52,

Notes to Pages 129 – 136

215

60, 74– 5, 82, 84, 89; E169, 200, 210, 229–31, 239–40, 243, 248–9); The Four Zoas (25:31, E317); On Virgil (E270); Laocoo¨n (E274). Cf. Morris Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and industry in the age of Blake (London, 1992), p. 125. 69. I discuss St Paul Preaching, The Death of St Joseph and The Death of the Virgin in: Billingsley, ‘“On the stocks”’.

CHAPTER 4 ETERNAL: CHRIST AS UNIVERSAL HUMAN FORM DIVINE (WORKS OF 1805 – C.1811) 1. On this period in Blake’s life, see: G.E. Bentley, Jr, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 267–334. 2. James Barry, An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (London, 1775); idem., An Account of a Series of Pictures, in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi (London, 1783). 3. The review, by Robert Hunt, appeared in The Examiner, 17 September 1809. 4. See also Blake’s statement in his notebook description of the Last Judgement that the depictions of Moses and Abraham do not represent those individuals ‘but the States Signified by those Names’; the Bible contains figures representing various States which ‘when distant they appear as One Man but as you approach they appear Multitudes of Nations’ (E556–7). The ‘One Man’ is Christ, the unified Divine Body who contains ‘Multitudes’. 5. On the idea of apotheosis in Blake’s thought (including detailed readings of the Nelson and Pitt pictures (pp. 193–224)), see: David Fallon, Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment: The Politics of Apotheosis (London, 2017). 6. Thomas also commissioned six Shakespeare designs (1806, 1809; B547) and Copy Q of Songs (c.1804, c.1802). 7. As detailed in note 59 in the Introduction, while B537 lists three works in the Linnell set, Butlin recently reported the discovery of a fourth, Adam and Eve Asleep (Martin Butlin, ‘Blake’s Unfinished Series of Illustrations to Paradise Lost for John Linnell: An Addition’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 51.1 (2017). Available at http://blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/ article/view/butlin511/pdf (accessed 06/10/2017)). Butlin’s identification has since been disputed in a ‘Discussion’ between David Bindman, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi and Butlin (Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 50.2 (2017)). Available at http://www.blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/ issue/view/65 (accessed 15/01/2018). 8. On previous illustrators of Paradise Lost, see: Marcia Pointon, Milton and English Art (Manchester, 1970); Stephen C. Behrendt, The Moment of Explosion: Blake and the Illustration of Milton (Lincoln, NE, 1983), pp. 89 – 127.

216

Notes to Pages 136 – 143

9. I discuss the depictions of Christ as Creator in Night Thoughts in: Naomi A.I. Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, University of Manchester PhD Thesis, 2016, pp. 45 –9. 10. On the Psalms watercolours, see: Mary Lynn Johnson, ‘David’s Recognition of the Human Face of God in Blake’s Designs for the Book of Psalms’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 117–56. 11. J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs: The Dynamics of Meaning (West ¨ rer’s print in the Cornwall, CT, 1993), p. 60. There are impressions of Du British Museum, including E,2.221 (viewable at http://www.british museum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx? objectId¼1337074&partId¼1&searchText¼E,2.221&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). 12. Cf. Behrendt, The Moment of Explosion, p. 139. 13. This mirroring is noted in: J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs, p. 53. 14. Bette Charlene Werner, Blake’s Vision of the Poetry of Milton: Illustrations to Six Poems (London, 1986), p. 206. J.M.Q. Davies rejects Werner’s suggestion because he thinks that Blake could not reconcile this orthodox teleology with his idea of Christ as a brother and friend (Blake’s Milton Designs, p. 176; cf. Jerusalem 4:18, E146). I show throughout this book that Blake’s Christ is not such a one-dimensional figure, and that an idea of Christ as a cosmic figure underpins Blake’s idea that he engenders brotherhood. 15. I discuss this parallel in: Naomi Billingsley, ‘Re-viewing William Blake’s Paradise Regained (c.1816–20)’, in Religion and the Arts 22.1–2 (2018); cf. Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 82, 111. 16. Billingsley, ‘Re-viewing Blake’s Paradise Regained’; idem., ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 68– 83. 17. Cf. Pamela Dunbar, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton (Oxford, 1980), p. 65; Werner, Blake’s Vision of Milton, p. 81. 18. John Milton; Thomas Newton (ed.), Paradise Lost (London, 1749), Vol. 1, after p. 381. 19. Pointon, Milton and English Art, pp. 151, 153. 20. Cf. Dunbar, Blake’s Illustrations to Milton, p. 67. 21. Thomas Gray, ‘The Progress of Poesy, II.1’, in Poems by Mr Gray. A New Edition (London, 1790), p. 46. This is the letterpress incorporated into Blake’s designs. This design (unlike most of the Gray series) is illustrated by Butlin (plate 343); it can also be viewed in the Yale Center for British Art’s online collections http://collections.britishart.yale.edu/vufind/ Record/1667907 (accessed 06/10/2017). 22. As noted above, I make such an argument at greater length in relation to Blake’s Paradise Regained series in: Billingsley, ‘Re-viewing Blake’s Paradise Regained’; cf. ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 68 –83.

Notes to Pages 143 – 147

217

23. Bentley identifies plate 35 as one of the later plates – i.e. produced after 1807, when George Cumberland recorded that Blake had produced 60 plates of a new prophecy (G.E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Blake Books (Oxford, rev. edn. 2000), pp. 225, 228). 24. Mark Crosby and Robert N. Essick (eds), Genesis: William Blake’s Last Illuminated Work (San Marino, CA, 2012), p. 43. Crosby argues elsewhere that the headpiece of Genesis, Leaf 6 also depicts the creation of Eve (‘“Merely a superior being”: Blake and the creations of Eve’, in Helen P. Bruder and Tristianne J. Connolly (eds), Blake, Gender and Culture (London, 2012), pp. 11 –23: p. 20); this identification seems plausible, but it is difficult to interpret the role of the deity here. 25. For negative readings of this design, see: Leopold Damrosch, Symbol and Truth in Blake’s Myth (Princeton, NJ, 1980), p. 183; Robert N. Essick, The Works of William Blake in the Huntington Collection: A Complete Catalogue (San Marino, CA, 1985), p. 44. 26. Behrendt thinks that her gaze is turned away from Christ in the later versions, but although her head is turned less towards Christ, eye contact is maintained (The Moment of Explosion, p. 160). 27. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 188; J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs, p. 74. 28. Fuseli’s Creation of Eve is in the collection of Hamburger Kunsthalle and can be viewed at http://www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/sammlung-online/ johann-heinrich-fuessli/die-erschaffung-evas (accessed 06/10/2017). Cf. Luisa Cale´, ‘Blake and the Literary Galleries’, in Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee (eds), Blake and Conflict (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 185 – 209; Pointon, Milton and English Art, p. 143. There are numerous precedents for this subject illustrating the biblical event, including (though relatively rare) examples that depict Christ as Creator; Morton D. Paley cites examples in the Biblia Pauperum and by Hartman Schedel in the Liber Chronicorum (Nuremberg, 1493) (The Continuing City: William Blake’s Jerusalem (Oxford, 1983), p. 105). Fuseli painted at least two versions of this design (1791 – 3; 1793). There is also an 1803 engraving by Moses Haughton for Erasmus Darwin’s The Temple of Nature (London, 1803), which omits the Creator. 29. Letter, 14 August 1795, quoted in Gert Schiff, Johann Heinrich Fu¨ssli, 1741– 1825. Text und Oeuvrekatalog (Zurich and Munich, 1973), p. 517, no. 897; cf. Paley The Continuing City, p. 105. 30. Jennifer Davis Michael, ‘Framing Eve: Reading Blake’s Illustrations’, in Helen P. Bruder (ed.), Women Reading William Blake (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 159–69: p. 164. 31. Blake’s original designs for The Grave were not known to Butlin; the 20 watercolours initially selected for publication by Cromek were rediscovered in 2001 and dispersed at auction in 2006; they can be viewed via the Blake Archive http://www.blakearchive.org/work/

218

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44.

45. 46.

47.

48. 49. 50.

Notes to Pages 147 – 156 butwba10 (accessed 06/10/2017). The Day of Judgment is in a private collection. On this episode, see Bentley, Stranger, pp. 276– 85. Anon. [¼ Henry Fuseli?], ‘Of the Designs’, in Robert Blair; William Blake, The Grave, a Poem (London, 1808), pp. 33– 7. Robert Blair; William Blake, The Grave, a Poem (London, 1808), p. 28. Anon. [¼ Fuseli?], ‘Of the Designs’, p. 36. Blair; Blake, The Grave, opposite p. 9. Ibid., opposite p. 12. Ibid., opposite p. 30. Ibid., p. 28. Ibid., pp. 28 –9. Ibid., p. 29. Blake’s design for ‘Heaven’s Portals Wide Expand to Let Him in’ can be viewed via the Blake Archive http://www.blakearchive.org/ copy/butwba10.1?descId¼butwba10.1.wc.13 (accessed 06/10/17). Johnson, ‘David’s Recognition of the Human Face of God’, p. 144. Ibid. The faces of Christ in Blake’s watercolour and Schiavonetti’s engravings can be compared by using the ‘Magnify’ or ‘Enlargement’ functions in the Blake Archive’s editions of the works: Blake’s The Day of Judgment http:// www.blakearchive.org/copy/butwba10.1?descId¼butwba10.1.wc.12 (accessed 06/10/2017); Schiavonetti’s engraving after Blake’s The Day of Judgment http://www.blakearchive.org/copy/bb435.1?descId¼bb435.1. comdes.09 (accessed 06/10/2017). Writing before the discovery of the Grave watercolours, Johnson notes a contrast between the books of the Christs of the biblical watercolour and The Grave design; she thinks that that in the former ‘seems to be on the verge of turning into a scroll, so that it does not appear to be as formidable an emblem of judgment as his Father’s imposing tome or the book Blake gave him in “The Day of Judgment”’ (‘David’s Recognition of the Human Face of God’, p. 144). Kathleen Raine, Blake and the New Age (London, 1979), p. 56. Steven Goldsmith, Unbuilding Jerusalem: Apocalypse and Romantic Representation (Ithaca and London, 1993), pp. 148–52; Christopher Rowland, Blake and the Bible (New Haven, CT, 2010), pp. 229–30; Susanne Sklar, ‘Erotic Spirituality in Blake’s Last Judgement’, in Helen P. Bruder and Tristianne Connolly (eds), Sexy Blake (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 125–40. John E. Grant, ‘Prospects of Divine Humanity: A Vision of Heaven, Earth, and Hell’, in Mark Crosby, Troy Patenaude and Angus Whitehead, ReEnvisioning Blake (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 130– 43: pp. 132–4. Ibid., p. 139. J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs, p. 79. Ibid., p. 77.

Notes to Pages 156 – 161

219

51. Grant, ‘Prospects of Divine Humanity’, p. 142. 52. The comment on the ‘Byzantine’ appearance of The Black Madonna is Rossetti’s, in his annotations to his 1863 lists in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, and is quoted in B674. 53. On the theology of icons, see: Vladimir Lossky and Leonid Ouspensky; tr. G.E.H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky, The Meaning of Icons (New York, NY, 2nd edn. 1999). 54. The Getty Provenance Indexw lists numerous works described as ‘Head of Christ’ in sales catalogues, some of which could be in The Holy Face tradition; searches ‘Holy Face’ and ‘Christ Blessing’ do not yield any relevant results (search of ‘Sales Catalogs’ for ‘(Lot Title/Description head christ) AND (Lot Sale Date or Range: 1780 through 1810)’ via http:// piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path¼pi/pi.web (accessed: 05/07/2017)). 55. Robert N. Essick, William Blake and the Language of Adam (Oxford, 1989), pp. 6–7; idem., ‘A (Self?) Portrait of William Blake’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 39.3 (2005–6), pp. 126–39; available online at http://bq. blakearchive.org/39.3.essick (accessed 06/10/2017). Cf. Martin Butlin, ‘A New Portrait of William Blake’, Blake Studies 7.2 (1975), pp. 101–3. The portrait is not included in Butlin’s catalogue raisonne´. 56. As noted in the text, the striking grey-blue of Christ’s eyes is lost in reproduction, but can be seen better in the digital image on Harvard Art Museum’s web pages than in print (the ‘Zoom In’ function is helpful) http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/art/230048 (accessed 06/10/2017). Likewise, the eye colour in the Phillips portrait does not reproduce well so it has not been included among the figures here, but the National Portrait Gallery has a good online image (NPG 212) (the ‘Larger Image’ function is helpful) http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/ mw00609/William-Blake (accessed 06/10/2017). ¨ rer’s self-portrait. An example in 57. There were various engravings of Du the British Museum, made by Ferdinand Piloty I and published by Johann Baptist Stuntz (c.1811– 6) (1845,0809.586) is viewable at http://britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_ details.aspx?objectId ¼ 1661668&partId¼1&searchText¼durerþselfþ portrait&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017). 58. Johann Caspar Lavater; tr. Henry Fuseli, Aphorisms on Man (London, 1788). 59. Cf. Sibylle Erle, ‘The Lost Original: Blake and Lavater’s Search for Divine ¨ diger Go ¨ rner and Angus Nicholls (eds), In the Embrace of the Likeness’, in Ru Swan: Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory (Berlin, 2010), pp. 211–30: p. 230. 60. Kerrison Preston reads the flanking figures as Poetry and Inspiration (Notes on Blake’s Large Painting in Tempera: The Spiritual Condition of Man (London?, 1949), p. 6).

220

Notes to Pages 162 – 170

61. An impression of this print is in the British Museum collection (2001,0729.54) (viewable at http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/ collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId¼687343& partId¼1&searchText¼HenryþReynellþnewþyear&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017)). 62. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 170. 63. John Beer, Blake’s Visionary Universe (Manchester, 1969), p. 287. ˚ bo, 1973), 64. Cf. Bo Lindberg, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job (A pp. 194–5.

CHAPTER 5 ICONOCLASM: CRUCIFIXION AS SELF-ANNIHILATION IN LATE WORKS (1804–27) 1. Blake had also told Crabb Robinson that ‘Christ ought not to have suffered himself to be crucified’ (BR 696), but the prevailing evidence in Blake’s late works is that he came to adopt a positive understanding of the crucifixion as self-annihilation. 2. Cf. Catherine Oakes, Doug Adams and Iris Kockelbergh, ‘Crucifix’, Grove Art Online (2000 – 12). Available at http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ subscriber/article/grove/art/T020450 (accessed 06/10/2017). 3. Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Young William Blake and the Moravian Tradition of Visionary Art’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 40.3 (2006– 7), pp. 84 –100: pp. 92 –3, 95. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3. schuchard (accessed 06/10/2017). As explained in the Introduction, there is limited evidence of the Moravian art that Blake could have encountered. 4. Schuchard notes that there is a striking similarity in the soldiers in Blake’s Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garments and Haidt’s painting of the Crucifixion in the Moravian Historical Society, but the latter was painted after Haidt’s emigration to America in 1754 (ibid., p. 95). Jessen offers a reading of Blake’s Night Thoughts ‘Man of Sorrows’ design (B330.121) as reflecting Moravian influences: Maria Elisabeth Engell Jessen, ‘Conversion as a Narrative, Visual, and Stylistic Mode in William Blake’s Works’, University of Oxford DPhil Thesis, 2012, pp. 84–155; cf. Naomi A.I. Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, University of Manchester PhD Thesis, 2016, pp. 92–5. On Moravian iconography of the Crucifixion, see also: Paul Peucker, ‘A Painter of Christ’s Wounds: Johann ¨ ller’, in Craig D. Atwood Langguth’s Birthday Poem for Johann Jacob Mu and Peter Vogt (eds), The Distinctiveness of Moravian Culture: Essays and Documents in Moravian History in Honor of Vernon H. Nelson on his Seventieth Birthday (Nazareth, PA, 2003), pp. 19 –33. 5. James Barry, An Account of a Series of Pictures, in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi (London, 1783), pp. 23–4. 6. The Royal Academy, ‘Object of the Month – November 2012. Anatomical Crucifixion (James Legg). 1801’, The Royal Academy (2012), available

Notes to Pages 170 – 176

7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

221

at http://www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?record¼ ART13544 (accessed 06/10/2017). Cf. Martin Postle, ‘Flayed for art. The E´corche´ Figure in the English Art Academy’, British Art Journal 5.1 (2004), pp. 55–63: pp. 61 –2. Blake was living in in Felpham at this time but it is plausible that he was aware of the experiment via reports in the press, or lost correspondence with London friends. Helmut von Erffa and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, CT, 1986), cats 356–7, cf. 358. For a more detailed account of Blake’s earlier engagements with crucifixion imagery, see: Billingsley, ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, pp. 90 –109. ¨ rrbecker (ed.), William Blake: On the binding of Orc, see: Detlef W. Do The Continental Prophecies (Princeton, NJ, 1998), pp. 53 –4; Christopher Hobson, The Chained Boy Orc and Blake’s Idea of Revolution (Lewisburg, PA, 1999). Hobson objects to identifying the binding of Orc as a crucifixion, emphasising that Orc is never on a cross, nor nailed (pp. 47 –53); he is correct that Orc is not literally crucified, but his binding is analogous to the Crucifixion because it is an act of violence on the Human Form Divine. On the Crucifixion of Fuzon, see: Jon Mee, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of the 1790s (Oxford, 1992), pp. 96 –7, 190–201; David Worrall (ed.), William Blake: The Urizen Books (Princeton, NJ, 1995), pp. 153–63. Edward Young; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (London, 1797), p. 73. A copy of this plate from coloured Copy O of Edwards’ edition in the collection of the John Rylands Library, University of Manchester, can be viewed at https://luna.manchester.ac. uk/luna/servlet/s/9q07q1 (accessed 06/10/17). Vala/The Four Zoas is reproduced in: Cettina Tramontano Magno and David V. Erdman (eds), ‘The Four Zoas’ by William Blake: A Photographic Facsimile of the Manuscript with Commentary on the Illuminations (Lewisberg, PA, 1987); the Man of Sorrows proofs are pages 59, 107 and 115 of the manuscript. The nailing of Orc is page 62 of The Four Zoas manuscript. W.M. Rossetti also lists ‘Christ and his Disciples’ (‘Annotated Catalogue of Blake’s Pictures and Drawings’, in Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (London, new edn., 1880), Vol. 2/2, pp. 205–77: p. 275, no. 9; B423) and ‘Christ Before Pilate’ (ibid., p. 275, no. 12), which Butlin suggests were in tempera (B423, 425A). G.E. Bentley, Jr (ed.), Blake Books (Oxford, rev. edn. 2000), pp. 223, 228. For detailed accounts of Jerusalem, see Paley, The Continuing City; idem. (ed.), William Blake: Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (Princeton, NJ, 1991); Susanne Sklar, Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ as Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body (Oxford, 2011). See especially: David Bindman, Blake as an Artist (Oxford, 1977), p. 179; Anthony Blunt, The Art of William Blake (New York, NY, 1959), pp. 80–2;

222

17.

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

31.

Notes to Pages 176 – 180 W.J.T. Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry (Princeton, NJ, 1978), pp. 209–16; Morton D. Paley, The Continuing City: William Blake’s Jerusalem (Oxford, 1983), pp. 113–18; Sklar, ‘Jerusalem’ as Visionary Theatre, pp. 117–19, 222. Henry Lesnick, ‘The Antithetical Vision of Jerusalem’, in David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (eds), Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 391–412: p. 399; J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs: The Dynamics of Meaning (West Cornwall, CT, 1993), p. 82. John E. Grant argues that the uncoloured copies can more readily be interpreted in negative terms (‘Jesus and the Powers That Be in Blake’s Designs for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 71 –115: p. 107). The monochrome Copy F, from the Morgan Library and Museum is available via the Blake Archive http://www.blakearchive.org/copy/jerusalem.f? descId¼jerusalem.f.illbk.76 (accessed 06/10/2017). Cf. Stephen C. Behrendt, The Moment of Explosion: Blake and the Illustration of Milton (Lincoln, NE, 1983), pp. 169–73; Pamela Dunbar, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton (Oxford, 1980), pp. 83–5; Jessen, ‘Conversion in Blake’s works’, pp. 137–8, 140, 143, n. 359; Bette Charlene Werner, Blake’s Vision of the Poetry of Milton: Illustrations to Six Poems (London, 1986), pp. 94 –8. John Milton; John Carey and Alastair Fowler (eds), The Poems of John Milton (London, 2nd imp. 1980), pp. 1046 –9. Ibid., pp. 1048. Ibid., p. 999. Werner, Blake’s Vision of Milton, p. 95. Jessen discusses this detail in relation to Moravian iconography (‘Conversion in Blake’s Works’, pp. 137– 8). According to the Blake Archive, copies, A– E were all printed c.1820–1 (Morris Eaves, Robert N. Essick, Joseph Viscomi (eds), ‘Jerusalem The Emanation of The Giant Albion’, The William Blake Archive (2003), available at http://www.blakearchive.org/work/jerusalem (accessed 06/10/2017)). Werner also makes the point that each version is a more positive presentation of the Crucifixion (Blake’s Vision of Milton, p. 95). John Thurston, Religious Emblems (London, 1809). Cf. Behrendt, The Moment of Explosion, pp. 171–2; Werner, Blake’s Vision of Milton, pp. 97 –8. Ibid., pp. 79 –81. Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton, NJ, 1947), p. 400; Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art, pp. 209 – 10; David V. Erdman, The Illuminated Blake (Garden City, NY, 1974), p. 355; Paley, The Continuing City, pp. 113– 18; idem. (ed.), Jerusalem, p. 346. David Bindman, ‘William Blake and Popular Religious Imagery’, The Burlington Magazine, 128.1003 (1986), pp. 712–18: pp. 714, 716; cf. idem.,

Notes to Pages 180 – 185

32.

33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

41. 42.

223

‘The English Apocalypse’, in Frances Carey (ed.), The Apocalypse and the Shape of things to Come (London, 1999), pp. 208–69: p. 215. Negative readings of Eve include: Dunbar, William Blake’s Illustrations to Milton, pp. 85 –6; J.M.Q. Davies, Blake’s Milton Designs, p. 81; Robert N. Essick, The Works of William Blake in the Huntington Collections (San Marino, CA, 1985), p. 51 (Essick’s is the Emanation reading; on the concept of Emanations in Blake’s work, see: S. Foster Damon; ed. Morris Eaves, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbolism of William Blake (London, 1979), pp. 120–2). Milton, The Poems of John Milton, p. 998. Cf. Paley, Jerusalem, p. 211. Ibid., 170; cf. idem., The Continuing City, pp. 117– 18. According to Paley, in the monochrome copies, Hand has nails in his hands and in one ankle; they are not visible in copy E, where they have been covered with flames (Paley, Continuing City, p. 117, n. 5) or changed to stigmata (Erdman, Illuminated Blake, p. 305; Anne Kostelanetz Mellor, Blake’s Human Form Divine (Berkeley, CA, 1974), p. 299). Leopold Damrosch, Symbol and Truth in Blake’s Myth (Princeton, NJ, 1980), pp. 334–5; cf. Paley, Jerusalem, p. 297. On the organisation of the major designs in Jerusalem, see Lesnick, ‘Narrative Structure and Antithetical Vision’; Mitchell, Blake’s Composite Art, pp. 197–215. Blunt first made this suggestion (The Art of William Blake, p. 81). Rossetti, ‘Annotated Catalogue’, p. 249, no. 238; cf. BR 481 fn.; Robert N. Essick, ‘Blake in the Marketplace, 1996’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 30.4 (1997), pp. 100–20: p. 100. Available at http://bq.blakearchive. org/30.4.essick (accessed 06/10/2017). Gerda S. Norvig, Dark Figures in the Desired Country: Blake’s Illustrations to The Pilgrims Progress (Berkeley, CA, 1993). This criticism is noted by Keri Davies and David Worrall in ‘Inconvenient Truths: Re-historicizing the Politics of Dissent and Antinomianism’, in Mark Crosby, Troy Patendude and Angus Whitehead (eds), Re-Envisioning Blake (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 30–47: pp. 34–5. Cf. Geoffrey Keynes, Blake Studies: Notes on his Life and Work in Seventeen Chapters (London, 1949), pp. 167–85; Bindman, Blake as an Artist, pp. 215–16; Jessen, ‘Conversion in Blake’s works’, pp. 229–61. John Bunyan; W.R. Owens (ed.), The Pilgrim’s Progress (Oxford, new edn. 2003), pp. 50 –1. Sturt’s designs were published in: John Bunyan; John Sturt, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From this World, to that which is to Come [. . .] Adorned with Curious Sculptures (London 1741). Stothard’s designs, engraved by Joseph Strutt, were initially published as a portfolio of plates, without the text, although they were subsequently included in editions of the text; there are impressions of the plates in the British Museum; one of The Consolation, depicting Christian at the cross (1868,0822.3305) is viewable at http://www.britishmuseum. org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?objectId¼

Notes to Pages 185 – 194

224

43. 44. 45.

46.

47. 48. 49. 50.

51. 52. 53.

3312824&partId¼1&searchText¼1868,0822.3305&page¼1 (accessed 07/10/2017). On the history of Pilgrim’s Progress illustrations: Nathalie Colle´-Bak, ‘The Role of Illustrations in the Reception of The Pilgrim’s Progress’, in W.R. Owens and Stuart Sim (eds), Reception, Approbation, Recollection: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Oxford, 2007), pp. 81–95. Bunyan, The Pilgrim’s Progress, p. 49. Ibid., p. 37. Cf. Norvig, Dark Figures in the Desired Country, p. 167; Jessen, ‘Conversion in Blake’s Works’, p. 253. Dante Alighieri; tr. Henry Francis Cary, The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri; the Second Edition, Corrected (London, 1819), Vol. 3/3, p. 131. David Fuller, ‘Blake and Dante’, Art History 11 (1988), pp. 349–73; V. Tinkler-Villani, Visions of Dante in English Poetry: Translations of the Commedia from Jonathan Richardson to William Blake (Amsterdam, 1989); Jeanne Moskal, ‘Blake, Dante, and “Whatever Book is for Vengeance”’, Philological Quarterly 700.30 (1991), pp. 317–37. Cf. BR 422– 8. Dante; tr. Cary, The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, Vol. 1/3, pp. 202–3. Fuller, ‘Blake and Dante’, p. 366; Tinkler-Villani, Visions of Dante in English Poetry, p. 284. Anon. [¼ Henry Fuseli?], ‘Of the Designs’, in Robert Blair; William Blake, The Grave, a Poem (London, 1808), pp. 33– 7: p. 37. Piloo Nanavutty, ‘A Title-Page in Blake’s Illustrated Genesis Manuscript’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 10 (1947), pp. 114–22: p. 117. Bindman, Blake as an Artist, p. 219. On this period in Blake’s life, see G.E. Bentley Jr, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven, CT, 2003), pp. 335–439. Bo Lindberg, for example, is an advocate of this idea (William Blake’s ˚ bo, 1973), p. 38). Illustrations to the Book of Job (A

CONCLUSION 1. Morton D. Paley, ‘‫ & הי‬His Two Sons Satan & Adam’, Studies in Romanticism 41.2 (2002), pp. 201–35. 2. On Blake’s afterlife in the British art world in the century after his death, see: Colin Trodd, Visions of Blake: William Blake and the Art World 1830– 1930 (Liverpool, 2012). Attempts to promote Blake’s religious ideas have included: Charles Gardner, Vision and Vesture: A Study of William Blake in Modern Thought (London, 1916); idem., William Blake, the Man (London, 1919); Max Plowman, An Introduction to the Study of Blake (London, 1927); John Middleton Murry, William Blake (London, 1933); J.G. Davies, The Theology of William Blake (Oxford, 1948); Margaret Bottrall, The Divine Image: A Study of Blake’s Interpretation of Christianity (Rome, 1950). More

Notes to Page 194

3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

225

recently Christopher Rowland has argued that Biblical Studies could learn from Blake as a biblical interpreter (Blake and the Bible (New Haven, CT, 2010). Since 2015 a group called ‘the Church of Blake’ and describing itself as an ‘online community that celebrates William Blake’s vision of Christianity’ has been publishing (often re-publishing) material about Blake’s religious ideas via its blog, ‘thehumandivinedotorg’ in order to ‘develop and explore the radical and imaginative aspect of Blake’s take on Jesus and what this means for the twenty-first century’ (https://thehumandivine.org/about/ (accessed 06/10/2017). Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘On Christianity’, in E.B. Murray (ed.), The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 1 (Oxford, 1993), pp. 246–71: pp. 246, 251. Idem., ‘The Necessity of Atheism’, The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, pp. 1– 5. Idem., ‘On Christianity’, p. 246. Oscar Wilde; Rupert-Hart Davis; W.H. Auden, De Profundis (London, 2017). The idea of ‘Jesus the Artist’ is addressed briefly in: Werner Pelz and Lotte Pelz, God is No More (London, 3rd imp. 1964), pp. 54– 60.

Bibliography

UNPUBLISHED ARCHIVAL MATERIAL Manuscript catalogue of the Library of George Cumberland. The John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. GB 133 Eng MS 420.

PRIMARY SOURCES (PRINTED TO 1827) ‘A.L.B.’ [Anna Laetitia Barbauld], Hymns in Prose for Children (London, 1781). Alighieri, Dante; tr. Henry Francis Cary, The Vision; or Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise of Dante Alighieri; the Second Edition, Corrected (London, 1819). 3 Vols. Anon. [¼ Henry Fuseli?], ‘Explanation of the Engravings’, in Edward Young; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (London, 1797), pp. [ix–x ¼ 2 unnumbered pages following p. viii]. ——— ‘Of the Designs’, in Robert Blair; William Blake, The Grave, a Poem (London, 1808), pp. 33–7. Barry, James, An Inquiry into the Real and Imaginary Obstructions to the Acquisition of the Arts in England (London, 1775). ——— An Account of a Series of Pictures, in the Great Room of the Society of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, at the Adelphi (London, 1783). Blair, Robert; William Blake, The Grave, a Poem (London, 1808). Bulkley, Charles, Discourses on the Parables of Our Blessed Saviour, and the Miracles of His Holy Gospel (London, 1771), 4 Vols. Bunyan, John; John Sturt, The Pilgrim’s Progress: From This World, to That Which is to Come. Compleat in Two Parts. The Three and Twentieth Edition. Adorned with Curious Sculptures (London, 1741). Butts, Thomas E. (ed.), Harmonia-Sacra, or, A Choice Collection of Psalm and Hymn Tunes (London, c.1753). Cadell, T. and W. Davies (eds), The Apocrypha. Embellished with Engravings from Pictures and Designs by the Most Eminent English Artists (London, 1816).

Bibliography

227

Cadell, T. and Edward Nares (eds), The Holy Bible. Embellished by the Most Eminent British Artists with Historical Prefaces by the Rev. Edward Nares (London, 1824). Darwin, Erasmus, The Temple of Nature; or, The Origin of Society, a Poem (London, 1803). Dodd, William, Discourses on the Miracles and Parables of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ (London, 1757). 4 Vols. Fuseli, Henry, Lectures on Painting, Delivered at the Royal Academy March 1801, with Additional Observations and Notes (London, 1801). ——— Lectures on Painting, Delivered at the Royal Academy, with Additional Observations and Notes. Part 2 (London, 1820). Hayley, William, The Life of George Romney, Esq. (Chichester, 1809). Hume, David, Philosophical Essays Concerning Human Understanding (London, 1748). Johnson, Samuel, A Dictionary of the English Language. Abstracted from the Folio Edition, by the Author. To which is Prefixed a Grammar of the English Language. The Eleventh Edition, Corrected and Revised, with Considerable Additions from the Eighth Edition of the Original (London, 1799). Jones, Jeremiah, A New and Full Method of Settling Canonical Authority of the New Testament (Oxford, 1798). 3 Vols. Lavater, Johann Caspar; tr. Henry Fuseli, Aphorisms on Man (London, 1788). Macklin, Thomas (ed.), The Holy Bible: Embellished by the Most Eminent British Artists (London, 1800), 7 Vols. Middleton, Conyers, A Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers (London, 1749). Milton, John; Thomas Newton (ed.), Paradise Lost (London, 1749), 2 Vols. Milton, John and William Hayley, The Poetical Works of John Milton, with a Life of the Author, by William Hayley (London, 1794–7), 3 Vols. Newton, Thomas, The Works of the Right Reverend Thomas Newton (London, 1787), 6 Vols. [Orleans Gallery], The Orleans Gallery now Exhibiting at the Great Rooms, Late the Royal Academy, No. 125, Pall Mall, April 1793 (London, 1793). ——— A Catalogue of the Orleans’ Italian Pictures which will be Exhibited for Sale by Private Contract, on Wednesday, the 26th of December, 1798, and Following Days, at Mr. Bryan’s Gallery, No. 88, Pall Mall (London, 1798). Paine, Thomas, The Age of Reason. Being an Investigation of True and Fabulous Theology (‘Paris’ (i.e. London?), 1794). ——— The Age of Reason. Part the Second. Being an Investigation of True and of Fabulous Theology (London, 1795). Richardson, Jonathan, An Essay on the Theory of Painting. The Second Edition, Enlarg’d and Corrected (London, 1725). Rousseau, Jean-Jacques; tr. ‘The Translator of Eloisa’, Emilius and Sophia, or A New System of Education (London, 1762), 2 Vols. Shakespeare, William; Harry Rowe (ed.), Macbeth: A Tragedy (York, 1797). Swedenborg, Emanuel, True Christian Religion (London, 1781), 2 Vols.

228

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Thurston, John and Joseph Thomas, Religious Emblems. Being a Series of Engravings on Wood, Executed by the First Artists in that Line, from Designs Drawn on the Blocks Themselves (London, 1809). Count Truchsess, Catalogue of the Truchsessian Picture Gallery, now Exhibiting in the New Road, Opposite Portland Place. To which are Added, Biographical Notices, Respecting the German, Dutch, and Flemish Masters (London, 1803). ——— Summary Catalogue of the Pictures now Exhibiting and on Sale at the Truchsessian Gallery (London, 1804). Watts, Isaac, Divine Songs Attempted in Easy Language for the Use of Children (London, 1715). Wesley, John, The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explain’d (London, 1746). ——— The Complete English Dictionary, Explaining most of those Hard Words, which are found in the Best English Writers. By a Lover of Good English and Common Sense (London, 1790). Wesley, John and Charles Wesley, Hymns and Sacred Poems (London, 1742). West, Benjamin, Christ Rejected: Catalogue of the Picture, Representing the Above Subject, Together with Sketches of other Scripture Subjects; Painted by Benjamin West, Esq., President of the Royal Academy and Historical Painter to the King. Now Exhibiting, under the Special Protection of H.R.H. the Prince Regent, at the Room, Formerly the Royal Academy, No. 125, Pall Mall, Opposite Market Lane (London, 1814). Winkelmann, Abbe´; tr. Henry Fusseli, Reflections on the Painting and Sculpture of the Greeks (London, 1765). Woolston, Thomas, Moderator Between an Infidel and an Apostate (London, 1725). ——— A Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour (London, 1727). ——— A Second Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour (London, 1727). ——— A Third Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour (London, 1728). ——— A Fourth Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour (London, 1728). ——— A Fifth Discourse on the Miracles of Our Saviour (London, 1728). ——— A Sixth Discourse on the Miracles of the Saviour (London, 1729). Young, Edward, The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, and Immortality. To which is Added, a Paraphrase on Part of the Book of Job. Adorned with Elegant Copperplates (London, 1779). ——— Night Thoughts; With the Life of the Author and Notes Critical & Explanatory (London, 1798). Young, Edward; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts (London, 1797).

PRIMARY SOURCES (PRINTED AFTER 1827) Bentley, G.E. [Gerard Eades], Jr (ed.), Vala; or The Four Zoas: A Facsimile Manuscript, a Transcript of the Poem, and a Study of its Growth and Significance (Oxford, 1963).

Bibliography

229

——— (ed.), Blake Records (New Haven, CT, 2nd edn. 2004). Bunyan, John; W.R. Owens (ed.), The Pilgrim’s Progress (Oxford, new edn. 2003). Butlin, Martin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (New Haven, CT, 1981), 2 Vols. ——— William Blake 1757–1827, Tate Gallery Collections, V (London, 1990). Butlin, Martin and Evelyn Joll, The Paintings of J.M.W. Turner (New Haven, CT, rev. edn., 1984). Crosby, Mark, and Robert N. Essick (eds), Genesis: William Blake’s Last Illuminated Work (San Marino, CA, 2012). ¨ rrbecker, Detlef W. (ed.), William Blake: The Continental Prophecies Do (Princeton, NJ, 1998). Erdman, David V. (ed.), The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake (New York, NY, 1988). Erffa, Helmut von, and Allen Staley, The Paintings of Benjamin West (New Haven, CT, 1986). Essick, Robert, and Jenijoy La Belle (eds), Night Thoughts, or, The Complaint and the Consolation: Illustrated by William Blake (New York, NY, 1975). Grant, John E., Edward J. Rose, Michael J. Tolley and David Erdman (eds), William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition (Oxford, 1980), 2 Vols. Hamlyn, Robin (ed.), Night Thoughts, The Poem by Edward Young, Illustrated with Watercolours by William Blake (London, 2005). Lincoln, Andrew (ed.), William Blake: Songs of Innocence and of Experience (Princeton, NJ, 1998). Magno, Cettina Tramontano and David V. Erdman (eds), ‘The Four Zoas’ by William Blake: A Photographic Facsimile of the Manuscript with Commentary on the Illuminations (Lewisberg, PA, 1987). Milton, John; John Carey and Alastair Fowler (eds), The Poems of John Milton (London, 2nd imp. 1980). Paley, Morton, D. (ed.), William Blake: Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion (Princeton, NJ, 1991). Schiff, Gert, Johann Heinrich Fu¨ssli, 1741–1825. Text und Oeuvrekatalog (Zurich and Munich, 1973). Shelley, Percy Bysshe; E.B. Murray (ed.), The Prose Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Volume 1 (Oxford, 1993). Telford, John (ed.), The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley; Vol. 2, May 17, 1742 to January 4, 1749 (London, 1931), pp. 312–88. Worrall, David (ed.), William Blake: The Urizen Books (Princeton, NJ, 1995).

SECONDARY SOURCES (PRINTED) Altizer, Thomas J.J., The New Apocalypse: The Radical Christian Vision of William Blake (East Lansing, MI, 1967). Aston, Nigel, Art and Religion in Eighteenth-Century Europe (London, 2009).

230

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Barrell, John, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: ‘The Body of the Public’ (New Haven, CT, 1986). Beer, John, Blake’s Visionary Universe (Manchester, 1969). Behrendt, Stephen C., ‘Blake’s Illustrations to Milton’s “Nativity Ode”’, Philological Quarterly 55:1 (1976), pp. 65 –95. ——— The Moment of Explosion: Blake and the Illustration of Milton (Lincoln, NE, 1983). Bentley, G.E. [Gerard Eades], Jr (ed.), Blake Books: Annotated Catalogues of William Blake’s Writings in Illuminated Printing, in Conventional Typography and in Manuscript, and Reprints Thereof, Reproductions of his Designs, Books with his Engravings, Catalogues, Books he Owned, and Scholarly and Critical Works about him (Oxford, rev. edn. 2000). ——— The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake (New Haven, 2003). Billingsley, Naomi, ‘Citizens of “London” as Members of Christ’s Divine Body in William Blake’s Biblical Illustrations’, in Ben Quash, Aaron Rosen and Chloe¨ Reddaway (eds), Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion (London, 2017), pp. 89–101. ——— ‘“On the stocks”: Biblical watercolours from the Felpham period’, in Andrew Loukes (ed.), William Blake in Sussex: Visions of Albion, edited by (London, 2018), pp. 33–45. ——— ‘Re-viewing William Blake’s Paradise Regained (c.1816–20)’, in Religion and the Arts 22.1–2 (2018). ——— ‘“As the Eye is formed”: seeing as Christ in Blake’s Bartimaeus’, in Elizabeth Ludlow, The Figure of Christ in the Long Nineteenth Century (London, forthcoming). Bindman, David, Catalogue of the Blake Collection in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Cambridge, 1970). ——— Blake as an Artist (Oxford, 1977). ——— William Blake: His Art and His Times (New Haven, CT, 1982). ——— ‘William Blake and Popular Religious Imagery’, The Burlington Magazine 128.1003 (1986), pp. 712–8. ——— ‘The English Apocalypse’, in Frances Carey (ed.), The Apocalypse and the Shape of Things to Come (London, 1999), pp. 208–69. ——— Mind-Forg’d Manacles (London, 2009). Binhammer, Katherine, The Seduction Narrative in Britain, 1747 – 1800 (Cambridge, 2009). Bloom, Harold, Blake’s Apocalypse: A Study in Poetic Argument (London, 1963). Blunt, Anthony, The Art of William Blake (New York, NY, 1959). Bottrall, Margaret, The Divine Image: A Study of Blake’s Interpretation of Christianity (Rome, 1950). Buckle, Stephen, Hume’s Enlightenment Tract: The Unity and Purpose of An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, 2001). Butlin, Martin, ‘The Blake Collection of Mrs William T. Tonner’, Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 67.307 (1972), pp. 5–31.

Bibliography

231

——— ‘A New Portrait of William Blake’, Blake Studies 7.2 (1975), pp. 101–3. ——— ‘Blake’s Unfinished Series of Illustrations to Paradise Lost for John Linnell: An Addition’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 51.1 (2017). Available at http://blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/butlin511/pdf (accessed 06/10/2017). Cale`, Luisa, ‘Blake and the Literary Galleries’, in Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee (eds), Blake and Conflict (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 185–209. Campbell, Ted A., ‘John Wesley and Conyers Middleton on Divine Intervention in History’, Church History: Studies in Christianity and Culture 55.1 (1986), pp. 39 –49. Colle´-Bak, Nathalie, ‘The Role of Illustrations in the Reception of The Pilgrim’s Progress’, in W.R. Owens and Stuart Sim (eds), Reception, Approbation, Recollection: Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress (Oxford, 2007), pp. 81 –95. Collins Baker, C.H. [Charles Henry], ‘The Sources of Blake’s Pictorial Expression’, Huntington Library Quarterly 4.3 (1941), pp. 359– 67. Crosby, Mark, ‘“Merely a superior being”: Blake and the creations of Eve’, in Helen P. Bruder and Tristianne J. Connolly (eds), Blake, Gender and Culture (London, 2012), pp. 11–23. Damon, S. Foster; ed. Morris Eaves, A Blake Dictionary: The Ideas and Symbolism of William Blake (London, 1979). Damrosch, Leopold, Symbol and Truth in Blake’s Myth (Princeton, NJ, 1980). Davies, J.G. [John Gordon], The Theology of William Blake (Oxford, 1948). Davies, J.M.Q., ‘Apollo’s “Naked Human Form Divine”: The Dynamics of Meaning in Blake’s Nativity Ode Designs’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 3 –40. ——— Blake’s Milton Designs: The Dynamics of Meaning (West Cornwall, CT, 1993). Davies, Keri, ‘Jonathan Spilsbury and the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 40.3 (2006–7), pp. 100–9. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.davies (accessed 06/10/2017). Davies, Keri and Marsha Keith Schuchard, ‘Recovering the Lost Moravian History of William Blake’s Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 38.1 (2004), pp. 36 –43. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/38.1.davies (accessed 06/10/2017). Davies, Keri and David Worrall, ‘Inconvenient Truths: Re-historicizing the Politics of Dissent and Antinomianism’, in Mark Crosby, Troy Patendude and Angus Whitehead (eds), Re-Envisioning Blake (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 30 –47. Dillenberger, John, Benjamin West: The Context of his Life’s Work, with Particular Attention to Paintings with Religious Subject Matter (San Antonio, TX, 1977). Dorment, Richard, British Painting in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: From the Seventeenth through the Nineteenth Century (Philadelphia, PA, 1986). ¨ rrbecker, Detlef W., ‘Review: David V. Erdman, John E. Grant, Edward Do J. Rose, and Michael J. Tolley (eds), William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly

232

The Visionary Art of William Blake

16.2 (1982), pp. 130–9. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/16.2. dorrbecker (accessed 06/10/2017). Dunbar, Pamela, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Poetry of Milton (Oxford, 1980). Earman, John, Hume’s Abject Failure: The Argument Against Miracles (Oxford, 2003). Eaves, Morris, ‘Romantic Expressive Theory and Blake’s Idea of the Audience’, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 95.5 (1980), pp. 784–801. ——— William Blake’s Theory of Art (Princeton, NJ, 1982). ——— ‘Review: John Barrell, Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt: “The Body of the Public”’, Studies in Romanticism 27.3 (1988), pp. 429–42. ——— The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (London, 1992). Erdman, David V., The Illuminated Blake (Garden City, NY, 1974). Erle, Sibylle, ‘The Lost Original: Blake and Lavater’s Search for Divine ¨ diger Go ¨ rner and Angus Nicholls (eds), In the Embrace of the Likeness’, in Ru Swan: Anglo-German Mythologies in Literature, the Visual Arts and Cultural Theory (Berlin, 2010), pp. 211–30. Essick, Robert N., ‘Review: Martin Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 61.1 (1982), pp. 22 –65. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/16.1.essick (accessed 06/10/2017). ——— The Works of William Blake in the Huntington Collection: A Complete Catalogue (San Marino, CA, 1985). ——— William Blake and the Language of Adam (Oxford, 1989). ——— ‘Blake in the Marketplace, 1996’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 30.4 (1997), pp. 100–20. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/30.4.essick (accessed 06/10/2017). ——— ‘A (Self?) Portrait of William Blake’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 39.3 (2005–6), pp. 126– 39. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/39.3.essick (accessed 06/10/2017). Fallon, David, Blake, Myth, and Enlightenment: The Politics of Apotheosis (London, 2017). Farrell, Michael, Blake and the Methodists (Basingstoke, 2014). Frye, Northrop, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake (Princeton, NJ, 1947). Fuller, David, ‘Blake and Dante’, Art History 11 (1988), pp. 349–73. Gardner, Charles, Vision and Vesture: A Study of William Blake in Modern Thought (London, 1916). ——— William Blake, the Man (London, 1919). Gardner, Stanley, The Tyger, The Lamb and the Terrible Desart: ‘Songs of Innocence and of Experience’ in its Times and Circumstance (London, 1998). Garrett, Clarke, Respectable Folly: Millenarians in the French Revolution in France and England (Baltimore, MD, 1973). Gigante, Denise, Life: Organic Form and Romanticism (New Haven, CT, 2009).

Bibliography

233

Gleckner, Robert F., ‘Blake’s Religion of Imagination’, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 14.3 (1956), pp. 359– 69. Goldsmith, Stephen, Unbuilding Jerusalem: Apocalypse and Romantic Representation (Ithaca, NY, 1993). Grant, John E., ‘Envisioning the first Night Thoughts’, in Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic, ed. David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 304–35. ——— ‘A Re-View of Some Problems in Understanding Blake’s Night Thoughts’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 18.3 (1984–5), pp. 155–81. Available at http ://bq.blakearchive.org/18.3.grant (accessed 06/10/2017). ——— ‘Jesus and the Powers That Be in Blake’s Designs for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 71 –115. ——— ‘Prospects of Divine Humanity: A Vision of Heaven, Earth, and Hell’, in Mark Crosby, Troy Patenaude and Angus Whitehead, Re-Envisioning Blake (Basingstoke, 2012), pp. 130–43. Grenby, Matthew, The Child Reader: 1700–1840 (Cambridge, 2011). Hagstrum, Jean H., ‘“The Wrath of the Lamb”: A Study of William Blake’s Conversions’, in Frederick W. Hilles and Harold Bloom (eds), From Sensibility to Romanticism: Essays Presented to Frederick A. Pottle (New York, NY, 1965), pp. 311–30. Hamlyn, Robin and Michael Phillips, William Blake (London, 2000). Harrison, J.F.C. [John Fletcher Clews], The Second Coming: Popular Millenarianism, 1780–1850 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1979). Haynes, Clare, Pictures and Popery: Art and Anti-Catholicism c.1660–c.1760 (Aldershot, 2006). ——— ‘In the Shadow of the Idol. Religion in British Art Theory 1600–1800’, Art History 35.1 (2012), pp. 62 –85. ——— ‘Anglicanism and Art’ in Jeremy Gregory (ed.), The Oxford History of Anglicanism, Volume II: Establishment and Empire, 1662–1829 (Oxford, 2017), pp. 371–91. Helmstadter, Thomas H., ‘Blake’s Night Thoughts: Interpretations of Edward Young’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 12 (1970), pp. 27– 54. ——— ‘Blake and Religion: Iconographical Themes in the “Night Thoughts”’, Studies in Romanticism 10.3 (1971), pp. 199–212. Heppner, Christopher, ‘The Woman Taken in Adultery: An Essay on Blake’s “Style of Designing”’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 17.2 (1983), pp. 44 –60. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/17.2.heppner (accessed 06/10/ 2017). ——— ‘The Good (In Spite of What You May Have Heard) Samaritan’, Blake/ An Illustrated Quarterly 25.2 (1991), pp. 64 –70. Available at http://bq.bl akearchive.org/25.2.heppner (accessed 06/10/2017). ——— Reading Blake’s Designs (Cambridge, 1995). Hobson, Christopher, The Chained Boy Orc and Blake’s Idea of Revolution (Lewisburg, PA, 1999).

234

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Jesse, Jennifer G., William Blake’s Religious Vision: There’s a Methodism in His Madness (Lanham, MD, 2013). Johnson, Mary Lynn, ‘Human Consciousness and the Divine Image in Blake’s Watercolor Designs for the Bible: Genesis Through Psalms’, in Beverly Taylor and Robert Bain (eds), The Cast of Consciousness: Concepts of the Mind in British and American Romanticism (New York, NY, 1987), pp. 20–43. ——— ‘David’s Recognition of the Human Face of God in Blake’s Designs for the Book of Psalms’, in David V. Erdman (ed.), Blake and His Bibles (West Cornwall, CT, 1990), pp. 117–56. ——— ‘Blake’s Mary and Martha on the Mount of Olives: Questions on the Watercolour Illustrations of the Gospels’, in Helen P. Bruder (ed.), Women Reading Blake (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 100–8. ——— ‘More on Blake’s (and Bentley’s) “White Collar Maecenas”: Thomas Butts, His Wife’s Family of Artisans, and the Methodist Withams of St. Bartholomew the Great’, in Karen Mulhallen (ed.), Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G.E. Bentley Jr. (Toronto, 2010), pp. 131–64. ——— ‘Newfound Particulars of Blake’s Patrons, Thomas and Elizabeth Butts, 1767–1806’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 47.4 (2014). Available at http:// blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/article/view/johnson474/johnson 474html (accessed 06/10/2017). Juster, Susan, Doomsayers: Anglo-American Prophecy in the Age of Revolution (Philadelphia, PA, 2003). Keynes, Geoffrey, Blake Studies: Notes on his Life and Work in Seventeen Chapters (London, 1949). Leader, Zachary, Reading Blake’s Songs (Boston, MA, 1981). Lesnick, Henry, ‘The Antithetical Vision of Jerusalem’, in David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (eds), Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 391–412. Lewalski, Barbara Kiefer, The Life of John Milton: A Critical Biography (Oxford, rev. edn. 2006). ˚ bo, 1973). Lindberg, Bo, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job (A Lindsay, David, ‘The Order of Blake’s Large Color Prints’, Huntington Library Quarterly 52.1 (1989), pp. 19 –41. Lister, Raymond, The Paintings of William Blake (Cambridge, 1986). Lossky, Vladimir and Leonid Ouspensky; tr. G.E.H. Palmer and E. Kadloubovsky, The Meaning of Icons (New York, NY, 2nd edn. 1999). Margoliouth, H.M. [Herschel Maurice], ‘Blake’s Drawings for Young’s Night Thoughts’, in Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.), The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake (London, 1957), pp. 193–204. Matthews, Susan, ‘Impurity of Diction: The “Harlots Curse” and Dirty Words’, Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee (eds), Blake and Conflict (Basingstoke, 2009), pp. 65 –83. Mee, Jon, Dangerous Enthusiasm: William Blake and the Culture of the 1790s (Oxford, 1992). Mellor, Anne Kostelanetz, Blake’s Human Form Divine (Berkeley, CA, 1974).

Bibliography

235

Michael, Jennifer Davis, ‘Framing Eve: Reading Blake’s Illustrations’, in Helen P. Bruder (ed.), Women Reading William Blake (Basingstoke, 2007), pp. 159–69. Mitchell, W.J.T. [William John Thomas], ‘Style as Epistemology: Blake and the Movement Toward Abstraction in Romantic Art’, Studies in Romanticism 16.2 (1977), pp. 145–64. ——— Blake’s Composite Art: A Study of the Illuminated Poetry (Princeton, NJ, 1978). ——— ‘Reply to John Grant’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 18.3 (1984– 5), pp. 181–3. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/18.3.mitchell (accessed 06/10/2017). Moskal, Jeanne, ‘Forgiveness, Love, and Pride in Blake’s “The Everlasting Gospel”’, Religion & Literature, 20.2 (1988), pp. 19 –39. ——— ‘Blake, Dante, and “Whatever Book is for Vengeance”’, Philological Quarterly 700.30 (1991), pp. 317–37. ——— Blake, Ethics, and Forgiveness (Tuscaloosa, AL, 1994). Murry, John Middleton, William Blake (London, 1933). Myrone, Martin, Gothic Nightmares (London, 2006). ——— The Blake Book (London, 2007). Nanavutty, Piloo, ‘A Title-Page in Blake’s Illustrated Genesis Manuscript’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 10 (1947), pp. 114– 22. Norvig, Gerda S., Dark Figures in the Desired Country: Blake’s Illustrations to The Pilgrims Progress (Berkeley, CA, 1993). Nurmi, Martin K., ‘Blake’s “Ancient of Days” and Motte’s Frontispiece to Newton’s Principia’, in Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.), The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake (London, 1957), pp. 207–16. Otto, Peter, ‘From the Religious to the Psychological Sublime: The Fate of Young’s Night Thoughts in Blake’s The Four Zoas’, in Alexander S. Gourlay (ed.), Prophetic Character: Essays on William Blake in Honor of John E. Grant (West Cornwall, CT, 2002), pp. 225–62. Paley, Morton D., ‘Blake’s Night Thoughts: An Exploration of the Fallen World’, in Alvin H. Rosenfeld (ed.), William Blake: Essays for S. Foster Damon (Providence, RI, 1969), pp. 131–57. ——— ‘Review: William Blake’s Designs for Edward Young’s Night Thoughts: A Complete Edition by David V. Erdman; John E. Grant; Edward J. Rose; Michael J. Tolley; Edward Young’, Modern Philology 80.2 (1982), pp. 198–205. ——— The Continuing City: William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ (Oxford, 1983). ——— The Apocalypse and the Romantic Imagination (Oxford, 1999). ——— Apocalypse and Millennium in English Romantic Poetry (Oxford, 1999). ——— ‘‫ & הי‬His Two Sons Satan & Adam’, Studies in Romanticism 41.2 (2002), pp. 201–35. ——— ‘William Blake and Chichester’, in Karen Mulhallen (ed.), Blake in Our Time: Essays in Honour of G.E. Bentley, Jr. (Toronto, 2010), pp. 215–32.

236

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Paulson, Ronald, Hogarth, Vol. 2: High Art and Low, 1732 –1750 (Cambridge, 1992). Pelz, Werner, and Lotte Pelz, God is No More (London, 3rd imp. 1964). Peucker, Paul, ‘A Painter of Christ’s Wounds: Johann Langguth’s Birthday ¨ ller’, in Craig D. Atwood and Peter Vogt (eds), Poem for Johann Jacob Mu The Distinctiveness of Moravian Culture: Essays and Documents in Moravian History in Honor of Vernon H. Nelson on his Seventieth Birthday (Nazareth, PA, 2003), pp. 19–33. Phillips, Michael, William Blake: Apprentice and Master (Oxford, 2014). Plowman, Max, An Introduction to the Study of Blake (London, 1927). Pointon, Marcia, Milton and English Art (Manchester, 1970). Postle, Martin, ‘Flayed for art. The E´corche´ figure in the English Art Academy’, British Art Journal 5.1 (2004), pp. 55 –63. Pressly, Nancy L., Revealed Religion: Benjamin West’s Commissions for Windsor Castle and Fonthill Abbey (San Antonio, TX, 1983). Pressly, William L., James Barry’s Murals at the Royal Society of Arts: Envisioning a New Public Art (Cork, 2014). ——— ‘Benjamin West’s Royal Chapel at Windsor: Who’s in Charge, the Patron of the Painter?’, in Andrew Hemmingway and Alan Wallach (eds), Transatlantic Romanticism: British and American Art and Literature, 1790– 1860 (Amherst, MA, 2015), pp. 102–21. Preston, Kerrison, Notes on Blake’s Large Painting in Tempera: The Spiritual Condition of Man (London, 1949). Raine, Kathleen, Blake and Tradition (London, 1969), 2 Vols. ——— Blake and the New Age (London, 1979). Robertson, W. Graham; Kerrison Preston (ed.), The Blake Collection of W. Graham Robertson (London, 1952). Rosenblum, Robert, The Romantic Child: from Runge to Sendak (London, 1988). Rossetti, W.M. [William Michael], ‘Annotated Catalogue of Blake’s Pictures and Drawings’, in Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (London, new edn. 1880), Vol. 2/2, pp. 205–77. Rowland, Christopher, Blake and the Bible (New Haven, CT, 2010). Russell, Archibald G.B., Catalogue of Loan Exhibition of Works by William Blake (London, 1913). Schuchard, Marsha Keith, ‘Young William Blake and the Moravian Tradition of Visionary Art’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 40.3 (2006–7), pp. 84 – 100. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/40.3.schuchard (accessed 06/10/2017). Sklar, Susanne, Blake’s ‘Jerusalem’ as Visionary Theatre: Entering the Divine Body (Oxford, 2011). ——— ‘Erotic Spirituality in Blake’s Last Judgement’, in Helen P. Bruder and Tristianne Connolly (eds), Sexy Blake (Basingstoke, 2013), pp. 125–40. Sola Pinto, Vivian de, ‘William Blake, Isaac Watts, and Mrs. Barbauld’, in Vivian de Sola Pinto (ed.), The Divine Vision: Studies in the Poetry and Art of William Blake (London, 1957), pp. 67 –87.

Bibliography

237

Steward, James Christien, The New Child: British Arts and the Origins of Modern Childhood, 1730 –1830 (Berkeley, CA, 1995). Swedenborg Society, The, Index to Swedenborg’s Arcana Cœlestia or Heavenly Mysteries Contained in the Holy Scripture (London, 1865), 2 Vols. Tinkler-Villani, V. [Valeria], Visions of Dante in English Poetry: Translations of the Commedia from Jonathan Richardson to William Blake (Amsterdam, 1989). Trapnell, William H., Thomas Woolston: Madman and Deist? (Bristol, 1994). Trodd, Colin, Visions of Blake: William Blake and the Art World 1830–1930 (Liverpool, 2012). Viscomi, Joseph, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ, 1993). ——— ‘A “Green House” for Butts? New Information on Thomas Butts, His Residences, and Family’, Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 30.1 (1996), pp. 4–21. Available at http://bq.blakearchive.org/30.1.viscomi (accessed 06/10/2017). ——— ‘Signing Large Color Prints: The Significance of Blake’s Signatures’, Huntington Library Quarterly 80.3 (2017), pp. 365–402. Warner, Janet A., ‘Blake’s Use of Gesture’, in David V. Erdman and John E. Grant (eds), Blake’s Visionary Forms Dramatic (Princeton, NJ, 1970), pp. 175–95. Welch, Dennis M., ‘Blake and Rousseau on Children’s Reading, Pleasure, and Imagination’, The Lion and the Unicorn 35.3 (2011), pp. 199 – 226. Werner, Bette Charlene, Blake’s Vision of the Poetry of Milton: Illustrations to Six Poems (London, 1986). Wilde, Oscar; Rupert-Hart Davis; W.H. Auden, De Profundis (London, 2017).

PHD THESES Ardill, Thomas, ‘Between God, Art and Mammon: Religious Painting as a Public Spectacle in Britain, c.1800–1832’, Courtauld Institute PhD Thesis, 2016. Billingsley, Naomi A.I., ‘The Visual Christology of William Blake’, University of Manchester PhD Thesis, 2016. Jessen, Maria Elisabeth Engell, ‘Conversion as a Narrative, Visual, and Stylistic Mode in William Blake’s Works’, University of Oxford DPhil Thesis, 2012.

ONLINE RESOURCES British Museum, The, ‘Collection Search’, The British Museum http://www. britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx (accessed 06/ 10/2017). Church of Blake, The, ‘thehumandivinedotorg’ https://thehumandivine.org/ (accessed 06/10/2017).

238

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Eaves, Morris, Robert N. Essick, and Joseph Viscomi (eds), The William Blake Archive http://blakearchive.org (accessed 06/10/2017). Eaves, Morris, and Morton D. Paley (eds), Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly http:// www.blakequarterly.org/index.php/blake/index (accessed 06/10/2017). Erdman, David (ed.), ‘The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake: Electronic Edition’, The William Blake Archive http://erdman.blakearchive. org (accessed 06/10/2017). Getty Trust, The J. Paul, ‘The Getty Provenance Indexw’, The Getty Research Institute http://piprod.getty.edu/starweb/pi/servlet.starweb?path¼pi/pi. web (accessed 06/10/2017). Hamburger Kunsthalle, ‘Sammlung Online’, Hamburger Kunsthalle http:// www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/sammlung-online/suchen?get_filter¼work_ search (accessed 06/10/2017). Harvard Art Museums, ‘Browse our Collection’, Harvard Art Museums http:// www.harvardartmuseums.org/collections (accessed 06/10/2017). John Rylands Library, The, ‘Bookreader 16123 (Spencer 16123: Edward Young; William Blake, The Complaint, and the Consolation; or, Night Thoughts, 1797)’, University of Manchester Image Collections https://luna.manchester.ac.uk/ luna/servlet/s/z44u51 (accessed 06/10/2017). Just, Felix (ed.), ‘Illustrations of Gospel Stories from Jerome Nadal’, Catholic Resources for Bible, Liturgy, Art, and Theology http://catholic-resources.org/ Art/Nadal.htm (accessed 06/10/2017). Metropolitan Museum of Art, The, ‘Collection’, The Metropolitan Museum of Art http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection (accessed 06/10/2017). National Portrait Gallery, The, ‘Explore our Collection’, The National Portrait Gallery http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/ (accessed 06/10/2017). Oakes, Catherine, Doug Adams and Iris Kockelbergh, ‘Crucifix’, Grove Art Online http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/ T020450 (accessed 06/10/2017). Royal Academy, The, ‘Object of the Month – November 2012. Anatomical Crucifixion (James Legg). 1801’, The Royal Academy http:// www.racollection.org.uk/ixbin/indexplus?record¼ART13544 (accessed 06/10/2017). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, ‘Online Collections Database’, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin http://www.smb-digital.de/eMuseumPlus (accessed 06/10/2017). Tate, ‘Explore the Collection’, Tate http://www.tate.org.uk/search?type¼ artwork (accessed 06/10/2017). Yale Center for British Art, ‘Search All Collections’, Yale Center for British Art http://britishart.yale.edu/collections/search (accessed 06/10/2017).

Index Note: Page references in italics refer to figures. Adam (biblical figure), 22, 143, 144, 145, 146, 148, 154 –6, 155, 157 – 60, 161, 164, 165, 177 –8, 179, 180, 183, 187, Plates 13, 15, 17 apocalypse; apocalyptic, 9, 22 – 3, 28 – 30, 32, 35, 38 –9, 47, 54 – 9, 101, 147– 8, 164, 165, 168, 173, 187 Ark of the Covenant, the, 28, 152 Atonement, the, 24, 45, 166, 168 –9, 171, 174 Barbauld, Anna Letitia, Hymns in Prose, 103 – 4 Barry, James, 10 – 11, 16, 71, 134, 170 Inquiry into [. . .] the Arts in England, 10, 134 Bible, the 1 Corinthians, 101, 163 2 Corinthians, 163 Acts, 5, 94, 131 Colossians, 102 Daniel, 29 Exodus, 152, 153

Galatians, 102 Genesis, 42, 71 Isaiah, 69 John, 9, 43, 50, 58, 69, 73, 89, 102, 107, 110, 118– 22, 124, 186 Judges, 58, 128 Luke, 28, 43, 55, 69, 71, 77 – 8, 80, 104, 107– 8, 110, 113, 116, 118, 122 – 4 Mark, 28, 55, 104, 113, 116, 125 – 7, 129, 154 Matthew, 28, 53, 55, 75, 82, 96, 98 – 101, 104, 113, 125, 154, 180 Numbers, 61 Proverbs, 7 Psalms, 129, 151 Revelation, 16, 19, 28–9, 30, 35, 54, 56, 101, 138, 153, 192 Romans, 103 Thessalonians, 101 Blake, Catherine, 106, 184, 203 n. 22 Blake, William commercial engraving projects

240

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Blair’s Grave, 134, 147, 149– 52, 162, 167, 187, 217 n. 31, 218 n. 44, Plate 14 Herries’ Family Bible, 18, 30, 32 Young’s Night Thoughts, 13, 20, 23, 30 – 59, 36 – 40, 47, 65, 75, 78, 80, 89, 93, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 136, 138, 143, 168, 172 – 3, 193, Plates 2– 3 concepts Albion, 21, 175– 7, 179– 80, 182– 3, 189 Bard, the, 26, 27, 60, 62 Divine Body, the, 1, 5, 6– 7, 13, 23, 42, 53, 57 – 8, 68, 78, 89 – 92, 98, 102, 104, 105, 122, 127, 129 – 30, 131, 134, 146, 150, 152– 3, 161, 163, 165, 183, 191 –3 Divine Humanity, 5, 60, 61 – 2, 86, 87, 94, 95, 108, 111, 113, 121, 122, 144, 147, 149, 157– 60, 168, 175– 6, 177, 189 Divine Image, the, 5, 67, 75, 82, 171, 176 Divine Vision, the, 5, 21, 28, 91, 95 Human Form Divine, the, 5– 7, 14, 24, 39, 46, 66, 68, 92, 94, 107, 108, 116, 118, 130, 131, 135, 136 – 7, 139, 143, 144, 145, 150, 156, 159– 60, 162 – 3, 164, 165, 168, 171, 174, 182, 183, 186, 188, 192– 3 Imagination, the, 1, 5, 6– 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 20, 23, 26, 28, 39, 42, 48, 52, 61, 62, 65,

67, 69, 86, 87, 88, 90 – 1, 96, 99, 102, 103, 122, 128, 129 – 30, 131, 132, 146, 179, 192 Orc, 8, 67, 91, 92, 171, 173 Poetic Genius, the, 1, 5, 42, 53, 60, 61, 62, 187 Urizen, 8, 50, 51, 163 pictorial works (excluding commercial engraving work) Abraham and Isaac, 87 Adam Naming the Beasts, 157 – 60 Adoration of the Kings, The, 78 – 9, 79 Agony in the Garden, The, 118, 174 Ahania, 6, 171 Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man, An, 160 – 4, 165, Plate 17 All Religions Are One Frontispiece, 69, 70 All Religions Are One ‘Principle 7th’, 30, 32, 41, 42, 53 America, 3, 171, 173 Ancient Britons (lost), 134 Ancient of Days, The, 7– 8, 33, 46, 50, 51, 67, 140, 142 – 3, 163, 168, Plate 1 Angel Appearing to Zacharias, The, 68 – 9, 86, Plate 6 Angels Hovering over the Body of Christ in the Sepulchre, 95, 134 Annunciation to the Shepherds, The (illustrations to Milton’s Nativity Ode), 69 Ascension, The, 127, 151

Index Baptism of Christ, The (watercolour), 13, 95 – 8, Plate 8 Black Madonna, The, 67, 69, 84, 157 By the Waters of Babylon, 129, 130 Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection, 20, 30, 32, 42 – 5, 44, 52, Plate 4 Christ Baptizing, 102– 5, 103 Christ Blessing, 157 – 60, Plate 16 Christ Blessing the Little Children, 87, 89, 90, 104 Christ Child Asleep on a Cross, The, 17, 76, 109, 207 n. 42, n. 46 Christ Girding Himself with Strength, 151 –2 Christ Healing the Woman with an Issue of Blood, 105, 107– 8, 110 Christ Offers to Redeem Man, 136, 137– 8, 144, 177, 178, Plate 12 Christ Raising Jairus’ Daughter, 87 Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain, 109 – 10, Plate 10 Christian Before the Cross, 184– 5, Plate 19 Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, 81 – 2, 82 Circumcision, The, 79 – 80, 80, 84 Conversion of Saul, The, 131 Creation of Eve, The, 142 – 4, 142

241 Dante Adoring Christ, 185– 7, Plate 20 Entombment, The (watercolour), 83, 113, 119 – 20, 121 Epitome of James Hervey’s Meditations Among the Tombs, 161, 213 n. 50 Eve Naming the Birds, 157 Fall of Man, The, 154 – 7, 155 Flight into Egypt, The, 80 – 2, Plate 7 God Writing Upon the Tables of the Covenant, 120– 1 Good Farmer, The, 19, 30, 32, 33, 55, 91 Healing of Bartimaeus, The, 87, 143 Hebrew Characters Using the Human Form, 137 – 8 Hiding of Moses, The, 77, 78, 84, 86 Hymn of Christ and the Apostles, The, 125– 31, 126 Hypocrites with Caiaphas, The, 186 Jacob’s Ladder, 94 Jephthah Met by his Daughter, 128 Jerusalem, 26, 168 Jerusalem, 32, 162 Jerusalem, 35, 143 Jerusalem, 51, 182 Jerusalem, 57, 162 Jerusalem, 76, 13, 24, 169, 171, 174–7, 178–80, 182– 3, 184, 185, 189, Plate 18 Jerusalem, 84, 162 Jerusalem, 96, 183 Jerusalem, 99, 183 Jerusalem, 100, 168

242

The Visionary Art of William Blake Job, Illustrations to the Book of, 129, 169, 188 Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, 122, 123 Judas Betrays Him, 128, 129 Judgement of Solomon, The, 86 Judgment of Adam and Eve, The, 144– 5, 145, 156 ‘Large Colour Prints’, the, 30, 32, 33, 42 –3 Last Judgement, The (Petworth), 21, 147 – 9, 148, 152 – 4 Last Supper, The, 128 Last Trumpet, The, 101 Magdalene at the Sepulchre, The, 121 Man Who Taught Blake Painting in His Dreams, The, 159 Michael Foretells the Crucifixion, 144– 5, 146, 175, 177 – 83 Moses Indignant at the Golden Calf, 86 Nativity, The, 53, 65, 69 – 78, 86, 96, 206 n. 28, Plate 5 On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, illustrations to, 69, 74, 83 Ordeal of Queen Emma, The, 120 Our Lady with the Infant Jesus Riding a Lamb, 76, 81, Figure 15 Paradise Lost, illustrations to, 135 –45, 156, 162, 165, 177, 179 Paradise Regained, illustrations to, 20 –1, 95 – 6, 138, 165

Penance of Jane Shore, The, 120 Pity, 75 Progress of Poesy, illustrations to, 140 Raising of Lazarus, The, 110, 111 – 13, 123, Plate 11 Repose in Egypt, The (tempera; lost), 82 – 3 Repose of the Holy Family in Egypt, The (watercolour), 83 – 5 River of Life, The, 98 Rout of the Rebel Angels, The, 138 – 40, 139, 144, 165 Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter, The, 128, 129, 131 Satan Calling Up His Legions, 137 Satan, Sin and Death, 137 Self-Portrait (?), 159 Soldiers Casting Lots of Christ’s Garment, The, 134, 174, 200 n. 50 Third Temptation, The, 97, 97 – 8 Transfiguration, The, 113 – 8, 114, 127 Virgin and Child in Egypt, The, 157 – 60, 158 Vision of the Last Judgment, The (Glasgow), 147 – 9, 152 – 4, 156 – 7, Plate 15 Wise and Foolish Virgins, The, 91, 98 – 102, 99, Plate 9 Woman Taken in Adultery, The, 118 – 22, 119, 168 writings Advertisement for the Exhibition, 60, 62

Index All Religions are One, 2, 42, 62, 134 Annotations to Joshua Reynolds’ Discourses on Art, 60, 62, 111, 202 n. 6, 204 n. 4 Annotations to Richard Watson’s Apology for the Bible, 106 Annotations to William Wordsworth’s Poems, 62, 204 n. 4 Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures, A, 13, 21, 22, 88, 89, 100, 111, 133– 4, 147, 149, 193 Europe, A Prophecy, 7 – 8, 67, 73 Everlasting Gospel, The, 5, 71, 119, 121, 159, 168 First Book of Urizen, The, 50, 143 Jerusalem, the Emanation of the Giant Albion, 6, 8, 13, 14, 21, 24, 27, 53, 62, 67, 77, 88, 90, 91, 121, 132, 134 – 5, 164, 168, 174 – 5, 176, 180, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189, 216 n. 14 Laocoo¨n, 1, 6, 9, 14, 22, 23, 53, 77, 90, 127, 190, 191 Letters, 6, 17, 20, 30, 32, 52, 58, 63, 64, 65 –6, 83, 85, 93, 94, 96, 104, 179, 209 n. 16 Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The, 7, 52, 58, 151, 167 Milton, A Poem, 6, 24, 26, 27 – 8, 56, 59, 60, 61, 91,

243

134 – 5, 138, 166, 168, 176, 188 Public Address, the, 193 Songs of Experience, 26, 27, 71, 100, 102, 120, 122 Songs of Innocence, 9, 13, 19, 32, 75, 82, 104, 107, 110, 162 Songs of Innocence and of Experience, 13, 30, 104 Vala/The Four Zoas, 24, 27, 91, 110, 134– 5, 143, 168, 173, 176, 188 Vision of the Last Jugdment, 2, 21, 27, 28, 39 – 40, 59, 100, 132, 146 – 7, 149, 158, 166, 176, 186, 192 – 3 Boydell, John; Shakespeare Gallery, 31, 92 Bunyan, John; Pilgrim’s Progress, 184– 5 Burke, Edmund; On the Sublime and Beautiful, 16, 29, 60 Butts, Thomas, 20, 68, 76, 77, 83, 89, 93, 101, 128, 129, 133, 138, 154 –6, 157, 160 – 1, 164, 174, 188, 206 n. 28 biblical temperas by Blake, 20, 23, 63 – 6, 68 – 83, 85 – 7, 89, 106, 107, 108, 163, 173, 174 biblical watercolours by Blake, 20, 34 – 5, 83 – 4, 91, 92 – 131, 173– 4 Milton watercolours by Blake, 20, 53, 73, 136– 45, 179 Christianity, 1, 2, 20, 22, 32, 106, 163, 164, 173, 176, 182, 191, 192, 194 Church of England, the, 16

244

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Dante Alighieri; Divine Comedy, 184, 185 – 7, Plate 20 ¨ rer, Albrecht, 159 Du Holy Trinity, The, 137 Melancholia I, 70 Self Portrait (1529), 159 Elijah (biblical figure), 116 Elisabeth (biblical figure), 71, 73, 74, 76, 77 – 8, 87 Eve (biblical figure), 22, 142, 142 –5, 145, 146, 148, 154, 155, 155 – 6, 157 – 8, 161, 164, 177, 181 –2, 183, 217 n. 24, Plates 13, 15, 17 Felpham, West Sussex, 20, 32, 63, 64, 66, 94 – 5, 128, 209 n. 16 Flaxman, John, 140, 186, 210 n. 19 Sketch of Ghiberti’s Transfiguration, 114, 116, 117 Fuseli, Henry, 48, 143 – 4, 149 Creation of Eve, 143 –4 gothic art and architecture, 12, 94 – 95, 153, 162 Haines, William, 101 – 2 Harrowing of Hell, the, 47, 56 Hayley, William, 17, 94, 95, 101 –2, 128 Hogarth, William Good Samaritan, The, 107 Pool of Bethesda, The, 107 Satan, Sin and Death, 100 Hume, David; ‘Of Miracles’, 106 Humphry, Ozias, 21, 147

iconoclasm, iconoclastic, 58, 165, 166, 167 – 9, 176, 178, 183, 185, 187, 188, 192 Imagination, 1, 5, 6– 7, 8, 9, 14, 20, 23, 28, 39, 42, 48, 52, 61, 62, 65, 67, 68, 69, 86, 87, 90– 1, 96, 99, 102, 103, 122, 128, 129, 130, 131, 138, 153, 179, 192 Jesus, 5 – 6, 13, 14, 26, 28, 88, 102, 104, 118 – 25, 131, 134, 147, 151, 160, 161 –2, 163, 164, 168, 169, 176, 186, 191– 2, 194 – 5 as artist, 1 – 2, 9, 91, 191 – 2 baptism, 95 – 8 crucifixion, 45, 46 – 8, 50, 75, 76, 93, 137, 154, 163, 164, 168 – 74, 176– 88 death, 1, 14, 28, 38, 75, 77, 81, 90, 93, 94, 102, 104, 165, 168, 173, 184, 192 disciples, 21, 42 – 5, 52, 113 – 18, 125– 31, 191 entombment, 50 – 2, 93, 94, 113, 121 infancy, 75 –6, 79 – 86 miracles, 1, 9, 29, 30, 105 – 13 nativity, 66 – 79, 86 – 7 parables, 1, 9, 19, 32, 55, 98 – 102 resurrection, 1, 13, 30, 35 – 54, 75, 76, 93, 94, 113, 131, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 171, 192 temptations, 97 – 8 Job (biblical figure), 100, 126, 129, 188 –9 John the Baptist (biblical figure), 69, 71, 73, 76, 77 – 8, 95 – 6, Plates 5, 8

Index Joseph of Nazareth (biblical figure), 67, 71, 76, 77, 87, 207 n. 46, Plate 5 Lavater, Johann Kaspar, 159 Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 101 Copy of Raphael’s Transfiguration, 113, 115 Lazarus of Bethany (biblical figure), 48, 109 – 10, 111, 112, 113, 123, Plate 11 Linnell, John, 20, 22, 101, 133, 136, 159, 179, 184, 187, 188, 201 n. 59, 210 n. 23 Lucifer; see also Satan, 56 Macklin, Thomas, 18, 31, 67, 68 Macklin Bible, 18, 67 – 8, 93, 113– 14 Magdalen (prostitute), 120 Magdalen, the (pseudo-biblical figure), 111, 118– 25, 119, 124, 125, Plate 11 Magdalen Hospital, the, 120 Malpas, Edward, 45 –6 Martha (biblical figure), 111, 122 –4, 124, 126, Plate 11 Mary, mother of Jesus, 21, 67, 69, 71, 74, 76 – 8, 79, 80, 80, 81, 81, 83 – 4, 84, 85, 87, 150, 157, 158, 158, Plates 5, 7 Mary of Bethany (biblical figure), 111, 122 – 4, 124, 126– 7, Plate 11 Michelangelo (di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni); Last Judgement, The, 150 Milton, John, 21, 27 –8, 138 On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity, 8, 65, 67, 73, 83

245

Paradise Lost, 18, 48, 136, 139, 143, 177, 178, 182 Paradise Regained, 96, 98 miracles, credibility of, 106– 7 miracles of Jesus; see Jesus, miracles Moravianism, 3, 17 – 18, 128, 170 Moses (biblical figure), 6, 19, 24, 77, 86, 113, 116, 149, 158, 204 n. 28 Orleans Gallery, the, 17, 67, 76, 169 Paine, Thomas; The Age of Reason, 106 Paul (biblical figure), 131 Phillips, Thomas; Portrait of William Blake, 159, 219 n. 56 prophecy; prophet; prophetic, 61– 3, 66, 67, 68, 69, 73, 77, 78, 85, 96, 101, 113– 18, 140, 175, 192 Raphael (Raffaelo Sanzio da Urbino); The Transfiguration, 45– 6, 113, 114, 115 (after), 116 regeneration, 26, 27 – 30, 35, 42, 48, 50, 52, 54, 55, 59, 111, 113, 131, 162, 163, 187 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn, 111, 133 Raising of Lazarus, The, 111, 112 Reni, Guido; Christ Child Asleep on a Cross, 17, 76 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 16, 60 Discourses on Art, 62, 111 Holy Family, The, 67 – 8

246

The Visionary Art of William Blake

Richardson, Jonathan; Essay on the Theory of Painting, 121, 214 n. 57 Robinson, Henry Crabb, 2, 5, 32, 37, 166, 168, 186, 190, 192, 220 n. 1 Romanticism, 12 – 13 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques; E´mile, 103 Royal Academy, the, 15, 101, 107, 133, 171 St Paul’s Cathedral, 16, 161, 162 Samson (biblical figure), 35, 40, 58 – 9, 204 n. 31 Satan; see also Lucifer, 51, 56, 97, 97 – 8, 100, 137, 144, 145, 146, 154, 155, 166, 168, 177, 188, Plate 13 Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 194 Smirke, Robert (senior); The Transfiguration, 113– 14 Spilsbury, Jonathan, 18 Stothard, Thomas, 46, 185, 223 n. 42 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 106– 7, 197 n. 11 Swedenborgianism, 106, 197 n. 11 Thomas, Joseph, 20, 133, 136, 179 descriptions for Thurston’s Religious Emblems, 179 Thomas the Apostle (biblical figure), 35, 38, 43, 52

Tree of Life, The (anonymous print), 180, 181 Truchsessian Gallery, the, 17, 67, 169 Trusler, John, 6, 52, 65, 104, 150, 179 Turner, J.M.W., 12, 15, 29 Holy Family, 85, 85 Watts, Isaac; Divine Songs, 103, 104 Wesley, John, 106, 128, 180 Harmonia Sacra, 128 Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained, The, 106 West, Benjamin, 11, 15, 16, 29, 107, 170 –1 Chapel of Revealed Religion, 15 Christ Healing the Sick, 107 Christ Rejected, 11, 15 Westall, Richard Adoration of the Shepherds, The, 68, 71, 72 Paradise Lost, Book, 3 48, 49, 50 Wilde, Oscar; De Profundis, 194 Young, Edward; Night Thoughts, 20, 23, 30 – 1, 33, 34, 35, 40, 42, 45, 46 – 8, 50, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 108, 135, 138, 168, 173 Zacharias (biblical figure), 689, Plate 6 Zinzendorf, Count von, 17, 170

PLATE 1 ‘Europe’ Plate i: Frontispiece, ‘The Ancient of Days’ (1794/1827?). 23.2 £ 17.0 cm. Relief etching with bodycolour and gold on paper. Image courtesy of the Whitworth q The University of Manchester.

PLATE 2 Night Thoughts, frontispiece to second volume (c.1795 – 7). 33.4 £ 26.2 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

PLATE 3 Night Thoughts, Night VI, page 42 (c.1795 – 7). 42.0 £ 32.5 cm. Watercolour on paper. q The Trustees of the British Museum. All rights reserved.

PLATE 4 Christ Appearing to the Apostles After the Resurrection (c.1795). 40.6 £ 49.9 cm. Print, ink, watercolour and varnish on paper. q Tate, London 2017.

PLATE 5 The Nativity (c.1799 – 1800). 27.3 £ 38.3 cm. Tempera on copper. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gift of Mrs William Thomas Tonner, 1964-110-1.

PLATE 6 The Angel Appearing to Zacharias (1799 – 1800). 26.7 £ 38.1 cm. Tempera, glue, pen and ink on canvas. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

PLATE 7 The Flight into Egypt (1799). 27.2 £ 38.3 cm. Tempera, pen and ink on canvas. Collection of Robert N. Essick: Copyright q 2017 William Blake Archive. Used with permission.

PLATE 8 The Baptism of Christ (c.1803). 31.3 £ 34.4 cm. Pencil, pen, ink and watercolour on paper. Ashmolean Museum, WA1962.17.57. Image q Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford.

PLATE 9 The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins (c.1825). 42.2 £ 35.2 cm. Watercolour with pen and ink on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

PLATE 10 Christ Raising the Son of the Widow of Nain (c.1803 – 5). 36.6 £ 33.1 cm. Watercolour on paper. Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Bequest of Charles J. Rosenbloom, 74.7.34.

PLATE 11 The Raising of Lazarus (c.1805). 40.7 £ 29.6 cm. Watercolour, pen and ink on paper. Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums Collections.

PLATE 12 Christ Accepting the Office of Redeemer (illustration to Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’) (1808). 49.6 £ 39.3 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, museum purchase with funds donated by contribution, 90.94. Pen and watercolour on paper. Photograph q 2018 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

PLATE 13 The Archangel Michael Foretelling the Crucifixion, illustration for Paradise Lost (begun 1822). 50.2 £ 38.5 cm. Indian ink, grey wash and watercolour on paper. q The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

PLATE 14 The Day of Judgment, from The Grave (1805). 27.0 £ 22.2 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over pencil on paper. Private collector, courtesy of Sotheby’s.

PLATE 15 A Vision of the Last Judgement (1806). 49.5 £ 39 cm. Pen and watercolour over pencil on paper. q CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections.

PLATE 16 Christ Blessing (c.1810). 76.5 £ 63.5 cm. Tempera on canvas. Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop, 1943.180. Photo: Imaging Department q President and Fellows of Harvard College.

PLATE 17 An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man (1811?). 151.8 £ 120.9 cm. Tempera on canvas. q The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

PLATE 18 Jerusalem 76 (1804 – 20). 22.5 £ 16.2 cm. Relief etching, with pen and black ink, watercolour and gold on paper. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT.

PLATE 19 William Blake and Catherine Blake(?), Christian Before the Cross, illustration to Pilgrim’s Progress (1824–7). 17.7 £ 12.5 cm. Pencil, pen and watercolour on paper. Private collector; image courtesy of Sotheby’s.

PLATE 20 Dante Adoring Christ, illustration to The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri (Paradiso XIV, 97 – 111) (1824 – 7). 52.7 £ 37.2 cm. Pen and ink and watercolour over black chalk, with touches of gum. National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne.