The Myth of Commissioned Illuminated Books: George Romney, Isaac D’Israeli, and “ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY designs…of Blake’s”
Joseph
Viscomi
I
On 24 July 1835, Isaac D’Israeli, author of the multi-volumed
Curiosities of Literature (1791-1834),
wrote T. F. Dibdin, the bibliographer, about his “ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY designs
. . . of Blake’s” (Reminiscences 788;
Bentley, Blake Records 243, hereafter cited as BR). D’Israeli’s
collection consisted of The Book of Thel copy A, The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy D,
Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy
F, America a Prophecy copy A, Songs
of Innocence and of Experience copy A, Europe
a Prophecy copy A, The Book of Urizen copy B, and one
separate plate, either “A Dream of Thiralatha” copy B, “The Accusers” copy H,
or “Joseph Arimathea Preaching” copy H (Bentley, Blake Books 157, hereafter cited as BB; all references to plate numbers follow the order established in
Bentley’s bibliography). The seven books made D’Israeli’s illuminated book
collection one of the most comprehensive of its day—and one of the most
impressive, for they are all large folio copies printed on one side of the
leaf. As we shall see, they share other bibliographical details that suggest they
were printed at the same time, possibly in early 1795, which in turn suggests
the possibility of their being commissioned as a set. None has a history before
1835, which means that theoretically each could have been purchased either
directly from Blake, as Keynes and Bindman ascertain (Census xviii; Blake as Artist
96), or from other collectors. The ideas, however, that D’Israeli visited
“Blake as early as 1794 [date of the paper used in these volumes], and bought a
wide selection of Illuminated Books,” and even that he was “a member of the
Joseph Johnson circle” in the early 1790s (Bindman, Blake as Artist 96), are based on nothing more substantial than his
having been a contemporary of Blake’s and having owned illuminated books. Even
Keynes found the association between Blake and D’Israeli “curious, for
[D’Israeli] made no reference to Blake in his writings. . .” (Census xviii). One purpose of this essay
is to question the assumption that D’Israeli was an early Blake patron and
collector, and to suggest that he probably purchased all his books late and
most of them from the collection of George Romney, whom a recent discovery
shows to have been both a collector and a patron. Another and more significant
purpose is to suggest that Romney purchased his books from stock, instead of
specifically commissioning them, and that what was true of Romney was true of
nearly all owners of illuminated books, which is to say that Romney’s and
D’Israeli’s copies, and copies of illuminated books in general, were not, as is generally assumed, produced
“one by one” (Grant 281) and “on demand” (Essick, “Materials” 857), “as [Blake]
got commissions” (Davids and Petrillo 154), or “with a particular customer in
mind” (Erdman, Poetry and Prose 786).
At
first sight, the relation between Romney and Blake is marked by a lack of
documents similar to that marking the relation between Blake and D’Israeli;
there are no letters, diary entries, and, until now, no known works by either
artist in the collection of the other. The absence of a documented biographical
connection, of course, does not preclude aesthetic influence, and may simply
be because Romney stopped keeping his diary in 1795, and because from 1795
to the
summer of 1799, when Romney left London mentally debilitated, there are only
five Blake letters extant (three to Cumberland, two to Trusler), and no letter
from the 1780s. Indeed, circumstantial evidence and aesthetic similarities
suggest very strongly that they met, probably in the early 1780s through their
mutual friend John Flaxman, who was ever “anxious to recommend [Blake] and his
productions to the patrons of the Arts . . .” (Bentley, BR 26, Smith). [1] Some of these productions
Flaxman apparently showed “Mr/: Romney,” who thought Blake’s “historical drawings
rank
with those of MI/:
Angelo” (BR 27-28). Flaxman also “recommended more than one friend to take copies”
of illuminated books (Gilchrist 1: 124). Of Flaxman’s friends, though, only “a
Mr.
Thomas,” who purchased Songs copy Q for 10 pounds around 1805, has been
identified conclusively. [2] To this list of friends,
however, we can now add Romney, for a previously unexamined auction catalogue
from 1834
reveals that he had purchased
at least
four illuminated books (or five distinct volumes), all of which were described
as folio.
The
books were Visions of the Daughters of
Albion, The Book of Urizen, America a Prophecy, and “Blake’s two volumes,” which, as I will show, were probably Songs of lnnocence and Songs of Experience. They were auctioned
in 1834, two years after the death of his only son, Rev. John Romney, but would
have had to have been produced by 1799, the date of Romney’s departure from
London. Romney’s owning a set of illuminated books proves that his admiration
was both genuine and not limited to the early drawings or to the 1780s, and
that Flaxman, assuming he played agent, merits his reputation for being
committed to Blake. More significant than Romney’s owning illuminated books,
however, are the illuminated books he owned, for if I have correctly identified
the copies, then his collection alters the history of other collections,
specifically D’Israeli’s, and also reveals how tenuous and speculative our
reasoning is when determining early provenance and identifying contemporary
patrons. More important still is the meaning of the visual and technical
coherence of these copies and the overt differences of each copy from nearly
all those of its kind produced before or after. The existence of a uniform set
of various titles raises important questions about how illuminated books were
produced and why.
II
William Hayley
met Romney in Eartham, Sussex, in 1777; he remained a close life-long friend
and wrote the first biography, The Life of . . . Romney (1809). He
employed Blake in 1803-04 to locate the painter’s works, many of which Blake
examined in October of 1803 at Saunders’, Romney’s frame maker, “who has now
in his possession all Mr. Romney’s pictures that remained after the sale
at
Hampstead” (Keynes, Blake, Complete
Writings 831; hereafter cited as
K). Held in 1801, a year before the painter’s death, the “Hampstead sale” was
an auction of Romney’s furniture and large collection of antique busts. [3] It
was not until 1805 and 1807 that Romney’s extensive private art collection
and
his
paintings and drawings were auctioned. On 22 and 23 May 1805, the
“Intire and Genuine collection of Prints, Books of Prints, and Drawings of
George Romney, Esq., Historical and Portrait Painter, deceased,” was auctioned
by “Mr. T. Philipe, at his Rooms, Warwick Street, Golden Square, adjoining the
Chapel” (YCBA Sales Cat. 649). This collection consisted of thousands of prints
and drawings of the Italian, Dutch, Flemish, French, and other schools, but
contained no original works of Romney’s. [4] Two
years later, on 27 April 1807, at Christie’s, Romney’s own paintings and drawings
were
auctioned,
but sold for
ridiculously low prices, with the best
of
them being bought in by John Romney. [5]
No
Blake work was listed in either sale, but probably four illuminated books (or
five separate volumes) were sold at Christie’s on 9-10 May 1834, when the
“Collection of Pictures, Reserved after the Death of that Celebrated and
elegant Painter Romney” were again put up for auction. [6] This
auction consisted of the original works bought back in 1807 (listed as lots 72-92
of the second
day of the 1834 sale), and works from Romney’s library
and art collection, which sold the first day of the 1834 sale and included
“fine Heads by Rembrandt, Vandyke and Dobson; a pair of spirited sketches by
Rubens, copies from Titian . . . the works of Montfaucon, Picart, The Galleries
of Dusseldorf and Crozat, and other Books of Prints and Works of Art” (YCBA
Sales Cat. 96). The art collection and library, which in addition to Picart,
Montfaucon, and Crozat included the most important reference works of the day,
such as Basan, Mengs, Webb, Shee, Strutt, Pilkington, Boydell, Richardson,
Caylus, and DePiles, had been shipped in two parts to Whitestock Hall, the
family home in Kendal, Westmoreland, in 1799, when John Romney came to retrieve
his father, and then in 1803, when Saunders packed up Romney’s works and “sent
a great part of them to the North” (K 832). The illuminated books, it appears,
were among the works “reserved” after the painter’s death and kept in the
family library at Kendal, and probably not among the purchases of John Romney.
Blake’s dealings with the son were on Hayley’s behalf and apparently through
the mail. [7]
The
illuminated books sold as lot 79, “Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of
Albion—Coloured”; lot 83, “Blake’s America, and Blake’s Urizen—coloured”; and
lot 86x, “Blake’s two volumes.” Visions sold
for 11 shillings to “Evans, “ probably the dealer R. H. Evans; America and Urizen sold for £1.4, also to Evans; and the “two volumes” sold for
18 shillings to Tiffin, possibly Walter E. Tiffin, “An Old-Established
Printseller.” [8] Lot 86x was
handwritten in the same brown ink as the prices, suggesting, perhaps, that the
two volumes were overlooked during cataloging. Like lots 79 and 83, lot 86x was
listed among the “Folio” books, which is probably an accurate description of
size, since the books could also have been listed as octavo or quarto, the
other book categories. Folio, of course, indicates a printing format, but was
here used in its general sense of a book with page height of 30 cm or more.
“Folio” does not help us to identify the specific copies of Visions or America, since all copies of these books (as well as of Europe) were folio and were so listed in both Blake’s 1793 prospectus (K
207-08) and his 1818 list to Dawson Turner (K 867). But it may help us to
identify the copy of Urizen, which Blake had listed (along with Thel,
Marriage, and Milton) as quarto.
There are eight copies of Urizen, counting copy E, which is untraced, and
copy J, which was recently rediscovered by Detlef Dörrbecker (Dörrbecker 60n1).
Of these, only two copies (A and G) have known histories that preclude their
consideration. Copy G was printed in 1815, after Romney’s death (1802), and
copy A was probably “acquired by the 1st Baron Dimsdale (1712-1800)” and stayed
in his family till 1956 (BB 180).
These two copies are also precluded by size, as are all but one of the other copies, for they are all less than 30 cm
in height and probably would have been described by a cataloger as quarto. Only
copy B, the copy owned by D’Israeli, is folio: 37.4 x 27.1 cm. This copy is
different from copies A, C-F, and J, in another important respect. Though it
is recorded as being color printed in brown and green inks like other copies
of Urizen (BB 168), it is neither color printed nor in brown ink. Except for
plate 2, which was printed in green, the ink is light black; its brownish tint
in the text is due primarily to the thin ink layer on off-white paper (see n.
12), something a magnifying glass and a comparison with the illustrations
(particularly the solid relief areas) clearly reveal. It appears color printed
at first glance because the black color on impressions is opaque and a few
impressions have colors that are thick and slightly reticulated. But the colors
were not printed from the shallows, as they were in the other copies of Urizen, and the opaque colors that
appear to have been printed from the relief areas were actually applied to the
impressions, the technique used to produce deep blacks in America copy A and many other copies of illuminated books (Viscomi,
“Recreating Blake” 10-11n16). [9] The differences in
size
and printing style suggest
that Urizen copy B was printed apart from and, as will be argued in part
IV, after copies A, C-F, and J.
The copy of Urizen
in the Romney auction was sold with a copy of America. No other collector at this time is known to have owned
both Urizen and America—no collector
other than D’Israeli, whose America copy
A was one of four colored copies, a format which fits the rudimentary
description of lot 83: “Blake’s America, and Blake’s Urizen - coloured. “ The
other three colored copies are copies K, M, and O. [10] Copy
O cannot be considered since it was printed for Linnell in 1819. To my eye the
rich palette of copy
M suggests a date of production later
than its Hayes & Wise 1799 watermark. But even if copy M were produced in
1799, it is unlikely to have been Romney’s copy, since by then he was by all
accounts not
much interested in art or anything else, having suffered a second stroke and
“his increasing weakness of body, and mind, afford[ing] only a gloomy prospect
for the residue of his life” (Hayley, in Chamberlain 223).
Of the remaining
two copies, A and K, it seems more likely that Romney would have purchased—or
had produced specially for him—the
former, since copy K seems certainly to have been printed in 1793-94 along with
copies C-I, L, and R, which, like copy K, were printed in the same style using
the same materials: undated E & P paper of similar size, printed on both
sides
of the leaf, in the same greenish- and bluish-black inks. [11] Copy K’s recto-verso printing dates it no
later than 1794, when Blake appears to have stopped printing in this style and
began printing on rectos only (see part IV). America copy A, on the other hand, was produced in the later
printing style, the same as Urizen copy
B, and both were printed on the same size paper (approximately 38 x 27 cm) and,
most significantly, in the same light black ink. [12] Copy A is also different in a way that may
suggest a special production: it is the only copy of America produced (besides copy O for Linnell in 1821) with the last
four lines of plate 4 unmasked. [13]
The
later printing style and paper size were also used for D’Israeli’s copies
of Thel (F), Visions (F), Marriage (D), Songs (A), and Europe (A). [14] The sharing of such specific stylistic
features as size, inks, and format—particularly since America was usually monochrome, Thel, Marriage, and Urizen were always
quarto, and Songs, with rare exceptions (copies R, V, and
W), was always octavo—suggests that these copies were printed around the same
time as a coherent set. With the exception of Visions and Thel, whose
plate numbers were etched in relief and are part of the design, these volumes
were numbered in pen by Blake, whereas early copies of Songs, America, and Marriage
were not, and this too suggests a coherent set. That one of the books from
this set (Urizen copy B) appears to have been owned by Romney
suggests that the copy of America with
which it sold was copy A rather than the earlier and very differently formatted
copy K, which was probably one of the copies of America that Blake advertised in the 1793 prospectus as
constituting the “numerous great works now in hand” (K 208). [15] Like Urizen
copy B, America copy A appears
to have been printed after the book’s initial printing run (C-I, K-L, and R),
and
to match the style of other books rather than other copies of America.
Thus, it seems reasonable to
propose that lot 79, “Blake’s Visions of the Daughters of Albion—coloured,”
may have been copy F, the copy acquired by
D’Israeli by 1835. All 18 known copies of Visions,
counting untraced copy Q and the Munich copy recently rediscovered by
Detlef Dörrbecker (Dörrbecker 61n8), were printed folio and hand colored. It
appears that possibly 15 of these were printed by 1800 and that the early
provenance of 10, including copy F, is unknown. But of these 10 copies, only
F,
G, and the Munich copy were printed on one side of the leaf, the format of Urizen copy B and America copy A. The other seven were printed
recto-verso, like the early copies of America, on either undated Whatman paper in
light brown or yellow ink, or undated E & P paper in green ink. Like Urizen copy B and America copy A, and the other books in D’Israeli’s
1835 collection, Visions copy G was painted in water colors; it was
also printed in the light brownish-black ink of America copies A and B and Urizen
copy B, whereas Visions copy F and the Munich copy were color printed. But while the early
history of Visions copy G is not clear, the later history is;
it belonged to D’Israeli’s friend Dibdin and was trimmed and bound with Thel copy J, possibly around 1816, the date of the third flyleaf (BB 128), though probably not by Dibdin. [16] While
this may seem to suggest the possibility of Visions
copy G as Romney’s copy and
Dibdin as its purchaser, the fact that it was professionally bound with Thel probably long before 1834 makes
that very unlikely, since lot 79 clearly sold as one item; it is also unlikely
since, as will become clear, Dibdin appears not to have acquired it or Thel till after 1836.
The Munich
copy of Visions
is recorded as having entered the
Royal collection by “1840/41” along with a copy of The Song of Los (Dörrbecker 61n8), and thus was not purchased
directly from the 1834 auction. It cannot be ruled out, though, because there
could have been an intermediate owner, one who also owned a copy of The Song of Los. It does, however, seem less likely than copy F, which the
following section reveals was probably not in D’Israeli’s collection in 1824,
when the collection was first described, but entered it as part of a set of
books (including copies of America and
Urizen) by 1835. Visions copy
F
is beautifully color printed, which may explain why lot 79 sold for 11 shillings. At one shilling per plate, this volume cost
a good deal more than the other books: 25 shillings for 46 impressions of America and
Urizen, and 18 shillings for “two volumes” that may represent 50 impressions. The
higher price per impression may reflect more competition than the other volumes
(Visions was the first of the books
sold), which in turn may reflect a particularly splendid copy. Of all the
copies of Visions produced in the
1790s, and of all the illuminated
books in the auction (assuming we’ve correctly identified the copies), the
color-printed Visions copy F,
especially with its stunning frontispiece, is far and away the most painterly and materially substantial
(illus. 3). A few years before the
Romney auction, Smith had noted the same about works printed in this technique:
“Blake’s coloured plates have more effect than others where gum has been used,”
for “they are coloured . . . with a degree of splendour and force, as almost
to
resemble sketches in oil colours” (BR 473,
472). Smith based his assertions
“upon those beautiful specimens [the Large
and Small Book of Designs] . .
. coloured purposely for . . . Ozias
Humphry” (BR 473). Smith’s opinion, that the opaque colors
characteristic of color printing are more “beautiful” than the transparent
tints characteristic of water color drawings, which he equates with their
binder, gum arabic, reflects the then fashionable taste for water colors in
“imitation of the effect of oil painting . . . the explicit desirability of [which was] the bellwether
of a new consciousness of the changing potential of watercolor art” (Cohn 11). [17] Given
the circumstantial evidence regarding D’Israeli’s ownership of lot 83 and the higher price per print of lot
79, it seems probable that Romney’s Visions was copy F, the copy later owned by D’Israeli.
D’Israeli’s
collection deserves a closer look. In addition to Urizen copy B, America copy A, and Visions copy F, it included Songs copy A, Europe copy A, Thel copy F, and Marriage copy D, all
folio. Could any two, or combination, of the last four account for lot 86x, “Blake’s two volumes”? At first glance,
it seems unlikely that the two unidentified volumes could refer to Songs of Innocence and of Experience, not
only because Songs is a combined work with a unifying
titlepage, but also because nearly all copies are octavo. But Songs copies A, R, V, and possibly W
before trimming, were, in fact, printed on folio leaves, and the first two of
these copies were printed during Romney’s lifetime. Both copies A and R were
printed on “I TAYLOR 1794” paper, the
former approximately 38 x 27 cm, and
the latter 30 x 22 cm (which may
represent trimming by Linnell’s binder), and were initially made up of Innocence and Experience plates stabbed as two separate but complementary
volumes. Both copies lack plate 1, the combined titlepage. [18] Copy R, though, remained in Blake’s
possession until it was purchased in 1819
by Linnell. It seems fairly certain, then, that if the “two volumes” were Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, they were the
volumes that now constitute Songs copy A, which is folio, initially bound and
numbered as two volumes, and has no combined titlepage to suggest otherwise.
That the largest number of impressions sold for the least money may be
explained by the size of the images, which are only one quarter the size of the
18 America plates and one half the
size of the 28 Urizen plates, which
together sold for a mere six shillings more. And, as mentioned, unlike Visions copy F, the images of Songs copy A, Urizen copy B, and America copy
A were not color printed. They look more like water color drawings than
paintings.
Perhaps Songs were designated so briefly
(“Blake’s two volumes”) because Blake’s name alone suggested Innocence and Experience, his best known works, particularly to an audience
familiar with Smith’s Nollekens and His
Times (1828) or Cunningham’s Lives (1830).
In 1830, a monochrome copy of Songs (copy
BB) sold simply as “Blake’s Phantasies,” realizing two shillings more than lot
86x (Census 66). Or, more likely, the
auction description may be brief simply because the people in the hall would
see and hear what the volumes were when the auctioneer held them up. [19] In any event, the idea that Romney owned Songs copy A challenges Keynes’
assertion that it was acquired by D’Israeli directly from Blake (Census 56). Bentley is more circumspect, stating that Songs copy A was
“Probably acquired” by D’Israeli, but certainly “Sold by [D’Israeli’s] son the
Earl of Beaconsfield at Sotheby’s, 20 March 1882” (BB 412).
Though right to question the
idea of a direct purchase from Blake, Bentley appears also to question the
purchase itself, which seems unnecessary
since without the 50 impressions of Songs
copy A (nearly a third of his
collection), D’Israeli could not have referred in 1835 to his “ONE HUNDRED AND
SIXTY DESIGNS . . . of Blake’s.” To make up this sum, D’Israeli had to have
owned either a 50-plate copy of Songs (as
opposed to the usual 54-plate copy) or Milton, and he (or his son) is known to have
owned the former but not the latter. [20] The question,
then,
is not whether D’Israeli
acquired Songs copy A, but from
whom and when. The evidence here suggests that he purchased it from (W. E.?)
Tiffin, who purchased it at the Romney auction in 9 May 1834, and not from
Blake. He acquired it, in other words, from a dealer a year or less before he
described his own collection on 24 July 1835.
That “Blake’s two volumes” were Songs
copy A, as initially bound, and
not a compilation of the other three D’Israeli books, Thel copy F, Europe copy A, and Marriage copy D, is
supported by two facts. First, these three works have different stab holes (BB 55-56), which means that they were
never bound in two. Could any two of the above have constituted “two volumes”?
Probably not any two, since Marriage copy D, was stabbed six times, a style Blake used only one other time,
for Thel copy O and Milton copy D, which were stabbed together for Mrs. Vine between 1815, the
date of the paper used in both books, and 1827 (BB 118). Marriage copy D, in other words, may have remained in
the studio in sheets long after it was produced, as did many other illuminated
books (see n. 26), and bound only when sold. Were Thel copy F and Europe copy A the “two volumes”? This too is
unlikely for it would mean that the “Blakean portfeuille” that D’Israeli had
already formed as early as 1824 would have consisted only of Songs and Marriage, which for reasons discussed below is very unlikely. This
portfolio, whose size and contents are not known, is generally assumed to have
contained the 160 designs of 1835 (BR 289n1).
I think this is mistaken; the evidence regarding Urizen copy B and America copy A already suggests that the earlier portfolio was much smaller.
Given Dibdin’s description of the 1824 portfolio, I suspect that it consisted
of only three illuminated books: Thel, Europe, and Marriage.
In The Library Companion, 1824, Dibdin
states:
My friend Mr. D’Israeli possesses the largest collection of any
individual of the very extraordinary drawings of Mr. Blake; and he loves his
classical friends to disport with them, beneath the lighted Argand lamp of his
drawing room, while soft music is heard upon the several corridors and recesses
of his enchanted staircase. Meanwhile the visitor turns over the contents of
the Blakean portefeuille. Angels, Devils, Giants, Dwarfs, Saints, Sinners,
Senators, and Chimney Sweeps, cut equally conspicuous figures. . . . (734n; BR 289)
Though
referred to as “drawings,” the works are no doubt hand-colored prints, the
term
“drawing” revealing the transparency of Blake’s innovative medium, a point made
by Smith. “The plates . . . were then printed in any tint that he wished, to
enable him or Mrs. Blake to colour the marginal figures up by hand in imitation
of drawings” (BR 460). [21]
D’Israeli
biographer James Ogden thinks the setting too imaginative, and says Dibdin “had
apparently not actually seen the collection” (44). The description’s list of
contraries, though, suggests otherwise. “Angels,” “Devils,” and “Giants” are
accurate descriptions of the verbal and visual imagery of both Europe a Prophecy, especially plate 8, and The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell. “Giant”
could also refer to “A Dream of Thiralatha” (B) (aka America pl. d), in which
a giant sleeps under a bent tree. “Dwarfs” may also refer to Europe, where on plate 15 a woman is
caught in a spiderweb, to the small interlinear figures of Marriage, or, more
likely, to the small and elf-like figures populating The Book of Thel. The
reference to “Saints” and “Sinners” is puzzling, though it could conceivably
be
to the pilgrim equipped like Bunyan’s Christian and the waiting assassin of Europe plate 4, or perhaps to “Joseph
of Arimathea Preaching,” where the prophet chastises the flock, or simply to
good
and evil figures in general, a variation of angels and devils. “Senators,”
which then referred to either a “counsellor, statesman; a leader in State or
Church” (OED), describes well Europe plate
14, where a batwinged papal figure lords it over the “Kings and Priests” on
Earth who had “copied . . . his brazen Book” (Europe pl. 14). “Chimney Sweeps,” which admittedly calls to mind Songs, may have been generated by its opposite, “Senators,” and meant to
refer to nothing more than the powerless underclass, as pictured in Europe plates 9 and 10: in the former
a mother
mourns the death of a child in front of a huge chimney. [22]
The works
described seem to be Europe, Thel, and Marriage, and perhaps a separate plate, copies of
which D’Israeli owned by 1835. Speculative as this is, it is probable that the
“Blakean portfeuille” contained multiple titles, but not a copy of Songs, which Dibdin would have recognized and presumably expounded upon
in more detail since he owned a copy of Innocence. The 1824 portfolio, then, may have
contained 54 designs. Had D’Israeli purchased his copies of Urizen (B), America (A), Visions (F), and Songs
(A) from the Romney sale (through
the print dealers Evans and Tiffin), he would have added 106 plates to the
collection for a total of 160 plates.
III
With 54 plates, D’Israeli’s “Blakean portefeuille” was certainly not “the largest collection of any individual of the very extraordinary drawings of Mr. Blake”—nor would it have been had it contained all “160 designs.” In 1824, Thomas Edwards, the brother of publisher Richard Edwards, owned the 537 large drawings of Night Thoughts, which he had offered for sale in 1821 for £300, and again in 1826 and 1828 for £50 (BB 646). Butts’ collection contained more illuminated prints and water color drawings than any other collector or patron (as opposed to publisher). Flaxman’s, with Songs copy O, Innocence copy D, and 116 designs for Gray’s Poems, was larger, as were Linnell’s and Cumberland’s illuminated book collections. [23] It was “curious” not only for D’Israeli not to have mentioned Blake in any of his writings (or for Blake, or any of Blake’s friends, not to have mentioned D’Israeli as a patron), but also for Dibdin not to have mentioned Linnell, Cumberland, Butts, Humphry, Edwards, Thomas, or Hanrott, Blake’s major patrons and collectors at that time, in either his Library Companion (1824) or Reminiscences (1836). Dibdin’s comments regarding the size of D’Israeli’s collection of 1824 are clearly those of a man with very limited knowledge of Blake’s friends and collectors, and, as will become evident, of the size and diversity of Blake’s canon. This is not surprising; according to the DNB, Dibdin’s reader “will find a great deal of gossip about books and printers, about book collectors and sales by auction; but for accurate information of any kind he will seek in vain.” [24]
Dibdin may have compared D’Israeli’s
collection to his own, which by the time of his death (1847) consisted of Thel copy J, Visions copy G, and unknown copies of Night Thoughts and Innocence. The 43-plate Night
Thoughts, which was one of Dibdin’s
favorite books, was acquired by 1836, but not necessarily before 1824. Dibdin’s
copy of Innocence was acquired by
1816, the year that Blake paid him a visit. Though the specific copy is
unknown, I suspect that it was an early one, because it appears to have been
purchased secondhand: “I told Mr. Blake that our common friend, Mr. Masquerier,
had induced me to purchase his ‘Songs of Innocence,’ and that I had no
disposition to ‘repent my bargain’” (Reminiscences
2: 787; BR 243). [25] Dibdin telling Blake that he owned an
illuminated book suggests that he did not purchase the book directly from
Blake. But even if he had, and the “bargain” was the good price given to him
by Blake, that too suggests an early copy, one that Blake did not specially
print
for Dibdin but was “in hand.” [26] That it was an early copy, like G, J, or L, means it was printed octavo on
both sides of the leaves, that is, 28 to 31 plates on 15 to 17 leaves. As mentioned, Dibdin’s copies of Thel and Visions were bound together, possibly around 1816, but not
necessarily for Dibdin; they could have been purchased after 1824, or even
after 1836 (see n. 16). Indeed, if D’Israeli’s collection was large relative
to Dibdin’s, then it is likely that Dibdin’s copies of Thel and Visions were not
yet in his collection in 1824, since they would have increased the size of
his collection to 47 or 50 designs on 34 or 36 octavo, quarto, and folio leaves—too
many to exaggerate the size of his friend’s collection as the “largest. “ On
the other hand, a portfolio consisting of Marriage
copy D, Thel copy F, Europe copy A, and a separate plate, that is, 54
variously sized and colored images printed on one side of large folio leaves,
would not only have appeared to consist of drawings instead of either prints
or book pages, but, relative to Dibdin’s Innocence,
would also have appeared particularly extensive and beautiful.
Eleven
years later, in 1835, Dibdin requested the loan of the portfolio because he
intended to include Blake in a projected chapter on the fine arts in his Reminiscences. D’Israeli’s “reply,”
however, “not only staggered me, but induced me to abandon nearly my whole
intention in regard to Blake” (BR 243).
Dibdin was “staggered” by the sheer number
of designs in D’Israeli’s collection, which he (or D’Israeli) emphasized
by
printing it in small capitals: “ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY.” [27] He was, no doubt, induced to abandon
his intention by the unexpectedly large number of works to be examined, and by
D’Israeli’s warning that “it was quite . . . impossible, if you had them, to
convey a very precise idea of such an infinite variety of these wonderous
deleriums of [Blake’s] fine and wild creative imagination” (243-44). Clearly, Blake’s canon was larger and
more diverse than Dibdin realized, than his own collection at this time would
have led him to believe, and D’Israeli’s collection had grown substantially
since the last time they spoke—and certainly since the last time he had seen
it. D’Israeli says as much, telling Dibdin in the same letter that there were
“unimaginable
chimeras, such as you have never viewed . . .” (BR 244). I suggest that D’Israeli’s collection grew by 106 prints, or four volumes: Urizen copy B, Visions copy F, America copy A, and the two volumes D’Israeli was eventually to bind as one, Songs copy A. These are the books, and
appear to be the copies, first owned by Romney.
D’Israeli’s
interest in the illuminated books appears to have been primarily pictorial
rather than literary. His bias reveals itself not only in his description,
which carefully attends to the visual images and drawing and coloring styles,
but also in his comment about the poetry: “the verses . . . are often
remarkable for their sweetness and their depth of feeling” (BR 244). He seems to have read nothing other than the Songs—lending further credence to Gilchrist’s belief that Blake’s
poems were “to the multitude . . . unintelligible” (Gilchrist 1: 303). What is not clear is the relation
D’Israeli had with Blake. Ogden, echoing Keynes and Bindman, expresses the
general consensus that “apart from Blake’s few close friends, D’Israeli seems
to have been the earliest customer for the illuminated books” (43) and “one of the first to discern his
Genius” (207).
Admittedly,
collecting Blake’s illuminated books seems especially appropriate for a man
of letters who wrote
the very popular Curiosities of
Literature (1791-1834) and whose
most original work was An Essay on the
Literary Character (1795), a
discourse on original genius. But there is no documentary evidence I know of
to
prove that D’Israeli knew Blake personally, or was responsible for the
commission, or even had purchased illuminated books in the mid 1790s, when the books in his collection were
produced. Though in 1799 he was a
member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and
Commerce, through which he met James Barry, D’Israeli and Blake moved in very
different circles. Through Murray, his publisher, D’Israeli met many of the
“leading contemporary men of letters” (Ogden 1), including Scott, Byron, and
Southey, but “there is not enough evidence to connect him closely with any of
the group that met at Joseph Johnson’s bookshop” (Ogden 43). The only reasons to suggest he may have
known Johnson are his friendship with Godwin in the 1820s and, again, his collection of Blakes, for it would have been at
Johnson’s “that he would be most likely to get to know the work of Blake, if
not the artist himself’ (Ogden 43). But
Tyson’s biography of Johnson does not mention D’Israeli at all. And, had
D’Israeli frequented the shop, he would probably have seen book illustrations,
not illuminated books. It does, indeed, appear that the sole evidence for
supposing that D’Israeli knew Blake is that he owned Blakes. [28]
Given
the absence of hard evidence to the contrary, it seems reasonable to suppose
that D’Israeli may have purchased his illuminated books late and possibly
through others. As mentioned, his copy of Marriage
(D) was produced early but was
stabbed by Blake in a peculiar style (six stab holes) that he used only one
other time, and that after 1815. Like
many other illuminated books, including Dibdin’s copy of Innocence, Marriage copy
D appears to have been produced early but sold late. That Dibdin came to own
illuminated books, purchased possibly from dealers or collectors and not from
Blake, but certainly purchased many years after they were produced, that Songs copy D was sold at auction in 1813
(BB 413), that Rivington and Cochran offered Songs copy U in 1824 (BB
654), that Hanrott bought Songs copy P from an auction in 1826 (BB 419), and that Francis Douce, D’Israeli’s
closest friend, purchased Marriage copy
B from Dyer in 1821, all suggest that
illuminated books were beginning to change hands late in Blake’s life without
his involvement. [29] Blake selling early books late, and other
people selling Blakes during his lifetime, reinforce the possibility that
D’Israeli acquired his 1824 “Blakean
portefeuille” without having met Blake personally, or at least not early.
Dibdin’s
1824 reference to D’Israeli’s
collection as the largest cannot be taken seriously, nor should the idea that
D’Israeli was an early purchaser and patron. D’Israeli was, along with
Cumberland, Humphry, and Butts, a major Blake collector, but like Hanrott,
Linnell, and Vine, he appears to have begun collecting Blake late. D’Israeli
may have learned of Blake through Dibdin or Francis Douce, friends who owned
illuminated books by 1821, or Prince
Hoare, a friend who knew Blake well. Or, he may have learned of Romney’s
specific copies of Blake’s books through his friendship with the dramatist
Richard Cumberland, who was also a close friend of Romney’s. However he learned of Blake, by 1835 D’Israeli’s collection of illuminated books, while not the largest, was one of the most comprehensive, coherent, and impressive “of any individual.” It appears, though, to have been formed in large part by a previously unrecognized Blake collector who was also a patron, George Romney.
IV.
Did
Romney form his collection the same way, purchasing a group of books, or one
book at a time? More important, were the works he purchased commissioned by him
or purchased from stock? These questions can be answered only by answering
another: when were the books produced?
Romney’s and D’Israeli’s books constitute a set not merely by ownership but by sharing stylistic features rare or unique for most of the books. As noted, the usually monochrome America is colored; the usually octavo Songs is folio and in two volumes; the normally color-printed quarto Urizen is folio and not printed in colors; the usually quarto Thel and Marriage are folio and printed in two colors, and the usually color-printed Europe is not color printed. To this list of books can be added Visions copy G, which is, as noted, closer stylistically and materially to these large paper copies than is color-printed Visions copy F, the copy that appears to have sold as lot 79 in the Romney auction of 1834. Visions copy G was printed without borders on one side of the sheet and, like Romney’s and D’Israeli’s copies, was numbered in ink. It was also printed in a brownish-black ink similar to the one used in America copy A and Urizen copy B, and exactly that of Europe copy H, a monochrome copy which appears to have been printed along with Europe copy A, D’Israeli’s copy, as monochrome copy B of America was printed with America copy A, and Songs copy R appears to have been printed with Songs copy A. [30] All Religions are One copy A and There is No Natural Religion copy L also appear to have been produced during this printing session. They are the only copies of these books printed on folio-size leaves, which given their one or so inch images strongly indicates that they were intended to match other copies of illuminated books. Several other features also support the idea that they were intended to be part of the set: they have the same ink as one another, the same printing style and paper as the other large paper copies, and the rudimentary color printing of Thel copy F and Marriage copy D. [31]
Blake,
it appears, printed at least one copy of each illuminated book in this large
paper, recto-only format, which is to say, during one session he printed his
entire canon up to 1795 in a uniform style. The copies printed were All Religions copy A, No Natural Religion copy L, Thel
copy F, Marriage copy D, Visions copy G, Urizen copy B, America copies A and B, Europe copies A and H, and Songs copies A and possibly R. The
hypothesis that these 11 copies
belong to the same printing session is suggested not only by their stylistic
similarities, but also, and more importantly, by their material similarities.
With the exception of Europe copy H, all were printed on I. Taylor or J.
Whatman paper (either undated or dated 1794) approximately 37 x 26 cm, and
in the same colors, which were possibly the same inks. As noted, America copies A and B and Urizen copy B were printed in the same light brownish-black ink; Europe copies A and H and Visions copy G were printed in the same light brownish-black ink, possibly a
lighter hue of the ink used in the copies of
America and Urizen. A similar
light black ink was used in illustrations of Marriage copy D and Thel copy F, making both books, technically speaking, color printed, since
their texts were printed in green and yellow-ochre, respectively. [32] The
green of Marriage copy D varies from
light to bluish to viridian lake, but the greener hue is very similar, if not
the same, as the hue used in Songs copy A (Experience), All Religions copy A, and No Natural Religion copy L.
Light
black, brown, and various greens, along with the yellow-ochre of Thel copy F, make for four distinct printing inks and may seem to invalidate
my suggestion that the shared materials and stylistic features are signs of the
same printing session. But Blake had used more inks than this in Marriage copy B, which was printed in yellow-ochre, olive-green, sage-green,
dark grayish-brown, and reddish-brown (the last color used consistently for
facing pages, which indicates that the 27 plates were printed at the same
time), and, of course, he had prepared as many colors and inks for the copies
of books that he color printed from both the shallows and relief areas, like Visions copy F, or Urizen copies A
and C, or Marriage copies E and F In
short, different inks (like different papers), especially among copies of the
same book, do not mean different printing sessions.
Two
other reasons to suppose that the books were produced together as a coherent
set are the shared palettes and coloring styles. Marriage copy D and Thel copy F share a feature not present
in any copy of either book printed before them: the top and/or bottom of most
of the designs were streaked or washed, which effectively called attention to
the rectangular shape of the image; that is, the design was framed by the bands
of colors (illus. 6, 7). A similar
framing device was used in Visions copy
G, where the right margin in plates 4, 7 (illus. 8), and 10 was painted in with flowers. [33] Most
of the Marriage plates (and Thel plate 7) were also streaked between paragraphs or at line breaks in pink,
yellow, or blue; the words themselves were not streaked or washed over. Marriage copy D, Thel copy F, and Songs copy A (illus. 4)
are closer to one another in coloring than to others of their kind. Instead of
a simple palette and colors laid on in thin, single, flat transparent washes,
as in plate 7 of Thel copy H (illus. 9),
the palette is more extensive and the coloring more translucent, even opaque
and chalky in places, with the figures delicately modeled. The coloring of Thel copy F, for example, particularly in plates 1, 6, and 7, is more complicated than all other copies
of Thel except copies N and O, the
last two copies produced (c. 1815-27). In
plate 7 (illus. 7), Thel and the baby
are on the banks of a river, a sense of place that is missing in the earlier
copies (except copy I) and represents a transformation of space that required
extra time and attention, as did applying seven or eight different colors
instead of the three or four broad washes that were used in copies B-E, G-I,
K,
M, and R. Thel copy F and Marriage
copy D also share a few colors
specially mixed, like the pinkish-purple in plate 7 of the former and plate
The
palette and coloring style of America copy
A, Urizen copy B, Europe copy A, and Visions
copy G are also similar to one
another and not to other copies of their titles. America copy A is elaborately
and sometimes heavily colored, but not at all like copy M, the copy reproduced
by the Blake Trust. In copy M, only one text was washed over; in copy A, only three were not. The former copy
was still treated as a text-centered artifact, though printed in or after 1799,
the date of the paper, whereas in copy A the
text was treated as part of the painting, colored in the same manner and
intensity as the illustration (illus. 2 and 10), and not, as such texts usually
were, in a light wash which integrated text and illustration while still
clearly differentiating one from the other. [34] The
coloring
of Europe copy A, in its deep, often somber tones, is
similar to America copy A. Plate 5 of the former (illus. 11) and
plate 6 of the latter (illus. 2), for example, were both painted in an
ultramarine-like blue, much stronger and deeper than Blake’s usual blue, a
green that varies from yellow to olive in its modeling, and an opaquish-pink.
More important, the manner in which the colors were applied is also similar:
broad washes with many smaller washes laid over to deepen the colors, as
opposed to single, even tints. [35] This technique is
also
used in Visions copy G, extensively in plates 1 (illus. 12),
2-3. The palette of Urizen copy B, though lighter, is similar to these
other copies, even containing the deep pink-red and blue of America copy A and Europe copy A. The flames in Urizen plate 11 (illus. 13), for example, are very like the flames
in America plate 7 (illus. 10), with
the same yellows, reds, and blacks; but more important, the flames are depicted
in the same manner, again in multiple overlaid colors, in contrast with the
earlier method of depicting flames in one or two flat colors, as in Marriage copies A-C, for example. [36] While Urizen copy B is closer stylistically to Europe
copy A than to America copy A, its figures, especially the 10 full-plate illustrations, appear
to have been painted more carefully than the larger works.
Such uniformity
in printing and coloring styles is characteristic of copies of the same title,
like early copies of America (C-I, K, L, and R), Thel (A-E, H-M, and R), Visions (A-E, H-M), Innocence
(A-G, K-M), Innocence of Songs (B-E), and Song of Los (A-E). The similarity
among early copies of the same title has been much commented
upon—indirectly. Editors and critics have long noted the variants in colors
among impressions of the same plate (a green instead of a pink dress, a blue
instead of a purple sky, etc.); what they fail to recognize and address,
though, is how variants imply repeatable patterns, or similarity, and that the
differences are in the placement of
colors and not in the number or choice of colors, nor in the technique of
applying them. Repetition of such specific stylistic features and techniques
is
a sign of edition printing and coloring. Here we need only to recognize that
similarity or repetition across titles
suggests that the books were intentionally produced as a set, and not simply as large paper copies printed along with other
copies of the title, or printed according to a new model for the books, since
too many of the qualities, like ink color and printing format, are unique. [37] The
very existence of these copies, approached from a practical and commercial
perspective,
raises the question of motivation: why reprint Thel and Marriage folio size, or Visions
on one side of the sheet, if not to match other large paper copies, since
there appear to have been copies of all of them “in hand” between 1795-99? The
obvious answer, that Blake produced them by commission and “with a particular
customer in mind” (Erdman, Poetry and
Prose 786), becomes less convincing when we raise the questions such an
answer demands. If all 11 large paper copies were produced at the same time,
and the seven copies Romney and D’Israeli owned were colored as a coherent set
within a set, why then did Romney own only three (America copy A, Urizen copy B, and Songs copy A)? Why did
he
own Visions copy F, the color-printed copy, and not Visions copy G? And how did D’Israeli acquire three books from the
set by 1824? Perhaps we will discover an intermediate owner for the three
books, or evidence to show that Romney did own them all but that he or his son
sold three of them, either to D’Israeli directly, or to a mutual friend, like
Richard Cumberland. Or perhaps Romney simply preferred the ones he bought over
the ones he did not, which is to say, perhaps he had a choice in the matter and
bought the works from stock. The set was undeniably a special production, but that does not necessarily mean that it was
motivated by a commission (or even that it evolved out of the commission of one
or more of its copies); it may have been motivated by Blake’s desire to make
either impressive gifts for friends, or, more likely, a deluxe set of his illuminated
canon up to that time.
Whether
these books were commissioned or merely purchased from stock can be determined
only by ascertaining their dates of production. Those can be ascertained only
by establishing through the historical and technical records a chronology of
production in the 1790s.
Romney’s
books must have been produced between 1794 and 1799, the date of the paper and
of Romney’s departure from London. Circumstantial evidence suggests the even
narrower parameters of 1794 and 1796, when two close friends purchased
illuminated books. Ozias Humphry commissioned the Large Book of Designs and the Small
Book of Designs copies A probably in 1796, the date inscribed on a plate
in
the Small Book of Designs copy B, which consists of impressions from
the same printing sessions as those in copies A (BB 356n1). [38] Humphry owned Songs copy H, Europe
copy D, and America copy H, probably before the 1796 commission,
since none of the plates in either Book duplicated
what he already owned—despite the obvious suitability of America and Europe designs
for such a project.
Flaxman
also purchased illuminated books before 1796. Within a few months of his return
from Italy in the fall of 1794, he moved to No. 6, Buckingham Street, Fitzroy
Square, which made him Romney’s neighbor (Chamberlain 196), and purchased one
and possibly two illuminated books. “Early in 1795 Flaxman ‘Pd for. . . Blakes
Book. . . 10[s]6’” (BR 569), which
was probably for Innocence copy D, but conceivably for Experience of Songs copy O as well, since in the prospectus of just 15 or so
months earlier the price for the two volumes was 10s. (K 209) and the latter
work appears to have come with a combined titleplate (BB 397). [39] I understand “early in 1795” to mean the
first month or two of the year and, as will become clear, conclude that The Song of Los, Book of Ahania, and Book of Los, all dated 1795, were produced at that time as well, before Flaxman’s copy of Experience. But even if Flaxman’s Experience was produced as late as 1796
or 1797 instead of “early 1795,” and the 10s.6d. payment was charitable for one
volume, or included a deposit for work to be done, this copy of Experience can still be used as an end
date, since it was printed in a style distinctly different from his Innocence and from Romney’s books, as
well as from books that were color printed—including those in 1795.
Like
Humphry’s illuminated books, Flaxman’s Innocence
and Experience are too similar
in
printing and coloring styles to other copies of Innocence and Songs to
have been specially produced by commission; they were all probably purchased
from the “numerous great works . . . in hand” (K 208). Innocence was printed on both
sides of undated octavo-size paper in yellow-ochre ink, as were copies C,
E, F, and G. Flaxman’s copy of Experience
is nearly identical in printing
to Songs copies I, J, K, L, M, N, Innocence copies N and R, and Experience of Songs copy S; all were
printed on one side of unmarked
paper, printed in dark brown ink, and, most telling, printed with plate borders. [40] Plate
borders were wiped
in all
recto-verso copies of illuminated books, including Flaxman’s Innocence. They were also wiped in books
color printed and in Romney’s and D’Israeli’s books, all of which were printed
on one side of the leaf. These copies, whether printed on one or both sides of
the leaf, were given more individual attention than copies where the borders
were left intact. Conversely, plates not wiped of their borders were easier to
ink and faster to print, making the book easier to produce.
The
copies of Songs and Innocence with which Flaxman’s copy of Experience appears to have been printed
are dated 1800-1814 (BB 382); they
are assumed to have been produced one at a time because the coloring is different from copy to copy and some copies were left uncolored
(Songs copies K, M, and Innocence of Songs copy O). But a
comparative examination of these copies (particularly of the inking accidentals
shared by impressions from the same plate) reveals that they were printed at the same time, in a limited
edition. Such an examination also shows that the coloring is not really very
different, that the coloring of Flaxman’s Experience
“strikingly complements Innocence copy
N” (BB 419), as well as Songs copies I and L. These copies have
similar palettes and their texts were similarly streaked in multiple colors
(pink, yellow, and blue), instead of washed solidly in one or two colors. Such
similarity is not accidental nor the result of one copy being used as the model
for others produced years later; it is the inevitable result of copies being
produced at the same time and with the same materials. [41] Printing
the plate borders made it necessary to color the impressions more extensively,
since text and illustration
were now framed and would have looked
unfinished if the washes did not meet the border/frame. This is why washing and
streaking the text became common practice in books printed after 1795.
Conversely, washed texts in copies without borders like Romney’s America copy A, or the streaking in Thel copy
F, Marriage copy D, and Visions copy G, may have preceded and prompted the
printing of the borders.
It appears that Blake had decided to color most of these copies of Songs as part of the initial production process, as was his usual practice, but kept a few copies back to color on order. How many of these uncolored impressions were later colored is not known, but the decision to print plate borders and leave some impressions uncolored or to color them upon need increased the potential for variation among copies initially printed at the same time. It was also the most cost-effective way to produce illuminated books, being a compromise position between “produc[ing] . . . works” without “subscription” and producing by commission (K 208). [42]
The
straightforward printing method represented by Flaxman’s copy of Experience (one ink, full plate, no
wiping) became standard practice, succeeding the most expensive and laborious
method, color printing. Color printing required multiple colors as well as
special inking tools, and the resulting impressions usually required extensive
recoloring and outlining. Without confirmed sales, the technique may have cost
Blake more in time and materials than he could afford. Or, he might have
abandoned it, if not for financial reasons, because in 1795 the creation myth
expressed in the last four illuminated books had run its course, and his time,
energy, and coloring technique were taken up by new, completely pictorial
projects, like the 12 large monotypes, creating paintings by color printing
earlier engravings, like Albion Rose, and starting the Night Thoughts designs (Butlin, Paintings
and Drawings 1: 178).
Color printing
itself initiated printing on one side of the leaf, which replaced recto-verso
printing, despite the four recto-verso
color-printed copies of Europe copies
D-G. These four copies, which were apparently printed together along with
single-sided copies B and C, appear to have been intentionally printed to match
recto-verso copies of America. [43] The
color printing, though, is minimal, with colors printed only from relief areas,
whereas
in copies B and C it is
from the shallows as well. Printing colors from both levels of the plate
requires more pressure and creates a more elaborate and painterly image—as well
as a more pronounced platemark, which in turn eliminates the use of the verso. [44] Unlike Experience, and perhaps even Europe, Urizen seems to
have been executed specifically to be color printed. Not only were all copies
of Urizen printed in this new
style—except copy B and late copy G—but the plates were exceedingly shallow
(Essick, Printmaker 92), and thus most suitable for printing
colors from both levels. For these reasons, I suspect that copies A, C-F, and J were printed first and
before copy B. They were probably produced in 1794, the year the plates were
executed, after Europe and Experience and possibly after a few
copies of earlier books reprinted in the new technique, including Visions copies F and R and Marriage copies E and F. The following
year Blake wrote and color-printed copies of The Song of Los, Book of Los, and Book
of Ahania, all on one side of the
leaf.
There
is also an aesthetic reason for abandoning recto-verso printing. The increased
labor required by color printing, both in the painting of the plates and
subsequent coloring and outlining of the impressions, many of which would have
otherwise looked like blots and blurs, resulted in more detailed and
complicated images. Finishing of this kind, combined with the absence of a
competitive facing page, creates an image that demands to be viewed and
experienced more like a painting than a page in a book, more autonomously than
as part of something larger than itself. The new printing format and coloring
style reflect a new idea of the book and reader, or rather reading experience.
Because the experience of an illuminated poem as physical book is as much an
integral part of its meaning as the combination of word and picture, changes in
the physical form alter how the poem is read and thus its meaning.
There are only
17 extant impressions pulled from the
small intaglio plates that make up The
Book of Los and Book of Ahania; in terms of labor, these etchings and
color-printed frontispieces and titlepages represent about a slow day’s worth
of printing. The 48 or so color-printed impressions pulled from the eight Songs of Los plates were printed in an
edition, that is, the impressions were printed per plate and not per book. [45] All
six (eight-page) copies could
have easily been produced in two or at most three days. This may strike the
non-printmaker as a herculean effort, but in fact the work involved,
particularly for a professional printmaker with a printing “devil” (Mrs. Blake)
handling the paper and press, was modest. Once the studio was set up for
printing, the press prepared, inks and colors made, paper cut and dampened, the
actual printing of the plates could not have taken very long. In fact, Blake
would not have had much time to play with the plates, since in color printing
some of his colors were water soluble and would have dried on the plate had he
dawdled. [46]
What
Blake said of drawing was true of color printing: “That is not a line which
doubts & Hesitates in the Midst of its Course” (K 603). This was even more
true of executing the designs, which essentially was drawing, which is to say,
the designs were not labored but drawn freehand, the materials of pen, brush,
and varnish making such an autographic process possible—and necessary. Any
hesitation would clog the pen with varnish and prevent a uniform script. Such
writing and drawing must have felt spontaneous, or, as Blake says in Europe, “dictated.” The time spent executing and printing illuminated
plates was, in other words, far less than is often imagined. In fact, the most
time-consuming aspect of production was biting the plates in acid and preparing
the studio and materials. With that done, it would have been inefficient to
print or paint only one impression per plate—or one copy of a book. [47]
Given that the work involved
in executing and printing The Song of Los, Book of Ahania, and Book of Los was minimal, and that
Blake’s known outside commitments in 1795 were the fewest in years, it is not
unreasonable to suppose that these three books, which mark the end of
color-printed illuminated books, were all executed and printed before Flaxman’s
copy of Experience—were executed, in other words, in “early
1795.” [48] Romney’s and D’Israeli’s books, I believe,
were produced together and part of a larger set (or project) in the same one-
or two-month
period, after The Book of Ahania and Book of Los and before the new edition of Experience.
The bibliographical evidence suggests that Blake did not print in the
ordinary manner while also color printing. Even the Experience plates of Songs copies
B-E were lightly color printed, whereas Urizen
copy B and Europe copies A and H were not. The use of a second ink to create
shade, as in Thel copy F and Marriage copy D, appears to be a holdover from color printing and
not an anticipation. Wiped borders, characteristic of books produced before and
during color printing, but abandoned with the edition of Songs that Flaxman’s Experience
belongs to, were another holdover. On the other hand, the subtle streaking
that frames texts in Thel copy F, Marriage copy D, and Visions copy G appears to anticipate the more overt
and stylized use of streaking and borders as frames characteristic of the
copies of Songs in that edition.
I am assuming, in other words, that practice was consistent and mutually exclusive, which may appear an odd thing to assume about an artist as innovative as Blake, yet it is merely to admit the causal relation between printing style (ink, inking, printing format) and production—that the former is the natural result of practice, involves the repetition of form and/or materials characteristic of printing sessions and/or editions, as well as of artistic interests of the moment, by which I mean at most a few weeks’ work in the studio, and not the many years that are generally thought to constitute the historical period for these early productions. Indeed, my other assumption, which is, like the first, based on my experience as a printmaker, is that the uninterrupted work involved in printing 160 plates not requiring à la poupée coloring, incised lines to be filled with ink, or surfaces to be inked and then wiped clean, was about 7 to 10 days. [49]
I
also think that production of this set of books followed The Book of Los and Book of
Ahania closely because, together with a copy of Song of Los (assuming one had been recently printed), they not so
coincidentally represent Blake’s entire published canon in relief etching up
to this time. With color printing, the creation myth as then formulated, and
relief etching all having run their course with or before The Book of Ahania and Book
of Los, it is not difficult to
imagine Blake wanting to consolidate his own best works. He would have done
so, forming a deluxe set of large paper copies of his illuminated books, by
reprinting the plates of All Religions (A), No Natural Religion (L), Thel (F), Marriage (D), Visions (G), America (A), Songs (A), Europe (A), and Urizen
(B) in the same format, with the same inks, and on the same size paper. [50] This
appears to have been the first time he printed across titles, that is, various
titles in the same printing session, but not the last. [51]
An
early 1795 date of production for the entire set of books means that America copies A and B are not 1800 and
1799, Thel copy F is not c. 1806, Europe copies
A and H are not 1805 and 1800, Marriage copy D is not 1794 and before color-printed
copies E and F, Songs copy A is not 1789-1800, and Visions copy G is not 1796-1800 (BB 87, 118, 146, 288, 382, 465). The 1795 date
also implies that washed texts and page numbers do not automatically signify
post-1800 production, that coloring was rarely separated from printing, and
that illuminated books were color printed before the monoprints and Books of Designs. That the Books were
color printed c. 1796 does not mean that color printing had remained Blake’s
standard printing technique through 1795 and 1796; it suggests, rather, that
Blake used an earlier and special technique that was warranted (and financially
guaranteed) by commission, a technique that may have been especially requested,
since Humphry owned two color-printed works (Europe copy D and Songs copy H). They were probably color printed because they were conceived in
the manner of the color-printed monotypes, i.e., as a portfolio of miniature
paintings and not books (see n. 38).
The new documentary evidence regarding Romney’s ownership of illuminated books may simply support a long-held assumption, that Romney knew and patronized Blake. But it overturns the assumption that D’Israeli was an early patron and collector. Equally important, this new evidence reveals how tenuous our assumptions are regarding patronage and the earliest modes by which illuminated books were produced and disseminated. The idea that Blake “didn’t print editions; he printed only one copy at a time, as he got commissions” (Davids and Petrillo 154) is based on the idea that each illuminated book is unique and hence must have been produced as such. The individual letters given to copies of books to indicate the chronology of production express this assumption. Yet, the shared stylistic features and materials among copies of the same title prove just the opposite, that the books were produced in limited editions and, hence, that production could not have been motivated by commission. Unique coloring is no more synonymous with individual print production than purchase is synonymous with patronage or ownership with commission. Indeed, even Flaxman’s copies of Experience and Innocence, the latter of which was reorted to have been “coloured by Blake for Flaxman,” were, like nearly all illuminated books except a few late copies, merely purchased from those “in hand.” [52]
The
illuminated books belonging to Romney and D’Israeli, which at first appear
certainly to have been commissioned, presumably by Romney, if for no other
reasons than their being different from others of their kind and like one
another, were produced in the same printing sessions and also purchased from
stock. If, on the other hand, they were “printed only one . . . at a time, as
[Blake] got commissions,” then the history of and motivation for the copies
stylistically matching Romney’s volumes but not in his collection are puzzling,
as is the inclusion of Visions copy F, since it was printed before the
others. That more books were produced than purchased suggests that they were
not produced to meet a single commission; that Visions copy G was
purchased by someone other than Romney suggests the same and that it either was
sold before Romney examined Blake’s stock or simply did not appeal to him as
much as Visions copy F. In either
case, it appears that Romney purchased not what he specifically commissioned
but what Blake had already produced. This reading of the evidence is further
supported if, as is likely, Flaxman played agent. For if Flaxman showed Romney
his own illuminated books and “recommended . . . [his] friend to take copies,”
then Romney would have purchased his books after Flaxman purchased his, that
is, after “early 1795,” and thus from a set already produced.
When
illuminated books such as these, which because of the similarities among
themselves and their differences from other copies appear so obviously to have
been commissioned, can be shown to have been produced for other reasons, then
the assumption that production was “on demand” (Essick, “Materials” 857) and
“with a particular customer in mind” (Erdman, Poetry and Prose 786), is undermined: copies closely resembling one
another in materials, printing, format, and coloring, like most copies of Thel,
Innocence, Visions, America, Europe, and Song of Los, are even less likely to have been produced by commission. The less
likely commission becomes, the more likely it becomes that illuminated books
were printed in small editions.
Romney
probably purchased his four books directly from Blake at one time, before any
other “friend” came by; D’Israeli or, more likely, an unknown intermediary
collector, may have done the same with Marriage
copy D, Europe copy A, and Thel copy F. In both cases, books were purchased from a deluxe—or
display—set, a set that helped to comprise and to sell the “numerous great
works now in hand” which Blake offered to friends, patrons, and collectors “at
a fair price” (K 208).
I am grateful to Mark Reed,
Robert Essick, and G. E. Bentley, Jr., for their close and critical reading of
an early draft of this paper, for their corrections, and for their many helpful
suggestions.
ILLUSTRATIONS
1. (in n. 12): America a Prophecy copy B, plate 6. Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. PML 63938.
2. America a Prophecy copy A, plate 6. Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. PML 63134.
3. Visions
of the Daughters of Albion copy F, frontispiece. Courtesy of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. PML 63138.
4. Songs
of Innocence and of Experience copy A, “Holy Thursday” from Experience, courtesy of the Trustees of
the British Museum.
5. (in n. 18): Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy R, “Holy Thursday” from Experience, reproduced by permission of
the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
6. The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy D, plate 10. Courtesy of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress,
Washington D.C.
7. The
Book of Thel copy F, plate 7. Courtesy
of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress, Washington
D.C.
8. Visions
of the Daughters of Albion copy G. plate 7. By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, bequest
of Amy Lowell.
9. The
Book of Thel copy H, plate 7. Courtesy
of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, Library of Congress, Washington
D.C.
10. America
a Prophecy copy A, plate 7. Courtesy
of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. PML 63134.
11. Europe
a Prophecy copy A, plate 5. Courtesy
of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, Upperville, VA.
12. Visions
of the Daughters of Albion copy G, plate 1. By permission of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, bequest
of Amy Lowell.
13. The
Book of Urizen copy B, plate 11. Courtesy
of the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. PML 63139.
WORKS CITED
Balston, Thomas. James Whatman Father & Son. 1957.
New York: Garland Publishing, 1979.
------. William Blake’s Writings. Oxford: Clarendon, 1978.
NOTES
[*] Blake/An
Illustrated
Quarterly 23 (Autumn, 1989): 48-74.
[1] The
eye tells us what documentary evidence does not, that Blake must have seen
Romney’s paintings and pen and wash drawings in the 1780s, probably before he
invented illuminated printing, since motifs in his earliest relief etchings
appear to echo specific Romney designs. The Urizenic figure in the clouds in All Religions are One plate 4, for
example, is thought generally to have been influenced by the pen and wash
drawing, “The Spirit of God Floating over Chaos,” though it is more likely
indebted to a lost painting entitled “Providence Brooding over Chaos,” which
was renamed “Jupiter Pluvius” by Romney’s son and described as representing “a
venerable old man borne upon the clouds. He fronted the spectator, and had his
arms outspread; his hair was parted on his forehead, and his beard flowing” (Memoirs 98-99). The drawing, on the
other hand, is of a beardless youth or female and appears to have been the
source for the female figure floating over the corpse in Marriage plate 14. Because of John Romney’s description, the
drawing has often been confused with the painting (see Hagstrum 202). For Blake
to have borrowed in these ways meant meeting the man himself, for these were
paintings and drawings in Romney’s private collection.
[2] Gilchrist
1: 124. Charles Augustus Tulk, who owned Songs copy J, was also a close friend of the Flaxmans; see BR 241-42. Flaxman practiced what he
preached, commissioning Blake in 1797 to illustrate Gray’s Poems, apparently as a
birthday present for his wife, Nancy (Bindman, Blake as Artist 113), and
presumably encouraged the publishers to commission Blake to engrave his designs
for “A Letter to the Committee for Raising the Naval Pillar” (1799), Homer’s Iliad (1805), Hesiod’s Works, Days, and Theogony (1817),
and his article on “Sculpture” in Ree’s Cyclopaedia
(1820). He also purchased Innocence copy D and Songs copy O.
[3] Mr.
Read, a friend of Romney’s and of Romney’s earliest patron, Mr. Braithwaite,
promised to show Blake a “Catalogue of [the] Hampstead sale” (K
836), though no paintings or drawings by Romney (or Blake) were then auctioned.
It was “A Catalogue of the Capital Collection of Casts from the Antique: among
which are the Apollo of Belvidere; Castor and Pollux, and the Laocoon; A Very
Fine Skeleton; Various Basso Relievos, Busts, and Fragments, Being the entire
Collection of that celebrated Artist, George Romney, Esq. At his late
Residence, Holybush Hill, Hampstead. Also, His Genuine househould Furniture and
other effects, which will be sold by Auction by Mr. Christie on the Premises,
On Monday, May the 18th, 1801, at twelve O’clock.” Some of the pictures which
were auctioned six years later were then on view: “A Select Part of the finest
Works of Mr. Romney, may in the mean Time be Viewed (with Tickets) on the
Premises, where the same may be treated for by Private Contract” (Yale Center
for British Art, Sales Catalogues 96).
[4] Lot
121 of the first day lists “38 Varied [drawings],” which could conceivably
have included a few of Blake’s drawings. Nearly all the prints and drawings in
this sale were after or by masters, like Poussin, Titian, Rosa, Romano.
Romney’s collection of art books, prints, plaster casts, paintings, and
drawings must have been of enormous educational value to young artists like
Blake and Flaxman. The instructional value was greatly increased by Romney’s
drawings after Raphael and Michelangelo, whose works in the Vatican, including
all the Sibyls and Prophets in the Sistine Chapel, he studied closely and
copied, having erected scaffolding for the purpose (Chamberlain 71).
[5] The
works were bought in for “£406.19s.6d.,” while the total amount realized
by
the works “actually sold was £307.1s., which when commissions and duty had been
deducted, was reduced to £250.16s.” (Chamberlain 233). The copy of the lower
half of Raphael’s “Transfiguration,” for example, which Romney painted in oil
to size and for which he was once offered £100, realized £6 (Chamberlain 231).
[6] Auction
catalogue of Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Christie, Friday and Saturday, 9-10
May 1834.
[7] A book
with a Blake engraving that was published after the painter’s death was listed
in the catalogue: lot 9 “Hoare on the Arts,” which may have been
his Academic Correspondence . . . on the Present
Cultivation of the Arts of Painting, 1804,
or his Inquiry into the Requisite
Cultivation and Present State of the Arts of Design, 1806, both of which contain frontispieces engraved by Blake. The
son continued to add to the library, but did not necessarily purchase this or
any other work from Blake.
[8] Auction
catalogue of Messrs. Christie, Manson, and Christie, Friday and Saturday,
9-10 May 1834. There are two copies of the catalogue in
the Yale
Center for British Art, one without prices, the other with prices and a
handwritten “86x” added but with no owners cited (Sales cat. 96). The buyers
are listed in Christie’s master copy in London, a reproduction of which G. E.
Bentley, Jr. generously checked for me. The “Large Collection of Engravings & Drawings”
of Walter E. Tiffin, “An Old-Established Printseller, Relinquishing the General
Business . . .” sold at Sotheby’s, 29 Feb.-9 Mar.
1860, and contained three water colors from Blake’s The Story of Joseph series, c. 1784-85 (lot 1826). See Butlin Paintings and Drawings 1: 59 (nos.
155-57). This printseller’s retirement from the business in 1860 indicates he
would have been in the business of attending auctions in the 1830s.
[9] Some
impressions in Urizen copy B appear color printed because the
black ink was gone over on the paper, possibly while wet, in green (pls. 18,
20, 23), grey, and black washes to produce a mottled effect. Part of Los’s
right knee in plate 7, for example, appears color printed, but the capillary
formation of the ink on the relief area that forms the knee is the same in the
part not color printed as in that color printed. The difference was created by
the latter being washed over in grey and
black opaque paint. This is even more apparent in plate 8, where the blue
opaque paint appears to be from the plate, but was actually applied to the
impression over the black ink (a relief plateau), as a close look with a
magnifying glass reveals: the blue does not always hold the relief line or
area. Plate 19 also looks color printed, but the deep red color is painted over
the ink on the impression; the relief area out of which the figures were
hollowed was heavily inked, but that ink is black and was applied generously
and not delicately because the area’s lack of detail made it easy and quick to
ink.
[10] America copies
K and A are thought to have been “coloured some time after they were printed”
(BB 91n3), probably “after 1805” (BB 91) because a few of the texts were washed. The date of this
stylistic feature is based on Songs copy
E (which was purchased by Butts in
1806) having washed texts while those of Innocence
copy P (which was given away by
Malkin in 1805) remained unwashed (Bentley, William
Blake’s Writings 1: liv). One of
these two copies was in Romney’s collection, however, which shows that washed
texts cannot be trusted as an absolute marker for dating. The few poems (“Infant
Joy” for example) with washed texts in Innocence
copies I and J, c. 1789-94, support this conclusion, as do the impressions
in Experience of Songs copy O (c. 1795) whose texts are streaked. Indeed either
washed texts occurred much earlier than we think, which seems likely on
aesthetic and technical grounds, or, as Bentley implies, coloring and printing
were stages regularly separated during the production of a book: Europe copy G “was color-printed about 1795, but the text was water-colored
about 1805” (Europe 5n10); Innocence copies K and L “seem to have
been printed early but coloured late” (BB
382n2). The idea that printing and coloring were often separated is very curious, given the assumptions that illuminated books in general were
commissioned and that America copy A in particular was supposedly
purchased by D’Israeli in the 1790s.
America copy R is listed in BB as an untraced colored copy printed on one side of the leaf
(89). It was recently auctioned at Christie’s, November 1987, and is essentially
a monochrome copy, recto-verso, in blue ink. It was, according to Robert Essick
and Thomas V. Lange, who examined the copy, the model for Muir’s uncolored
facsimile. See Essick, “Resurrection.” The coloring of America copy K seems to
have been loosely modeled on copy A, particularly in the way the text of some
plates are colored as part of the illustration, though generally its palette is
more restricted and its washes are thinner and flatter (see n. 34). America copy Q, printed posthumously in
black and presumably colored for Walter T Spencer in 1913 (BB 105), was unquestionably colored in imitation of America copy A, apparently when that copy was in the Pierpont Morgan Library (BB 100). A comparison of any two impressions from copies A and Q reveals
that the latter’s colors, their placement, and the manner in which they were
applied, were dictated by the former. Spencer was likewise responsible for the
coloring of Europe copy L, which was
also printed posthumously in black ink (BB
160).
[11] Like
most illuminated prints, those making up America copies F and L do not have watermarks. Of the 100 leaves
used to print the 10 copies of America (C-I, K-L, and R), only 15 leaves are
watermarked. The absence of a watermark in a leaf of fine paper like this
probably indicates that it was cut from a larger watermarked sheet. On the
other hand, the absence of a watermark on any sheet of wove paper may be due
to the thickness of the paper or to the mark’s being at the edge of the sheet
and
not the middle of one-half; in the latter case, the mark may have been trimmed
or hidden in the binding (Balston 160). The
sheets used for America were probably
either double crown (approximately 72 x 51 cm) or imperial (approximately 72
x
55 cm). Such sheets could be cut into quarters for folio books, like America, or into eights for quarto books, like Marriage, or into
sixteenths for octavo books, like Songs. Blake’s choices were no more exact than
small, medium, or large, for the exact size of the leaf was determined less by
plate size (technically Songs could
have been quarto) than by the sheet it was cut out of, that is, by such
practicalities as using efficiently raw materials whose sizes were fixed. From
one quire (25 sheets) of imperial paper, Blake could print exactly 10 recto-verso
copies of America (18 plates on 10
sheets), or 23 recto-verso copies of Innocence.
When, on the other hand, an octavo or quarto was reprinted as folio, it was
assuredly for aesthetic reasons, following the general rule of thumb that the
larger the size the more valuable—or prestigious—the artifact.
[12] The
inks of America copies A and B
are listed as brownish-black and dark brown (BB 88). They are, however, the same light black ink as Urizen copy B, whose brownish tint was caused by the thinness of the ink
layer, the warm tone of the off-white paper, a mixture of brown and black
pigments, and the yellowing effect of linseed oil. All three copies are in the
Pierpont Morgan Library, which allows for this kind of comparison. The ink’s
true color, though, is also apparent when the ink is examined under a glass or
in a solid area that printed heavily, such as the dragon, lower right corner,
and space between the clouds in plate 6 (illus. 1). The ink will tend to look black under a glass because the ink
particles are seen in isolation, counteracting the “color-addition” effect that
is perceived by viewing the overall image with its off-white support and
underlying brown hue in thinner areas. Various hues from a black ink are
characteristic of intaglio plates, where the deeper lines print darkest and the
shallow lines print light grey; in aquatint, the range of one ink can be so
great that multiple inks appear to be used. Blue pigments are often used in
combination with black to counteract the brown hue of natural black pigments.
That the ink in America
copies A and B is the same ink, and not just the same color, is proven by
their shared accidentals, a feature of production that cannot be duplicated
except by sequential pulls. In plate 3, for example, the blemish next to the
word “Dark” of line 11 is the same in
copies A and B, though darker in A; the same is true of the blemish at the end
of the tendril from the letter “N’ in line 16, and the traces of ink in the shallows of the lower tree trunks and
inside of the border. The repetition of ink traces is a sign that the dabber
overinked or touched an area that was supposed to remain white and that the
plate with the residue of ink was reinked and printed again, producing a second
impression having the same accidentals regardless whether the second inking was
more carefully done, since the pressure and paper were the same in both pulls.
The sequentiality of copies A and B is even clearer in plate 5, where the
bottom border is half wiped in the same manner (and with the same gesture) in
both copies, and the same wove pattern of the paper or backing blanket—a very
distinctive mark—is present, as it is in the left bottom corner of plate 6
(illus. 1 and 2), and in the lower left and right corner of the flames in plate
12. For the checkerboard effect to be repeated in two impressions from the same
plate means that a combination of variables (the paper’s texture and dampness,
ink, and pressure) was repeated, and that indicates sequentiality. This effect
does not show up in the recto-verso copies, or in proofs, or in canceled plates
a and b. It does, however, show up in America
plate c, which was also printed in a black ink (with plate 15 on its verso
printed in brown). Whereas plates a and b are variants of plates that were used
(plates 5 and 6), plate c is a new
text, most likely to have been inserted between plates 10 and 11. Unlike the other two canceled plates,
it has lines added and deleted in pencil, which indicates that Blake would have
had to execute another plate. Apparently he chose not to. It is possible that
plate c was not “eliminated in [the] revisions” of America (Erdman, Illuminated
Blake 394), but was a new idea executed around 1795 and printed along with
copies A and B. Its sharing ink color and texture suggests that it may at the
very least have been printed at that
time.
[13] America copy B
is listed in BB as having plate 4 masked (87), but
plate 4 in copy B, along with plate 9, are fakes; see my “Forgery or Facsimile?
An Examination of America plates 4
and 9,” copy B, Blake 16 (1983):
219-23. I suspect that copy B’s original plate 4 was like copy A’s, because,
as
the shared ink, paper, and inking accidentals show, copies A and B were printed
together (See n. 12).
[14] The
paper used in all these books is J. Whatman 1794 or I. Taylor. America copy A is now 32.0 x 23.3 cm, apparently cut down from approximately
38
x 27 cm, along with plates 1-2, 4-6 of D’Israeli’s copy of Europe copy A, his Song of Los copy B, plate 1 of his Visions copy F, and the three separate plates, “A Dream of Thiralatha” copy B,
“The Accusers” copy H, and “Joseph of Arimathea Preaching” copy F. These books
and plates, which were bound “somewhat irregularly” by 1856 (BB 474n1), were probably trimmed after
1835, when Song of Los and two of the
separate plates came into D’Israeli’s collection (BB 156n). (The leaves of the other five copies of Song of Los are a quarter of royal crown
paper, which was approximately 36 x 26 cm) Urizen
copy B and America copy A may have
sold as one lot because they were stabbed together, but this is impossible to
tell since America copy A has no stab holes, perhaps because
it
was trimmed.
[15] Bentley
dates America copies C, D,
and H c. 1796 because they have only one serpent tail in plate 13, reduced from
three (BB 87). An alteration of this
kind, though, is technically very minor, requiring at most a few hours’ work
with a scraper. The evidence is not firm enough to warrant dating these copies
two and three years later than the other recto-verso copies with which they have
more in common, stylistically and materially.
The frontispiece of America copy K sold
anonymously in 1904 “with property evidently once in the D’Israeli Collection”
(BB 103). This suggests the
possibility that America copy K was the copy that sold with Urizen copy B, but that its plates 2-18 were sold off and replaced by America copy A. The early provenances of plate 1 and plates 2-18 of America copy K are not known, but if D’Israeli’s and his son’s arithmetic can
be trusted, then plate 1 probably entered the collection after 1862, when Lord
Beaconsfield described having “170 Drawings etc By W. Blake” (BB 156n). The 10 plates added to the
collection since 1835, when it was described as having 160 designs, can be
accounted for by the eight plates of Song
of Los copy B and two separate
plates that were bound “somewhat irregularly” with America copy A and a few
other designs by 1856 (see n. 14). Had America
copy A replaced America copy K, it would have been before or while copy A was bound with the
other plates, and that would put the extra plate 1 in the collection by 1862
for a total of 171 designs.
[16] Both Thel copy J and Visions copy G were produced early (BB 118, 465n4); when and from whom
Dibdin acquired them is not known. They are assumed to have been purchased
directly from Blake because (using the same logic applied to D’Israeli) Dibdin
was a contemporary and owned them sometime after 1816. They could have been
purchased, though, after 1824, or even after 1836, since they were “not
catalogued with Dibdin’s library, sold by Evans, 26 June, 1817” (Census 23n), or mentioned in his Library
Companion (1824) or Reminiscences (1836),
the latter mentioning Songs and Night Thoughts (BR 243). It is possible,
then, that, as D’Israeli purchased books from Romney’s collection, so Dibdin
purchased his bound volume of Thel
and Visions from another
collector and later than we imagine.
Thel copy
J differs from other copies by having its two offending lines (19-20) in plate
8 deleted. These were scraped off the paper, which makes the deletion
impossible to verify as Blake’s since it occurred after the plate was inked and
printed. Thus possibly either Dibdin or the person from whom he acquired it had
erased the lines. The kind of deletion that is verifiable, other than masking,
was the wiping off of ink, which could only occur after inking and before
printing. Copy I, though, has scrolls painted over these two lines, which
appear to be in Blake’s hand.
[17] Smith
knew that Blake “preferred mixing his colours with carpenter’s glue, to gum,
on
account of the latter cracking in the sun, and becoming humid in moist weather”
(BR 472). But he must have also known
that the opacity of size-color or “body-color” was not due to the binder but
to
an inert pigment, like precipitated chalk, mixed with the colors, which gave
them bulk and hiding power. Even with glue binders Blake was able to produce
transparent stains. Giving water colors body was one of the ways watercolorists
attempted to legitimize their medium as painting
and to compete with oil painters. See Cohn for a discussion of this and
other techniques that English water color artists used “to establish their
medium’s credentials as high art—against painters in oils, who would admit them
into the Royal Academy only in 1812 and then segregated them into a separate
gallery” (11-16).
[18] Songs copy R
has plate 1 but it is unnumbered and seems to have been inserted late, perhaps
with
the copy’s impression of “Tyger,” which is watermarked 1808, whereas other
sheets are I. Taylor 1794 (Bindman, Fitzwilliam
Catalogue 12). Both plate 1 and “Tyger” were printed in black ink, whereas
the Innocence plates were printed in
a dull brown and the Experience plates
were printed in a dull green (or greyish-green)—the same two inks used in copy
A. Copy R also has plates 50-52, which are missing in copy A, but these too may
have been inserted or added late, in that they are the last three plates of Experience, and thus could have been easily added without upsetting the
initial pencil numbering. Plate 52 was printed in a blackish-green and plates
50 and 51 were printed in green. The three frame lines and some of the rich
colors in copy R appear certainly to have been added late, perhaps in
preparation to sell the copy to Linnell. Recoloring an illuminated book would
not have been unprecedented; Blake recolored Songs copy E in 1806 for
Butts, though its impressions were initially lightly washed c. 1789 and 1794.
What America copy B was to America copy A, Songs copy R may have been to Songs copy A, that is, the second set of
impressions pulled from the plates, and not produced between 1802-08 as Keynes
has suggested (Census 55). The matching inks (as well as coloring)
is particularly noticeable in “Holy Thursday” of Experience, where a
“monk” (i.e., an accidental ink blot) mars the word “rain” in line 14 (illus. 4
and 5). Copy R is slightly smaller than copy A, probably because it was trimmed
by Linnell’s binder to match his other volumes.
[19] This
possibility was suggested to me by G. E. Bentley, Jr.
[20] Because Songs copy A was numbered in ink by Blake, 1-26 and 1-20, with the
frontispieces and titlepages of both sets unnumbered, it is unlikely that its
50 pages were the result of later extractions, though, as mentioned (see n.
18), the three missing Experience plates,
50-52, are the last three plates of Experience
of Songs copy R—a grouping found
in no other copy.
[21] Linnell
described Songs of Innocence and of
Experience copy R as a “Book of
Designs” (BR 585). Coleridge, in a
letter to Tulk, Feb. 1818, referred to Songs
as “Drawings” (BR 252). Dibdin
(or an assistant who mistook Blake’s first name) also lists in a separately
published Index to the . . .
Reminiscences D’Israeli’s “letter respecting his collection of drawings by
the late T. Blake” (20). They were still being called drawings by D’Israeli’s
son, Lord Beaconsfield, who told W. M. Rossetti in 1862 that he had “170
Drawings etc By W. Blake” (BB 156n). The Large and Small Books of Designs copies
A were described similarly, selling as “original drawings” in 1846 (BB 356-57). Even uncolored prints,
prints not thought of as facsimiles or drawings, were often referred to as
drawings. Edward Dayes, for example, states that “drawing . . . possess[es] a
divine virtue in its creative power . . . as it preserves the images of distant
objects, and the likeness of those we love. Without risking our lives on the
boisterous ocean, we may enjoy at home, in a small book, representations of the
finest productions of nature and art . . .” (252-53). Drawing as representation
refers to “the exact imitation of all the forms and manners which present
themselves to our sight” (253), and thus re-presentations in books, which are
technically prints, are also “drawings.”
If, on the other hand, we assume that the
works in the portfolio were real drawings, a possibility suggested to me by G.
E. Bentley, Jr., then we must also assume that this collection was sold by 1835 and replaced by a new collection
focused entirely on Blake’s books, since the “one hundred and sixty designs”
can be accounted for in full by illuminated books. It is more reasonable to
assume that D’Israeli had a rudimentary collection by 1824 which he later
enlarged.
[22] According
to the OED, “chimney” referred not only to a flue
but also to “a fireplace or a hearth,” as well as to a “chimney piece,” the
mantle over the fireplace. The former sense is pictured in Europe plate 9; the latter sense mentioned in plate 12: “Over the
doors Thou shalt not: & over the chimneys Fear is written.”
[23] In addition
to The Book of Job
and other drawings, Linnell owned Innocence
copy I, America copy O, Europe copy K, Marriage copy H, Songs copy R, Jerusalem copy C, and On Homer’s Poetry copies B and C (250
designs on 224 leaves), and had three copies of For the Sexes. In 1824,
Cumberland’s illuminated book collection probably consisted of America copy F, Visions copy B, Europe
copy C, Song of Los copy D, Thel
copy A, Songs copy F, and For Children copy C (115 designs on 102 leaves), and possibly Marriage copy A and Urizen copy F, since they were once bound with Thel copy A (Census 21). Bentley, though, believes they were bound by Beckford,
who owned them by 1835, since they were not listed in the 1835 Cumberland
auction catalogue. Lot 61 of that catalogue was “Blake’s Book of Job. Book of
Thel, etc. coloured; and Gates of Paradise,” and sold for £3.13s.6d. (BB 657). The “etc.,” though, is
inconclusive; if only these three works sold, the price was high, especially
compared to lot 60, which consisted of copies of America, Visions, Europe, and Song of Los bound
together, and The Grave, and sold for £3.18s. Keynes’s
attribution of Marriage copy A and Urizen copy F to
Cumberland should not be easily ruled out.
In 1835, Butts bought America,
Visions, Europe, and Los from the Cumberland auction and
added them to the illuminated books he already owned: Songs copy E, Thel copy E, Ghost of Abel copy A, Jerusalem
copy I (posthumous), Milton copy A or B, On Homer’s Poetry (?A), which by any counting made his the
largest collection of illuminated books and prints at that time. It is
interesting that Butts, who was a major collector of water colors and drawings
and had purchased a few books, acquired most of his illuminated books from
another collector and not directly from Blake.
[24] The DNB also quotes the even harsher
critique of Alexander Dyce: Dibdin was “an ignorant pretender, without the
learning of a schoolboy, who published a quantity of books swarming with
errors. . .” Even a defender of Dibdin’s like William Alexander Jackson was
forced to admit that “the person who turns to Dibdin for information finds a
. . . baffling kind of error—and sometimes it entails considerable search
to
ascertain whether or not Dibdin is confused or careless, or whether he really
had seen such a book as he describes” (Records).
[25] Masquerier
was a respected painter 20 years Blake’s junior. He was also a friend of
Crabb Robinson’s, who speaks of him as having no feel for or
appreciation of Blake (BR 331, 336,
549).
[26] Blake sold many books late in life that were printed early, that is, sold
them
from stock. Examples of this practice include Innocence copy I, which
remained in the studio till Linnell purchased it (Essick, Huntington Catalogue 146); Songs
copy J to Tulk; Songs copy R to Linnell; Songs copy E, which contained impressions from Innocence copy J, to
Butts; Innocence of Songs copy O to Flaxman; Marriage copy H to Linnell; and America copy D to Crabb
Robinson.
Dibdin may have owned Innocence
copy S (BB 410), but this is
sheer speculation, apparently based on copy S being watermarked 1808 and thus
appearing to be the copy printed closest in date to Blake and Dibdin’s 1816
interview (BR 242-43). But as Bentley
also points out, Dibdin’s copy could have been G, J, L, N, O, Q, or T; in
short, any of those whose early nineteenth-century history is unknown (BB 410).
[27] I have
not seen the original letter, and I suspect Ogden did not either. Though
Ogden, observing that “Dibdin’s text of the letter is patently
corrupt,” “emended its obvious errors,” such as “every” for “very,” a semicolon
for a period, and “teribil via” for “terribilita,” he leaves “one hundred
sixty” in small capitals (44n). This makes it unclear if the emphasis is in the
original or in the transcript (which he uses), the former expressing the
excitement of news, the latter expressing Dibdin’s own initial response. In
either event, however, it seems clear that Dibdin was “staggered” by the size of a collection he thought he knew.
Again, it appears that Dibdin acquired Visions
copy G with Thel copy J, with which it was bound, not from
the 1834 auction but from an unknown collector after writing the Reminiscences
(1836), for how with these two books in a collection consisting of Innocence and Night Thoughts could he record having been staggered by the size
and diversity of Blake’s canon? If anything, it seems that his interest in
Blake was reawakened by D’Israeli’s enlarged portfolio.
[28] Their
paths may have crossed very early, though without either of them being aware
of it, and before the invention of illuminated books. D’Israeli had
contributed “Letter from Nonsense with some account of himself and family,” and
“Farther account of the family of Nonsense,” to Holcroft’s Wits Magazine for April (145-47) and May (177-79) 1784, which also
contained plates engraved by Blake.
[29] Bentley
has not identified Dyer, other than to suggest “(George?) Dyer,” by which
he probably means the poet (1755-1841) (BB 289, 298). Perhaps “Dyer” was the “honest, worthy, painstaking
bookseller, the brother of the late Rev. Mr. Dwyer,” whom Dibdin mentions in Reminiscences (1: 194), or, as Essick
has suggested, Charles George Dyer, a London printseller (Separate Plates 30).
[30] The
similarity between Europe copies
A and H has been noted by Bentley: “Copy A, which is much like H, may have been
printed early, but it seems to have been colored later, for both the designs
and the text are colored, a practice Blake apparently began about 1805” (Europe 5). Bentley’s date for coloring is based on his theory that washed
texts were characteristic of post-1805 coloring (see n. 10). Bindman, though,
believes its coloring belongs “to the mid-1790s” (Art and Times 106), which is technically more likely than its
printing and coloring having been separated by years. Europe copy H is on
smaller leaves than Europe copy A and is not listed in Blake Books (142) as trimmed, but “the leaves were disbound, trimmed, and
individually mounted, probably on the instructions of E. W. Hooper for the 1891
Boston exhibition” (Europe 14).
Initially, the paper for the two copies may have been the same size, though in
copy H it was undated E & P, the kind used in many of the recto-verso folio
copies of America and Visions which appear to have been
printed c. 1793-94, and in Marriage copy F, which was color printed c. 1794-95.
The paper, in other words, appears to have been from earlier stock than that
used in Europe copy A and the other large paper copies. The
brownish-black ink of Europe copy H is the same as in Visions copy G and appears to be the same used in Europe copy A, which is
not an olive brown (BB 142), but a
brownish-black. Europe copy H may have been left monochrome to
match America copy B, as Europe copy A appears to
have been colored to match America copy A.
The proposal that at least a second set of impressions were
printed from the plates is in keeping with standard printing practice. With
materials made and equipment set up, it would have been extremely inefficient
not to have done so (see n. 41). It is possible, then, that untraced Visions copy Q, which was printed on one side of the leaf, may have been
printed along with Visions copy G, that is, the second set of Visions impressions pulled in this
printing session.
[31] In
all four copies, relief lines and areas were brushed over with a second ink,
black in Marriage and Thel,
and brown in All Religions and No Natural Religion. The second ink was used to create shading and texture, which is
most apparent in the treatment of bark on the trees of Marriage plate 2, Thel plate
1, and No Natural Religion plates b10
and a5 of copies L and C, and the frontispiece of All Religions (see n. 32).
These copies of All Religions and No Natural Religion were printed on I. Taylor paper, the former
dated 1794 and the size of the leaves used in the D’Israeli copies, the latter
undated and trimmed to approximately 30 x 22 cm as part of a volume of
miscellaneous Blake prints (BB 337-39).
The leaf size, the four frame lines given each image (which may have been added
late, as were those in Songs copy R),
the absence of other copies, and its being kept in the studio until it was
acquired by Linnell, suggest that All
Religions are One copy A, the only complete copy extant, had a special
importance to Blake. The same appears true of No Natural Religion copy L,
which is on large leaves, with each image given four or more frame lines and
finished in pen and ink. It is also the only complete copy of series b, and
appears certainly to have been printed with 12 other green impressions now in
copies C, D, and L2. All the other impressions of No Natural Religion, series
a and b, were printed in brown, yellow-ochre, or olive, though most are listed
simply as “brown” and on octavo-size leaves (BB 80-81). Their “general uniformity suggests that they were
printed at the same time” (BB 82), while
their distinct differences from the green impressions suggests that they were
printed in a different session.
[32] Marriage copy D is said to be in green and brown inks (BB 287n4); the brown is actually black, which is the same hue, and
possibly the same ink, as that used in Thel
copy F. In Marriage it was brushed over the green and used to create shadows
in plates 1-5, 10-11, 14-16, 20, 21, 24, and in Thel it was brushed over the yellow-ochre in plates 1, 6-8. This
brownish-black reticulates like an ink, and not like a tempera color. (The very
dark and solid black that often passes for color printing is an opaque tempera
that was applied to the impression.) It is possibly the black ink used to print
America copies A and B and Urizen copy B. In any event, the color printing in Thel copy F and Marriage copy D is rudimentary, coming from the relief areas and not the
shallows, as it did in Visions copy F and most other works color printed
on
one side of the leaf.
[33] In
plate 7 (illus. 8), a tree and bush stem out of a green cliff; their purpose
is decorative as well as cosmetic, since they are actually covering ink
blemishes. The last line and bottom of plate 7 was given a thin pink wash,
which complements the bright orange in the sky, and moves the eye to a green
wash at the left of the text that is the same color as the cliff at the right.
The effect of these washes and additions is to frame or call attention to the
design as an imposed shape, that is, as different from the paper.
[34] America copy
A’s distinct and heavy coloring forces one to ask whether it was
painted for (or by) another painter, especially since it was printed in a black
ink like the uncolored copies. A comparison of copies A and K, the two colored
copies, though, reveals that copy K was colored in loose imitation of copy A
(especially apparent in plates 5, 6, 7, and 10, where the texts are washed and
treated as part of the same painting surface as the illustrations), which
suggests that copy A was not only colored by Blake but that the two may have
been colored at the same time, despite copy K’s having most likely been printed
earlier (probably in 1793 with copies C-I, L, and R). Plate 14, for example,
is
colored like copy A, though here the text is not washed: the tomb is yellow,
the tree is green and grey, and the ground is green. In copy A, each of these
colors is deepened with another thin layer of the same color or a grey; in copy
K they remain flat and thin. In general, copy K was not colored as well, or not
as consistently well, as copy A, and to my eye appears more likely the hand of
Mrs. Blake, which I believe is characterized by the use of flat unmodeled
washes and a predominance of pink, green, and purple. The unique shades of
purple and blue in copy K, as well as the simplicity of the laying in of colors
(particularly in those plates whose texts were not colored), make me suspect
her hand.
[35] As
noted by
Bindman, the coloring of Europe seems
“in fact . . . to belong to the mid-1790s” (Art
and Times 106) and not “about 1805” as Bentley claims (BB 147). It is stylistically closer to Urizen copy B than America copy A; the texts of Europe copy A are not
washed and the coloring is not as heavy. Many of the figures, though, were
deepened with a second wash in the same hue or in another color; the wings of
angels (plates 6 and 8) are multi-colored in the manner of the snake in Urizen copy B, plate 24: pink, blue, yellow, green. A few plates in these
copies (most notably the frontispiece of Visions
copy G [illus. 12]) were stippled with a dry brush, a technique more
characteristic of color-printed copies of Urizen,
like copies C and F.
Bindman has also commented on the peculiar coloring of Europe copy A: “bold additions in opaque watercolour that may have been
touched up by another hand” (Art and
Times 106). This appears true only of plate 1. Bindman also describes Europe copy A as color printed, though only plates 1 and 4 were printed in this style and even then only in a
rudimentary manner.
[36] The
similarity in palette is especially apparent between Urizen (B) plate 10 and America
(A) plate 8; Urizen plate 24 and America plates
4 and 5; Urizen plate 18 and America plate 12; and Urizen plate 25 and America plate 7 in the coloring of the bodies.
[37] If
these were large paper copies printed with other copies of the title, then Innocence of Songs copy A would
probably have been printed recto-verso or at the very least have included
plates 34-36, which were, however, printed as Experience plates. This dates the printing of the plates after Experience of Songs copies B-E. See n. 43.
[38] Bindman
and Butlin date the Small Book of
Designs copy A (and by
association the Large Book copy A) 1794 because the date on Urizen plate 1 was left as printed,
i.e., “1794.” They date copy B 1796 because the printed date was altered in pen
to “1796” (Bindman, Graphic Works 476; Butlin, Paintings and Drawings 2: 136).
Given these dates, Bindman believes the two copies represent different projects
and motives, the former serving as a “sampler of his best designs” to
“demonstrate his colour-printing process,” the latter possibly “some kind of
emblem book [compiled] out of a selection of his own designs” (476). A printed
date, however, does not date a printing session, as is clear from nearly any reprinted illuminated book; America copies A and B, for example,
retain their printed date of 1793 despite their having been assuredly printed
later. The altered date is reliable for both sets because many of the
impressions making up copies A and B were printed sequentially, as is
self-evident in color reproductions in Butlin’s Paintings and Drawings and Essick’s Separate Plates. The two pulls of “Albion Rose” from the Large Book copies A and B, for example
(Butlin, Paintings and Drawings illus. 331 and 332), have the same palette,
color placement, and brushwork, which are material and stylistic features
independent of the plate image and which could not have been duplicated months
or years apart. The same is true of “The Accusers of Theft Adultery Murder,”
“A
Dream of Thiralatha,” and “Joseph of Arimathea Preaching to the Britons” (see
Essick, Separate Plates, color plates 2-5, and 7-8). And the
same is true of the impressions in the two copies of the Small Book of Designs. The
three impressions of Urizen plate 5
in copies A and B (Butlin, Paintings and
Drawings illus. 329, 357) and an
independent pull (illus. 380) reveal the same kind of repetition (cf. 329,
which is reproduced in color, with no. V in Bindman’s Art and Times, a color
reproduction of Butlin, Paintings and
Drawings illus. 357). Color-printed impressions pulled from the same plate
at different times do not show this
kind of exact repetition. Compare, for example, the two copies of Visions plate 1 from the Large Book of Designs copies A and B
(Butlin, Paintings and Drawings illus. 362 and 337), where the highlights at
the right corner and at the waves are exactly the same, with that of copy F
(363), which was printed a year or so earlier. The same kinds of repetition and
difference are apparent in color-printed drawings printed in 1795 and those
printed in 1805 (seen. 46 and Butlin, “Physicality”).
Color-printed impressions are easily misdated, because the
sequentiality of color prints is not always self-evident. In color printing, a
second pull is often weaker than the first and must be touched up more
extensively in water colors and pen and ink, which in turn disguises the
material and stylistic features it may have initially shared with another
impression. This is especially apparent with the second copies of the Large and Small Book of Designs. Their
impressions were more carefully outlined in pen and ink and attentively
finished in water colors (see Butlin, Paintings
and Drawings illus. 337, 338,
353, and 360). They were also given multiple frame lines, a stylistic feature
characteristic of late production and similar to those employed in Songs copy R and All Religions are One copy A, both of which were printed early (c.
1795) but also refinished and sold late, both to Linnell. Like these other
works, the impressions constituting the Large
and Small Book of Designs copies
B appear to have remained with Blake; three of the former were acquired by
Linnell, and one of the latter given to Tatham. These impressions, in other
words, appear to have been reassembled and freshened up late, and the “1796”
date written in pen and ink may have occurred at that time, many years after
the impressions were printed. For that reason, the altered date is probably the
more trustworthy record of the initial production.
It is interesting to note that D’Israeli or his son acquired
three separate impressions from the Large
Book of Designs copy B, and that
Humphry’s impressions appear to be the first and finer pulls (see
Essick, Separate Plates VIII, IX, and
X). The impressions of copy B, which admittedly may exist as a book only by analogy with copy A,
appear not to have been presented as part of a set or portfolio, but as
autonomous paintings. Even the impressions making up copy A may not have been
intended as a book, since they were never bound as a set but instead inserted
and bound at the back of Humphry’s copy of Europe.
[39] Flaxman
also paid Blake four shillings in Oct. 1795 for “Blake’s Engravings” (BR 569), which may account for Experience, but if so, then Innocence would
have by itself cost 10s.6d., or six shillings more than Experience, which is very
unlikely since it was printed on both sides of the paper and thus involved
fewer leaves. Perhaps the 10s.6d. refers to Innocence
copy D and an untraced drawing
or
print. If any other of Flaxman’s payments to Blake can account for Experience, it is probably the £2.2s.
of
Oct. 1797 (BR 570); this, of course,
does not necessarily mean that Experience
was produced this late, particularly since by then Blake was busily at work
with Night Thoughts and Gray’s Poems (Bindman, Blake as Artist 109). It does suggest, though, that the printing
session responsible for this copy of Experience
occurred between 1795 and 1797.
[40] It
is not true that only “posthumous copies uniformly show this dark rim while
copies printed by the Blakes do not” (Bentley, William Blake’s Writings 1: xlix).
For plate borders, see the impressions from Songs copy I reproduced in The
Illuminated Blake. The borders
in a few impressions printed lightly, not because they were wiped of ink, as
was
Blake’s earlier practice, but because they were avoided (i.e., incompletely
inked) during inking. The ink varies in hue from lighter to darker brown, but
it is the same ink. The variation is due to the thickness of the layer of ink
as it is spread out and as it is applied to the plate, and even of slight
differences in the thickness and dampness of paper, since the condition of the
paper affects pressure and receptivity.
Innocence copy W, which is untraced, was probably part of
this edition. The rudimentary description in Sotheby’s auction catalogue for 30
April 1941 (lot 641) strongly suggests this possibility: “22 plates printed in
brown on one side of the paper only, watermarked ‘Whatman’ on plate 18,
wrappers, loose in morocco binding (7 15/16 in x 4 9/16 in).” An otherwise
irregular pattern of production (seven sets of Innocence and eight of Experience)
also suggests that Innocence copy
W was part of the edition.
[41] Besides
sharing stylistic features like format, size, and ink, these copies share
accidentals in inking (filled counters, blemishes from shallows, missing
letters, etc.). “The Lamb” of Innocence copy N, for example, shares inking patterns,
such as the same words darker and lighter, with “The Lamb” of Songs copy O. “On Another’s Sorrow” in Innocence
copy N is the same as the
impression in Innocence copy R, with the same letters missing and
same letters strengthened. These are signs of edition printing and cannot be
repeated by printing copies over a few years, matching them to an unstated but
presumed archetype. An even more overt sign of edition printing is the exact
repetition of recto-verso plate pairs in Innocence
copies A-G, K-M, and Innocence of
Songs copies B-E, which are thought
to have been produced between 1789 and 1800 (BB 376-77, 382). Bentley says “there is no easy explanation for
why” the same two plates would be “invariably paired” (BB 387). The difficulty dissolves once the unstated assumption that
illuminated books were printed one at a time and by commission is dismissed.
Indeed, if illuminated impressions were printed per book and not per plate as
was standard practice, then the exact repetition among copies supposedly
produced over an 11 year period necessarily implies a model, an idea especially
difficult to accept for Innocence and
Songs. It means that Blake would have intentionally repeated himself only
to undermine the model’s pairing by ordering the pages differently in each
copy, while within the same period producing copies of Innocence (copies I, J, X, and Innocence
of Songs copy F) that do not repeat the model.
While traces of ink from the lower shallows may continue to
print, their absence within a set of impressions is no more proof of
discontinuous printing than are different inks or sizes of paper, but may be a
sign of the cleaner impression having been pulled first, or of necessary
adjustments in ink, dabber, pressure, etc., having been made to make the next
print better. Indeed, the very existence of poorly printed or registered
illuminated impressions is reason enough to believe that Blake printed multiple
impressions per plate—and to have done otherwise would have been a terribly
inefficient use of time, labor, and materials. He admits as much in the
prospectus: “No Subscriptions for the numerous great works now in hand are asked,
for none are wanted; but the Author will produce his works, and offer them to
sale at a fair price” (K 208). Blake declares that multiple copies of each book
had been and would continue to be produced independent of subscription, that he
had, in other words, produced books on his own account and independent of
advanced monies.
The idea that Blake printed most of the illuminated books in
limited editions and not one at a time, printed the impressions per plate and
not, as Essick (and others) argue, on “a per-copy basis” (Essick, “Materials”
856), alters the dates of most books and our understanding of what constitutes
Blake’s “style,” as well as our idea of what motivated production. Perhaps more
significant, it is a mode of production that reveals when Blake was and was not
involved with poetry, which forces us to reexamine the role illuminated
printing and poetry played in Blake’s creative life after 1795. The evidence
for this mode of production is dealt with briefly in my Art of William Blake’s Illuminated Prints and more extensively in a
forthcoming article.
[42] Separating
coloring from printing also gave Blake the option of offering monochrome
copies as “finished,” that is, illuminated prints as prints instead
of hand colored drawings, should that be requested of him. In any event,
monochrome copies of Innocence and Songs are not “proof” copies, as Songs copy K is described by the Pierpont Morgan Library’s catalogue. There
are no “proof” copies of these works, since the point of proofing a plate was
to check its design or to test and adjust the press. Neither case requires the
whole set of plates be printed.
[43] Europe copy F is not listed as being color printed (BB 142, 145), but all of
its plates were color printed from the surface in the same manner and, more
important, with the same colors and inks as copies D, E, and G, which suggests
that the four copies were printed together. In plate 9, for example, the two
women, child, and background are color printed in four different colors: green,
reddish brown, yellow ochre, and black. In copies D-G, the same four colors are
used, though their placement may alternate. The figure on the right is reddish
brown in copies D, E, and G, and there are slight traces of that color in the
hands of the figure in copy F, which is in yellow ochre. The very same inks and
placement were used in plate 9 of copies B and C, except that the reddish brown
of the right-hand figure was also printed from the shallows. It appears that
Blake painted the plate six times using the same palette and printed four
impressions on two sides of the sheet and two impressions on one side only.
All six copies are on undated I.
Taylor paper, with at least two sheets of 1794 / J. Whatman in copy C; the four
recto-verso copies match recto-verso copies of America, or, rather, give
buyers the opportunity to have matched copies, buyers such as Ozias Humphry who
owned recto-verso copies of America (H) and Europe
(D). At this time (c. 1794),
though, there were only recto-verso copies of America; copies A and B,
the single-sided colored and monochrome copies of America had not yet been printed. They were produced as part of
the large paper set and appear to have had as their counterparts Europe copies A and H, which were
similarly colored and uncolored. The Experience
plates of Songs copies B-E, all
on undated I. Taylor and J. Whatman papers, were probably printed recto-verso
for the same reason as Europe copies
D-G: to match copies of Innocence printed
earlier. That the two parts were printed at different times is indicated by
plates 34-36 having been printed with
Innocence but moved over to Experience, taking with them plate 26
(the recto of p1. 34), which belongs to Innocence.
[44] Platemarks
are most noticeable in Experience, Marriage, and Visions color-printed plates; given their embossments, these plates
were apparently bitten deeper than Urizen
and Song of Los. Todd’s assertion
that color printing did not require a press is unfounded and ignores the fact
that both levels are being printed and that the inks were burnt oil and not
glue based like the colors. The former is the vehicle for intaglio ink and
necessitates more pressure for its clean transference from plate to paper than
can be gotten “by the hand” (Todd 37).
[45] For
a description of copy F, which was recently rediscovered,
and color
reproductions, see Dörrbecker. A comparison of the ink color and inking
peculiarities of plate 4, for example, reveals that the impressions from copies
A-F were pulled sequentially; Essick notes the same with plates 1, of copies A-E, though finding a
different printing order than myself (Essick, Printmaker 129). Other color-printed works, like the Large Book of Designs copies A and B,
the Small Book of Designs copies A
and B, and the monoprints of 1795, followed this practice (see n. 38).
[46] Color
printing preceded and led to Blake’s great color print drawings of 1795, which
are technically monotypes. Tatham described Blake’s monoprinting process to
Gilchrist as making “prints in oil,” and although the medium appears not to
have been oil paint but a mixture of ink and size color, and the support
appears not to have been exclusively millboard (at least one print, “God
Judging Adam,” was pulled from a relief-etched metal plate), and although
Linnell dismissed the account as inaccurate (without saying how or why),
Tatham’s description is essentially correct for both the monotypes and the
color-printed illuminated impressions. According to Tatham, Blake painted his
colors upon the support:
roughly and quickly, so that no colour would have time to dry. He
then took a print of that on paper, and this impression he coloured up in
water-colours, repainting his outline on the millboard when he wanted to take
another print. This plan he had recourse to, because he could vary slightly each
impression; and each having a sort
of accidental look, he could branch out so as to make each one different. The
accidental look they had was very enticing.
(BR 33-34, my emphasis)
Tatham
admits that impressions could be sequential and different, though, as noted (37), the overt differences were due
more to finishing than to printing. He also admits that impressions could be
produced whenever Blake “wanted to” repaint “the outline,” which implies that
multiple color-printed drawings could have been printed during one session or
years later, which is exactly what recent research of Martin Butlin, the
leading expert on the color-printed drawings, has verified, that some
impressions were printed sequentially in 1795 and others from the same plates
in c. 1805 (Butlin, “Physicality” 12). The fact that Blake was producing color
prints in c. 1805, with all their blots, blurs, and opacity, indicates that
color printing’s use and abandonment were not tied to Blake’s changing theories
about perception.
[47] Blake’s
comment in 1827 about needing six months to print a copy of Songs was seriously qualified with “consistent with my other Work,” and cannot be taken to reflect his
practice or abilities 30 years earlier, when he was not “shut up in a Corner”
but had a “whole House to range in,” i.e., was set up to print, physically and
mentally, in that the illuminated books in the early 1790s were his primary
creative work (K 878). Equally important, in 1827 he was no longer just washing impressions, but rather painting them elaborately, which took
more time and attention. The coloring of most books produced before 1795 and
not color printed is simple, consisting of a few washes; for example, the five
broad washes in “The Lamb” of Innocence copy
B probably represent no more time and labor than it took to ink and print this
plate one time, since those acts involved applying ink to the plate with a
dabber, which had to be handled carefully to keep it from touching the
shallows, wiping the borders, registering the plate on the bed of the press and
registering the paper to the plate, and pulling the bed through the rollers.
For plates like “School Boy” and “Holy Thursday,” laying in simple washes would
have taken far less labor than inking and printing. Nor do Blake’s late comments
accurately describe his late practice, which may seem to have been to print and
color books by order, “having none remaining of all that [he] had Printed” and
little room to do otherwise, but actually conformed to his earliest practice
of
printing in editions, albeit smaller ones, as is evinced by the material and
stylistic features shared by the last copies of Songs, copies V, Z, and
AA, Visions, copies N, O, P, and Thel, copies N and O (see n. 51).
[48] What
little information that exists about Blake’s activities for 1795 is nearly
all in Stedman’s journal and does not reveal Blake’s work schedule (BR 49). It appears that Blake executed only three small frontispieces that
winter and spring, finishing them by March and May (BR 614). The year before that he had no commissions other than six
outlines for Cumberland’s Thoughts on
Outline (1796); conversely (and understandably), Blake produced and printed
more illuminated plates in 1794 than any other. It is important to understand
that printmaking and printing were Blake’s life, that he was not a poet lucky
enough to know how to etch or unlucky enough to have to leave off writing and
make time to print. It is also important to recognize the fallacy of
Cunningham’s popular depiction of Blake as a man working for the publishers by
day and for himself at night (BR 484, 501). The truth is that Blake worked
at
home and structured his own time, worked on book illustrations, which were
relatively small and syntactically uncomplicated compared to separate plates,
i.e., reproductive engravings after paintings, like his “Beggar’s Opera” of
1788 after Hogarth. Indeed, with the possible exception of two etchings and an
engraving after Fuseli (c. 1790? BR 612),
Blake did not execute any separate commercial plates between 1789 and 1795, the
period of illuminated printing, and, as mentioned, appears to have had a good
deal of time on his hands in 1794 and 1795.
Had Blake started the Night
Thoughts designs in 1795, as Butlin believes, he would most likely not have
begun till after he printed his last books and the monoprints, since that
enormous project would have necessitated rearranging his work-space as well as
his time. That painting and printing made different practical demands Blake
made clear in his refusal in 1808 to reprint illuminated books, fearing “that
it is impossible for me to return to [them] without destroying my present
course,” “which in future must alone be devoted to Designing & Painting”
(K
865-66).
[49] Though
D’Israeli’s copy of Visions, copy F, was not printed with the set, Visions
copy G was, which keeps the
number at 160; in addition to these 160 plates there were the 23 small plates
of All Religions copy A and No Natural Religion copy L,
and with more than one impression printed from the America, No Natural Religion, Europe, and possibly Songs plates,
there may have been about 275 impressions. The estimate of 7 to 10 days to
print these plates is based also on the experience of Paul Ritchie of the
Manchester Etching Workshop, who printed the Workshop’s Blake facsimiles of Songs copy B in 1983. According to Ritchie, if Mrs. Blake was the “clean-hand
person,” then this estimate is very charitable. Working together, “100
uncolored relief prints of Songs could
be done in a day and the 180 larger America
prints [10 copies] could easily be
done in 3 days”—and this would include “a pint & a pie at lunchtime”
(private correspondence). Again, it must be remembered that once the shop was
set up, printing small relief plates was relatively easy, that printing was
what Blake and Mrs. Blake did for their material and spiritual livelihood, and
that my estimate of 30 to 40 impressions a day supposes a mere three to five
impressions an hour, an output easily reached even with intaglio plates and
color printing. In preparation for this article, I printed two of the
electrotypes we used in the Manchester Etching Facsimile of Songs. Working alone and with a linen dabber, I printed 30 impressions,
15 from each plate, in two hours.
The relation between practice and style is beyond the scope of this essay, but suffice it to say that Blake’s practice only seems inconsistent because his mode of production and its effect on dating are poorly understood, obscured by our focus on differences instead of similarities (by which style is defined and discernible) and our assumption that artifacts as unique (and valuable) as illuminated books must have been produced uniquely, that is, one at a time.
[50] America may
have been reprinted because there were no copies in stock on one side of
the sheet; Europe, on the other hand, may have been reprinted because copies B and
C,
which were color printed on one side of the leaf (though probably with
recto-verso copies D-G, see n. 43), did not match the copies of America texturally or were already sold.
Cumberland, one of Blake’s earliest collectors, owned Europe copy C; Hanrott
owned Europe copy B, which was not necessarily purchased early or directly from
Blake. Hanrott bought Songs copy P in 1826 from another collector (BB 419), and his copies of America (G), Europe (B), and Jerusalem (B),
which were bound possibly as early as 1821 (the date of a flyleaf; BB 102), may also have been purchased
late. As with D’Israeli, there is no evidence other than the books themselves
to suggest Hanrott knew or met Blake.
[51] Blake
was to print the canon in this fashion, that is, print various books around
the same time using the same paper, printing format, palette, and inks,
in c. 1815 and 1825, apparently to replenish stock. For example, he printed
copies of Marriage (G), Visions (N, O, and P), Thel (N, O), Milton (D), Urizen (G), and Songs
(U, T2) all on the same Ruse & Turners
/ 1815 paper and in the same shades of reddish brown and orange ink. All of these
copies except Thel copy
O and Milton copy D, which were stabbed together for Vine, have a similar single
frame line outlining the plates. The technical, material, and stylistic
similarities suggest that these copies were produced in the same printing
sessions.
[52] Christie’s
catalogue of 1876 (BB 405). Innocence copy D was probably produced in 1789, but no later than 1793, yet
Flaxman returned from Italy late in 1794. Innocence
copy C was said by R. H. Shepherd
to have been “executed” for Samuel Rogers (BB
405n2). Both cataloguer and critic equate ownership with commission.