Facsimile or Forgery? An Examination of America, Plates 4 and 9, Copy B

Joseph Viscomi *

 

In 1927 the copy of Blake’s America we now know as copy L was sold as a “facsimile reprint” for £4, though it is quite genuine. [1] It is not unheard of for an original work of art to be sold as a facsimile, but it is certainly more common for a facsimile to be sold as an original. The authenticity of plates 4 and 9 of America copy B, in the Pierpont Morgan Library, has never been doubted in print. But in fact neither one is an original impression. Although both are facsimiles photomechanically reproduced on wove paper, very little about either image appears suspicious. Indeed, both are reproduced in The Blake Collection of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne. [2] The true technical and historical origins of plates 4 and 9 are not easily identified. What information we have is supplied only from the plate measurements and foliation, the binding, and the inscription on the front flyleaf of copy B. From these few facts, and with much caution, we can begin to speculate about who executed the plates, when, how, and why.

 

Plate Measurements

Plates 4 and 9 (illus. 1, 2) are printed on the same paper, the feel, weight, and texture of which are, from the verso, noticeably different from the other sheets in the book. The paper—which called to mind Murillo, an etching paper I had printed on before—and not the image, made me suspicious enough to check some measurements. [3] As in most copies of America, the last four lines of plate 4 have been masked out. Unlike all other copies, however, the bottom platemark is only 2.4 cm. from Orc’s foot, instead of the usual 4.1 cm. If this bottom platemark were caused by the material used to mask out the four lines, then, because 2.4 cm. is not wide enough, half of line 3 and all of line 4 would have printed. If this were the platemark of an authentic impression, then Blake’s plate had been cut in about the middle of the third line, a possibility not yet to be ruled out since the plate could have been pulled posthumously and there is precedent for such plate tampering. [4] To make sure I was not looking at a late impression or posthumous pull, I also checked the distance in plate 4 from the top platemark to Orc’s toe: 19.5 cm. in copies A and L, but 20.4 cm. in copy B. In plate 9, the distance from the top platemark to the first line is 11.6 cm. in copy L, but 12.0 cm. in copy B; from the bottom of the text to the bottom platemark is 8.4 cm. in copies A and L, but 9.15 cm. in copy B. Because the relation of image to platemark did not check out, I measured the distance between parts within the image. For example, line 4 of plate 4 is 12.6 cm. long in copies A and L, but 13.0 cm. in copy B. Line 7 of plate 9 is 11.5 cm. long in copies A and L, but 11.9 in copy B. [5] More revealing than incorrect measurements within the image and between image and platemarks, however, are the plate measurements themselves. Plate 4 of copy B is 22.9 x 16.9 cm. vs. 23.8 x 16.6 cm., and plate 9 of copy B is 24.9 x 17.5 cm. vs. 23.5 x 16.8 cm. [6] These and other differences are too great to have been the result of one paper shrinking less than the others. Damp printing paper shrinks only 1 to 2.5 % of the sheet size, [7] which could not, for example, account for the 1.4 cm. difference between the length of plate 9 of copy B (24.9 cm.) and of copy A (23.5 cm.).

Except for the platemarks, plates 4 and 9 are free of the embossment that is characteristic of a relief etching, or a process block. Instead, the ink lies flat on the paper, which is characteristic of lithography. The platemarks are themselves suspicious, as I’ll explain later, and do not positively identify the kind of lithography used. But whether these impressions were pulled from stone or metal plates, whether produced from a transfer or directly from a reverse negative, one thing is certain: they are photolithographs. The proportion of the parts to each other is correct, which indicates the work of a camera. But compared to the originals, the overall dimensions are slightly distorted, or elongated, which indicates either the slight distortion in the negative caused by the camera lens or in the contact between the transfer paper and the stone. In any event, with a photomechanically reproduced image, a good solid black ink (and not the thinner greyish black of tonal lithography), an impression that has been touched up in black water color (like the other prints in copy B), and platemarks, it is little wonder that these two plates have escaped detection.

 

Plate Numbers

America copy B was stabbed through two different sets of three holes. Plates 4 and 9, however, have no stab holes, though both plates are numbered. Copy B has two sets of numbers: 1-16 and 1-18. Both sets are in pencil and start on plate 1, and neither set is by Blake or C.H. Tatham, the first owner of copy B. [8] Numbers 1-16 are written just below the platemark on the left hand side; numbers 1-18 are written at the top right corner of the leaf. Plates 4 and 9 are the two plates not in the 1-16 sequence, which indicates that 1-16 is the set of numbers first given to the plates. [9] Plates 4 and 9 are numbered in set II, and just below “4” and “9” is a “7”. [10] That plates 4 and 9 are not included in the first set of numbers, and that neither sheet has stab holes, suggest that copy B had for a time only sixteen plates to number and stitch.

 

Binding

America was “splendidly bound in Citron morocco” when it sold in 1878 with the library of A.G. Dew-Smith at Sotheby’s for £16.5 (lot 247) to John Pearson. According to the Sotheby catalogue, copy B sold in 1874, unbound, for £18. Being bound by 1878 would seem to imply that the facsimiles were executed before this date, but this is not necessarily the case, because plates 4 and 9 are not in the binding but are tipped in. They are glued to plates 5 and 10, are without gilding, and are slightly lower than the rest of the pages, noticeable only when looking along the foreedge. The facsimiles enter after, not before, the binding. [11]

The tipping-in of plates 4 and 9 indicates that one of the owners after 1878 could also have been responsible for their execution and insertion. Three of these owners had access to facsimilists and to models, and had reason enough to complete an incomplete copy. John Pearson, the bookseller, published the excellent Jerusalem facsimiles with 100 photolithographs in 1877, and was William Muir’s first agent, issuing four of Muir’s Blake facsimiles in 1884-85. Bernard Quaritch, who owned the book in 1890, was Muir’s agent in 1885-94, and issued a series of facsimiles by William Griggs from his own and other collections, including Poetical Sketches (1890) and The Book of Ahania (1892). He also owned another copy of America (R), which he lent Muir for his 1887 facsimile. Bernard Macgeorge, who owned the copy from 1892 to 1924, also knew Muir; Macgeorge lent Muir Europe copy A, which was then missing five plates, and which were “all supplied in facsimile by Muir.” [12] Macgeorge also owned Songs copy A, which entered the British Museum in 1927 [13] with photolithographs of plates 51, 52, 53, and b.

 

The Inscription

Before eliminating suspects, we must examine a pencil in­scription on the front flyleaf:

Lowndes [pens?] 18 designs [14]

There are 2 more in some copies

but I believe these to be a supplementary number

& that the book is perfect & is only 18

Assuming “is only 18” refers back to “designs” and not to £18, the price the 1878 Sotheby catalogue says it sold for in 1874, the inscription can still be read in one of two ways, depending on whether “designs” refers to pictures or pages. In the Prospectus, Blake uses the word “design” to mean picture, not plate or page. [15] America, minus plates 4 and 9, would still have eighteen designs if, as Blake himself did with the Marriage, one were to separately count the top and bottom pictures on two plates as separate designs. By counting in this way, there would, indeed, be “some copies” with “2 more” designs, whereas in fact there are no copies with twenty plates. If, on the other hand, “designs” is referring to pages, then the inscription is referring to a copy in which the two facsimiles have already been inserted, a copy, in other words, with eighteen plates. In this second interpretation, the statement “There are 2 more in some copies” is probably a reference to Gilchrist’s description of America as “a folio of 20 pages.” [16]

The inscription is written on a flyleaf, thus written after the book is bound. [17] The insertion of plates 4 and 9 also follows the binding, but may precede or follow the inscription. There are only two possible combinations of these three bibliographical facts: binding, inscription, insertion, or binding, insertion, inscription. If the inscription precedes the insertion, the inscription refers to a copy that still has only sixteen plates. If the inscription succeeds the insertion, the inscription refers to a book with eighteen plates. Neither combination rules out the possibility of the inscription and/or insertion occurring after 1878—unless we can date the inscription.

The Sotheby catalogue entry for the 29 January 1878 auction and a comparison of the numbers in set II with those in the inscription make me believe that the inscription followed the insertion of the plates. The catalogue entry describes copy B as:

The cataloguer’s “two leaves said to be wanting” seems to refer to the assertion in the inscription that “There are 2 more in some copies.” If so, the inscription was already written by 1878. And his “but Blake’s original prospectus says” clearly implies that two leaves are not wanting, that this copy of America has 18 plates, the number that the prospectus says it should. The idea that the cataloguer is counting pages rather than illustrations is supported by internal evidence. As I mentioned, the two sets of plate-numbering are by different hands, but the “8” in the inscription—a very distinct δ—is, I believe, the same “8” in numbers “8” and “18” of the second set of plate-numberings.

If the inscription is pre-1878 and is written by the same person who renumbered the plates, then the two facsimiles must have entered America copy B between 1874, when it is reported to have been unbound, and January 1878, by which time it was bound and in Dew-Smith’s library. Who bought copy B in 1874 is unknown; it may or may not have been Dew-Smith. Thus plates 4 and 9 could have been inserted either before or during Dew-Smith’s ownership. [18] In the first case, someone other than Dew-Smith purchased copy B in 1874, had it bound, inserted plates 4 and 9, and, possibly, even wrote the inscription and renumbered the plates. In the second case, Dew-Smith bought the volume either bound with sixteen plates, or unbound in 1874 and had it bound, only to find out later that it was missing plates 4 and 9. He had the two plates made, inserted them, and described his copy as perfect. But it is also possible that Dew-Smith wrote the inscription and renumbered the pages in good faith, having bought a bound volume with plates 4 and 9 already inserted.

 

Reproductive Process Used to Make Plates 4 and 9

In the 1870s, photolithographs could be printed from fine-grained limestones and from specially grained zinc plates. To use stone, the negative of the copy to be reproduced is placed in contact with paper coated with a light-sensitive gelatine film. The areas exposed to light become insoluble in water, so that when the sheet is covered with a transfer ink and soaked in a bath of water, all the soluble (unexposed) gelatine lifts off the paper, leaving only the inked image ready to be transferred (counterproofed) onto the prepared stone. To use zinc plates instead of stone, a reverse negative is exposed directly on a sensitized zinc plate, which, because it eliminates the intermediate step of transferring the image, is “much more likely” to retain “the finer qualities” of the original. [19] The fine details of plates 4 and 9, including subtle traces of ink along the sides of the text, suggest—as do the platemarks—that these two prints were pulled from zinc plates. Lithography is a planographic method which, at least theoretically, should not leave platemarks. But because a press and a scraper bar are used, printing with too much pressure and with a bar wider than the plate will emboss the shape of the stone or metal plate into the print. The platemarks on plates 4 and 9 reveal the even edges of a metal plate, not the irregular edge of stone. But, as I mentioned, these marks are suspicious.

Robert N. Essick has in his collection what are possibly the proofs of plates 4 and 9 (illus 3, 4). His two impressions were printed on larger sheets (40.3 x 28.5 cm. for plate 4, and 44.5 x 28.5 cm. for plate 9, vs. 36.3 x 26.1 cm.), on different paper (“thin, hard, ivory colored, machine made”), [20] and in a dull black ink. Neither of his prints has any trace of side platemarks, while the side platemarks are the ones most noticeable in plates 4 and 9 of copy B. In plate 4, the bottom, top, and left platemarks are sharply defined, while the right side is slightly beveled. In plate 9, the plate lines forming the two bottom corners and top right corner intersect; the bottom platemark, for example, is 18.5 cm. long, while the distance between the platemarks is only 17.5 cm. In Essick’s plate 9, this bottom platemark is “about 20 cm. long.” [21] This slight crossing of plate lines in copy B and the fact that the side platemarks are heavier while altogether absent in Essick’s two prints mean that the side platemarks in plates 4 and 9 of copy B are faked.

Such platemarks can be made with a stylus along a metal ruler with a bevel, or along a metal plate. The top and bottom platemarks, however, appear to have been produced by a metal plate in the process of printing, and they are the same distance from the image in Essick’s two prints as they are in copy B. Thus, plates 4 and 9 are either printed from zinc plates, or the same blank metal plates are registered exactly on both sets of impressions. [22] Pulling a lithograph face down on a blank metal plate through a rolling press would give platemarks, but such a trick doesn’t explain why side platemarks are absent in Essick’s two prints, or how platemarks can intersect, or why the length of a platemark from the same plate is different in two impressions. Perhaps plates 4 and 9 were printed on a litho press using scraper bars of two different sizes, neither of which was as wide as the plates, and thus not able to force paper over the sides, but which came onto and off the plates with enough pressure to catch the top and bottom edges. The missing side platemarks, therefore, had to be added with a stylus. In any event, because lithographs from zinc and stone would ordinarily have been printed without platemarks, the platemarks, however they were made, were made to deceive, to make a flat image appear slightly embossed like a relief etching. The intention to deceive makes plates 4 and 9 forgeries, not facsimiles.

The Original Prints Reproduced

For there to be two photomechanically reproduced forgeries, two authentic prints must have been photographed. The bottom four lines of plate 4 (illus. 5) are missing in the fake impression, which means its model is missing these four lines, due to Blake having masked them when printing the plate.And because photolithographs of the period could reproduce line drawings or designs only in pure black and white (half-tone screens not yet having been perfected[23]), the two authentic prints photographed must have been uncolored. In addition to there being requisites for the models, both fake prints also have distinguishing, albeit, more subtle, marks. Plate 4 has an extra line on the lower right side of the leaf underneath the text, ink splatters on the right side of the tree, opposite line 8, and at the end of the last word, “foretold”; plate 9 is missing the two birds flying under the lowest tree branch, has an ink trail along the left of the tree trunk, a top branch that is lightly extended to the leaves, and ink splatters along the right side of the plate and along the bottom just under the grass.

Of the seven monochrome copies with a masked plate 4, America (F), in the British Museum since 1859, comes closest to having these peculiar markings (illus. 6). [24] Plate 4 (F) has both sets of ink splatters and an ink trace that could have been transformed into an extra leaf line, and the two birds in plate 9 are very faint. On the other hand, plate 9 (F) has no ink trail, no completion of the top branch, and no ink splatters along the right side of the text. But just as the ink stain at the bottom of plate 9 (F), the “JY 59” (illus. 7) museum accession number (1859), and the birds could have been rubbed off the plate so that they wouldn’t show in an impression, the light marks completing the branch in plate 9 (B) could have been added, and the ink traces accidentally printed from the litho plate itself, possibly the result of it not being thoroughly sponged during inking. Because an image on stone or zinc could be altered in such subtle ways, absolute verification may not be possible, but it does seem probable that plates 4 and 9 of copy F were the prints photographed by or for the forger.

Conclusion

We do not know for sure who is responsible for executing and inserting the two forgeries into America copy B. The person who wrote the inscription and renumbered the plates is not necessarily the person who inserted the two prints. The inscription may be the hand of an honest owner warding off Gilchrist’s implication that his copy with only “18 designs” was incomplete. But, according to my reading of the evidence—and other readings may be possible—we do know when (between 1874 and 1878), how (photolithography), where (London), the probable model (F), and, I believe, why. Plates 4 and 9 are not facsimiles; they are not taken from a lost facsimile edition of America made in the 1870s. In short, they are not like Trianon Press facsimilies doctored up to fool the unsuspecting eye. Plates 4 and 9 were executed from the beginning with the intention to pass as originals and thereby secretly complete an otherwise incomplete copy. The plates have done well at both. Many professional bibliographers and bibliophiles have examined this copy of America. To their credit, plates 4 and 9 are not only extremely good forgeries, but, and I think this is equally important, as pages in a bound volume, they appear innocent by association. Had plates 4 and 9 been separate prints, it is more likely they would have been detected long ago. As it is, no other illuminated book, bound or loose, is known to contain a facsimile. Do we need to look harder? “Let the collector of prints be cautioned . . . to beware of buying copies for originals. Most of the works of the capital masters have been copied, and many of them so well, that if a person be not versed in prints, he may easily be deceived” (William Gilpin, An Essay on Prints, 4th ed., 1792).

 

ILLUSTRATIONS

 

1.  America, copy B, plate 4.  Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, Thorne Collection.

2.  America, copy B, plate 9.  Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, Thorne Collection.

3.  America, plate 3, facsimile.  Robert N. Essick Collection.

4.  America, plate 9, facsimile.  Robert N. Essick Collection.

5.  America, copy A, plate 4.  Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, Thorne Collection.

6.  America, copy F, plate 4.  British Museum.

7.  America, copy F, plate 9.  British Museum.