This essay appeared in print in Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 41.2 (fall 2007): 52-83. The online version has six more illustrations, all illustrations in color, and a slightly longer first section.
Blake's "Annus Mirabilis":
The Productions of 1795
Joseph
Viscomi
In 1795, Blake produces The Song of Los , The Book of Ahania , and The Book of Los , executes 12 large color-printed drawings, color prints a few etchings, reprints 8 copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience , reprints most of his illuminated canon to date in a deluxe, large-paper set, and begins the 537 watercolor drawings of Night Thoughts . The first period of illuminated book production, 1789-95, culminates, new experiments in combining printmaking and painting are begun and perfected, and work as designer and painter begins to dominate Blake's energies and time for the next 10 years. In this essay, the second of a two-part study, I focus on the last of Blake's illuminated books from this period, The Song of Los , The Book of Los , and The Book of Ahania , trying to sequence them from a purely materialist perspective—by recreating the large copper sheets from which the individual plates were cut—to see how Blake's creative process, including changes of mind and false starts, unfolded through production and how these particular works and their techniques might relate to one another, to the color-printed drawings, and to the experiments in color printing that lie behind them both.[1]
The Song of Los is generally thought to precede the two other books, which is to say, Blake is thought to have returned to America a Prophecy (1793) and Europe a Prophecy (1794) with "Africa" and "Asia," the two parts of The Song of Los , rather than continuing The First Book of Urizen (1794), because he began the "continental" books before the "Urizen" books. [2] The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania are thought to be last because they are intaglio and short, supposedly representing a decreased focus on illuminated book production. An easy symmetry and progression, from large format to small, relief etching to intaglio—and then no more illuminated books until Milton (c. 1804-11)—helps make this sequence attractive. But when examined in terms of their production, these books reveal a much different sequence, one in which The Song of Los is executed last, the "Urizen" project is completed uninterrupted, and the return to the "continental" project is possibly an afterthought.
I.
Blake's Reconstruction of The Song of Los
The Song of Los, dated 1795 on its title page, is
Blake's most oddly shaped illuminated book, consisting of four full-page
illustrations (including the title page) and four text plates, which are about
4 cm. narrower than the illustrations and 1 to 2 cm. shorter. As I have shown
elsewhere, illuminated plates are never perfectly uniform or square, because
Blake cut most from larger sheets by hand.[3]
But the variance among plates is greatest in The Song of Los—and, as we shall see, is actually much
greater than it first appears. The frontispiece (illus. 1), picturing Urizen
kneeling at an altar under a globe inscribed with strange markings, is the
exact same size as the endplate (illus. 2), picturing Los kneeling above the
sun, hammer in hand. Figures with globes in mirrored position pair the designs
visually and thematically and suggest a new, conflated virtual design (illus.
3). Plates 1 and 8 are the same size because they are executed on the front and
back of the same copper plate. Proving that these plates are recto/verso is not
difficult, but one cannot rely on recorded plate measurements. Bentley records
plate 1 as 23.4 x 17.3 cm. and plate 8 as 23.5 x 17.5 cm. (Blake Books 70); these are indeed the approximate
average measurements of known impressions. But given how plates were cut from
larger sheets, they are not perfectly squared, and thus one needs four
measurements. For example, the copy B impression of plate 1 is 23.6 cm. left
side, 23.6 cm. right, 17.8 cm. top, and 17.5 cm. bottom. Plate 8 has the same
measurements, indicating that the plates may be materially connected,
either recto/verso of the same plate or cut from the same larger sheet of
copper. Absolute proof of plates' being recto/verso comes from their sharing
the same measurements as well as unique shape, which can be demonstrated by
laying one of the images in reverse along two sides of the other image (illus.4).
Blake typically etched both sides of
relief-etched plates: Experience
plates are on the versos of Innocence, Europe
on America, Urizen on Marriage. Thus, discovering that plates 1 and 8
were etched recto/verso was not surprising. Finding plates 2 and 5, the other
two full-page illustrations, apparently not recto/verso, however, was surprising. Plate 2
(illus. 5) is recorded as 24.3 x 17.2 cm. and plate 5 is recorded as 23.2 x
17.5 cm. (Bentley, Blake Books
70). I suspected these measurements were mistaken and recently reexamined five
copies to see if I could determine their correct sizes and shapes. Plate 2 of
copy B is 24.2 cm. left, 24.0 cm. right, 17.4 cm. top, and 17.2 cm. bottom.
Plate 5 (illus. 6) is 17.4 cm. bottom and 17.18 cm. top, but is 9 mm. shorter
in height on both sides. Very interesting: same shape, same widths, but
shorter. The discrepancy is an
illusion, however, caused by the top of plate 5's having been masked 9 mm. upon
printing.[4]
The plates are recto/verso, with the top of plate 5 being the bottom of plate
2. The masking is very difficult to detect, but the plate's embossment is
visible in the verso of the copy C impression, which reveals the plate's true
size. It also reveals a 4-5 mm. dent in the plate's edge, which is visible in
the embossment of the plate 2 impression (under the "b" in "Lambeth" in the
inscription), but made more readily apparent through computer enhancement
(illus. 7). The dent would have been unsightly and distracting had it been
printed as part of the heavily color-printed plate 5. The surface area of the
bottom of plate 2, however, was uninked except for the inscription, and thus
could be printed without showing the dent. Together, this recto/verso pair form
a virtual design in which Urizen is imprisoned behind the leaves of the lilies
holding Titania and Oberon (illus. 8), calling to mind the imprisonment of
another eternal in Urizen
plate 4 (illus. 9) and the body behind the tall grasses in the trial proof for Pity (illus. 10), which I will refer to
throughout this essay as small Pity
and which, as we will see below, was executed before The Song of Los.
Erdman sees a virtual design formed of
plates 6 (illus. 11) and 7 (illus. 12).
He notes that plate 7 "seems to continue the forest of plate 6; the boughs that crowd the left margin—an
unusual effect—can be the ends of those bent down in the right margin of 6" (Illuminated
Blake 180). Envisioning
plate 7 to the right side of plate 6 actually corresponds to Blake's design as
originally executed. These two plates, which form the poem or section entitled
"Asia," are actually the left and right sides of one horizontal design, as are
plates 3 (illus. 13) and 4 (illus. 14),
which form the poem or section entitled
"Africa." The "Africa" design is 21.5 cm. left, 21.5 cm. right, 27.3 cm. top,
27.2 cm. bottom; the "Asia" design is 22.2 cm. left, 22.2 cm. right, 27.2 cm.
top, 27.4 cm. bottom. Instead of being recto/verso, as one would expect, the
text plates are actually only half their original designs; as conceived and
etched, "Africa" and "Asia" are autonomous designs clearly related to one
another visually but not materially. I discovered these interesting material
facts in 1991 and published them two years later (Blake and the Idea of the Book 287), and Detlef Dörrbecker, in his 1995
edition of the poem, was the first to arrange black and white photographs of
the conjunct pages to give an idea of what the original relief-etched plates
looked like (320n29, 345-46). The digital recreations here (illus. 15, 16),
however, are the first reproductions to join the plates seamlessly and present
them color printed in their entirety.[5]
Blake initially divided his text into two
columns, but very unlike the columns in Urizen, these being very loosely placed across
a horizontal—or "landscape"—format, a format used for paintings and prints but
not the text of books. By masking one side of the design, probably with a sheet
of paper, he was able to print each text column separately. Hence, he
transformed a coherent design 27.2 cm. wide into two seemingly independent
designs/pages approximately 13.6 cm. wide, which is nearly 4 cm. narrower than
the four illustration pages. As I said, The Song of Los is Blake's most oddly shaped illuminated
book. He produced it using just four plates, but two are portrait format and
executed recto/verso and two are landscape format and apparently executed using
one side only. Very odd indeed. Why create pages in oblong folio format, with
double columns, so visually different from the pages of America and Europe? Why print the columns of text
separately after composing and etching them as part of the same design?
Given the two distinct sets of plates, The
Song of Los appears to
have emerged from two distinct stages of production, with the text plates
coming first. This sequence seems
the most likely, because if Blake had the two portrait plates on hand,
intending to use them for the designs of his new book, then he would have
acquired plates for texts to match. If, along with the portrait plates, he also
had the 27.2 cm. plates on hand, then he probably would have cut them
approximately 17.5 cm. wide and etched both sides to create four text plates to
match the width of his illustrations, thereby producing a book of eight pages much
nearer in size and shape to America
and Europe. It seems
reasonable to assume, then, that the two portrait plates were not yet on hand,
that the two 27.2 cm. wide plates were acquired first, and that the text plates
preceded the illustrations. (As we
shall see, the shared width of these plates is not a coincidence; at least four other
plates from 1795 share the exact measurement of 27.2 cm., including the sheets
that yielded the plates for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania.) Moreover, from this perspective, Blake
appears to have set out to fuse poetry, painting, and printmaking in ways even
more radical than the illuminated books. "Africa" and "Asia," as originally
executed, function autonomously as painted poems or written paintings, with
text superimposed on a landscape design. Each design could have been matted,
framed, viewed, and read like a separate color print or painting. They do not,
however, function as book pages.
Blake created relief etching as a way to
work as a printmaker with the tools of the poet and painter, that is to say,
with pens, brushes, liquid ink, and colors, rather than the burins and needles
conventionally required of metal. Blake worked on rather than in the metal surface, as though it were
paper, with tools that enabled him to work outside the conventions and codes of
printmaking and indulge his love of drawing and writing. His new medium encouraged
the autographic gesture, the calligraphic hand of the poet with the line and
brushwork of the painter. As he says in his prospectus (1793), his is a "method
of Printing which combines the Painter and the Poet," but he notes also that it
is a "method of Printing both Letter-press and Engraving" (Erdman, Complete
Poetry 692), by which he
means printing text and illustration in the service of book production. Between
1789 and 1794, Blake printed illuminated plates as book pages; in his later
style, beginning with the color-printed designs of 1794, he printed the plates
more like miniature paintings. In the early style, he wiped the plate's borders
of ink to conceal the rectangular shape that signals copper plate, press, and
machine, printed on both sides of the leaf to create facing pages, and washed
the illustration lightly but left the text unwashed. The visual result, as
Robert Essick has noted, is a "printed manuscript" (Blake 170). In the later style, Blake printed
plate borders, printed on one side of the leaf only, and washed the entire
design, often further emphasizing the now overt rectangular shape with frame
lines drawn around the plate. Whether he printed them as poems or elaborately
colored them as miniatures, Blake designed illuminated plates with reference to
the codex form and in portrait format.
Blake did not, however, design "Africa"
and "Asia" as book pages; he transformed them into book pages through a trick
of printing. Horizontal formats were commonly used for print series,
particularly aquatints of picturesque views, but also for works like George
Cumberland's Thoughts on Outline,
eight of whose illustrations Blake engraved in late 1795 and 1796. But, as
mentioned, horizontal formats were not used for texts of books, nor does any
book in oblong folio before 1795 with pages in double columns come readily to
mind (I have asked a number of librarians of special collections about such a
possible model and hope a reader of this essay may know of one that might have
influenced Blake). Even stitched together to form a long open diptych (illus.
17), the two designs seem less like facing pages in a book than a long panel,
pair of broadsides, or a horizontal scroll. Perhaps Blake used a non-Western
book format to evoke Africa and Asia. For example, the Chinese horizontal
scroll, usually on silk or paper, fuses calligraphy and painted image. It reads
right to left, starting with the title panel, which names the work, and has a
colophon panel, at the end of the scroll or juxtaposed over the image, which contains the poem or notes pertaining to the work. Blake titles his poems
"Africa" and "Asia" and thus does not need a title page, which is a book
convention. If he meant the poems
to be read as parts of one work entitled "The Song of Los," then that too is
effected without a title page. "Africa" begins with "I will sing you a song of
Los, the Eternal Prophet," and "Asia" ends with "The Song of Los is Ended. /
Urizen Wept." Moreover, if treating the poems as autonomous designs or parts of
the same panel or scroll, Blake could have signed and dated the work in pen and
ink on its surface as he did paintings and color-printed drawings (usually with
"WB inv." in monogram, with a date; illus. 18). Thus, these works did not need
a title page for date and author.
Perhaps the two designs were meant to be
joined and printed on one sheet to form a panorama, a format the landscape
painters Paul Sandby and Francis Towne were experimenting with in the 1780s and
1790s, or, as noted, to suggest an ancient scroll, the predecessor of the
printed codex, and thus a fitting medium for the Eternal Prophet. Indeed, "in
the context of Romantic textual ideology," according to Mitchell, "the scroll
is the emblem of ancient revealed wisdom, imagination, and the cultural economy
of hand-crafted, individually expressive artifacts" (65). For Blake, "the scroll represents
writing as prophecy:
it is associated with youthful figures of energy, imagination, and rebellion"
(65). Printed together on one sheet of paper the designs form a long, narrow,
perpetually open composition approximately 22.5 x 54.5 cm., which is half the
size of most of the color-printed drawings; if given a centimeter between and
around the images (illus. 19), the resulting two-part panel would be
approximately half the size of Newton (46 x 60 cm.) or Good and Evil Angels (44.5 x 59.4 cm.), among the largest of
the color-printed drawings. As originally designed, however, the two poems
continuing Blake's continental myth do not resemble the previous installments
in size, shape, number, or structure. America with 18 plates and Europe with 17 plates are matched in size,
shape, and structure: both begin with frontispiece, title page, two-page
preludium (Europe's
plate 3 is a late addition, though one that gave Europe 18 pages), a heading of "A Prophecy,"
and "finis" as the last word. The titles of The Song of Los
sections clearly connect the poems/panels to the earlier works, but the horizontal
format marks a break with them as well. The full visual extent of that break
was not realized; instead, Blake executed four illustration pages exactly the size of America and Europe and printed each of the four text columns
separately. The resulting eight pages of The Song of Los are frontispiece, title page, "Africa,"
full-page design, "Asia," end-piece; headings of "A Prophecy" or endings of
"finis" are not present. As reconstructed, The Song of Los is unevenly shaped and oddly structured,
being two poems in one book to form a quartet of continental works within a trilogy of
artifacts.
Proofs of the text plates in their
original condition, or "first state," are not extant, which may suggest that
Blake abandoned his experiment in rethinking text and image soon after
completing the text plates. This, however, cannot be proven, since other plates
are also without proofs. But it does seem reasonable to suggest that Blake
reconstructed the text plates to salvage an experiment about which he had
changed his mind. We can sequence and speculate upon the stages in the
production of The Song of Los,
but can we sequence those stages within the year's worth of productions and
discover the relation of the books to one another and to the color-printed drawings?
These are the main questions I try to answer in the following five sections.
II. The Large Color Prints
The large color prints are, "as a group,
the first really mature individual works in the visual arts that Blake created.
Moreover they are, as a group, probably the most accomplished, forceful, and
effective of Blake's works in the visual arts" (Butlin, "Physicality" 2).
Technically, they are monotypes, which are in effect printed paintings.
Frederick Tatham described the process to Gilchrist accurately enough, stating
that when Blake
wanted to make his prints in oil ... [he]
took a common thick millboard, and drew in some strong ink or colour his design
upon it strong and thick. He then painted upon that in such oil colours and in
such a state of fusion that they would blur well. He painted 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, re-painting 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.
(Gilchrist 1: 376)
To W. M. Rossetti, Tatham added that the printing was done
in a loose press from an outline sketched
on paste-board; the oil colour was blotted on, which gave the sort of
impression you will get by taking the impression of anything wet. There was a look of accident about this
mode which he afterwards availed of, and tinted so as to bring out and favour what was there rather blurred.
(Rossetti
16-17)
Tatham is mistaken about the medium, which was gum and
glue-based colors and not oil-based inks or colors, as are commonly used today
for monotypes, and Blake would not have had to work too quickly or worry too
much if his colors dried to the touch on the support, because he almost
certainly printed on dampened paper, whose moisture would have reconstituted
the colors.[6]
The colors, though, he applied "strong and thick" to create a unique spongy
opaque paint film, but also to enable a second and sometimes a third impression
to be pulled from the millboard without having to replenish the colors.
Generally speaking, depending on the paper's dampness and thickness and the
amount of printing pressure, the colors are strongest in first impressions and
less intense in subsequent pulls. The presence of lighter outline and colors in
second impressions is proof that outline and colors were both printed together
for the first impressions as well, even for the one color-printed drawing with a
relief-etched outline, as will be demonstrated in illustrations below. Tatham
is correct, then, to assume that Blake "drew ... his design ... [and] then painted upon
that ... [and] then took a print of that on paper," as opposed to printing outline
("design") and colors separately.[7]
He is also correct that Blake "tinted" the impressions "to bring out and favour
what was there rather blurred." As with his color-printed illuminated book
impressions, Blake finished the large color-printed drawings in watercolors and
pen and ink, clarifying forms in the blots and blurs. Translucent and
transparent washes over mottled colors could also transform printed colors,
making more colors appear to have been printed than actually were. Given that
the method is primarily painting on a flat support and pressing that painting
into paper, differences among impressions were inevitable if not also
intentional, hence the oxymoronic term of monoprint, a print that is unique
rather than exactly repeatable.
To use millboard to print colors requires
at least minimal sealing of its porous surface. Blake could have done this with
a coating of glue size or gesso, which is chalk or whiting mixed with size and
painted over panels or canvas to produce a very white ground. Smith, Tatham,
and Linnell mention Blake's using this mixture to prepare his tempera
paintings. According to Smith,
"his ground was a mixture of whiting and carpenter's glue, which he passed over
several times in thin coatings" (Bentley, Blake Records 622). In his manuscript on the life of
Blake, Tatham says "3 or 4 layers of whitening & carpenters Glue" were used
(Bentley, Blake Records
671). Linnell told Gilchrist that it was a "plaster ground (literally glue and
whiting); but he always called it either fresco, gesso, or plaster. And he
certainly laid this ground on too much like plaster on a wall" (1: 368). One can sand gesso smooth or leave the
striations created by brushing it on for a rougher feel for brushes. Colors
printed from such a textured ground will replicate that texture if they are
thin or pressed hard enough, or hide it if they are thick or opaque enough. The
sample of three color strips (illus. 20) demonstrates this: at the top of the image,
the first and second strips (red and yellow ochre) reveal the same striations, indicating that this
texture is from the millboard and not the paint layers; the opacity of the
third strip (green) hides most of that texture. At the bottom of the strips, the gesso was
applied with a stump brush rather than brushed on, and its textures are also
revealed in the printed colors.
The striations in the surfaces of The
Night of Enitharmon's Joy (illus. 21) and Christ Appearing to
the Apostles (illus. 22)
suggest that Blake painted his large color-printed drawings on gessoed grounds.
Butlin notices "a striated" effect in Pity, as well as in impressions of Newton and Nebuchadnezzar (cat. 311, 307, 302), but believes it
may have been "produced by only partial adherence" of paint to paper "as if the
paper were slightly oily"
("Physicality" 17). The
striations, though, appear not to have been created by the paint layer, but by
the textured surface of the millboard, because the same striated patterns are
visible across different printed colors, as is clear in the Metropolitan Museum's
copy of Pity (illus.
23).[8]
Gesso is used in fresco painting, and if Blake "always called" his "plaster
ground" "fresco, gesso, or plaster," as Linnell states, then Blake's writing
"Fresco" on five of his large color prints in an "Indian-type ink" (McManus and Townsend 82) is fitting.[9]
But whether he used glue
size or gesso, or thought of the millboard surface as canvas or panel or
plaster wall, he needed an outline to know what to paint. Chalk or charcoal
serves this purpose in oil painting, but lines made with either medium could be
ruined in color printing and thus make returning to the design years later (as we know Blake did, around 1805) impossible (Butlin, "Newly Discovered Watermark" 101). He
could have perhaps relied on the thin dried colors on the millboard, but it is
more likely that he had an impervious outline to guide his hand. Some X-radiographs
reveal traces of a lead-based paint, which may have been used for outlining,
while others show no traces of lead, supporting the idea that the outline was
executed in an ordinary water-based "Indian ink," which is lead-free and thus
not detectable (McManus and Townsend 87). Indeed, the "Indian ink" used to sign
color prints works for the purpose, because when dry it is not disturbed by the
wet black paint and colors laid over it or by printing (Essick and Viscomi,
"Blake's Method" 62). With a fixed
outline, Blake could, as Tatham says, return to the design "when he wanted to
take another print," presumably years later, by "re-painting his outline on the
millboard," painting in the forms, and printing "that on paper."
What Tatham describes is
planographic printing, that is, printing outline and colors not only together
but also from the same flat
surface, with outlines neither raised—as in woodcuts or relief etching—nor
incised—as in etchings and engravings.[10]
Blake had tried his hand at planographic printing before 1795, possibly as
early as 1789, in a print entitled Charity. Identified as a "planographic transfer print" (Essick, Separate
Plates 10), the image
was first painted on a sheet of paper or millboard and transferred to the paper
while the ink was wet.
Counterproofing (placing face down) newly printed impressions—regardless of matrix—works
the same way, wet ink transferred from a flat surface to paper, reproducing all marks and forms, albeit in reverse. Blake did not, however,
systematically experiment with printing painted images until he color printed the etching Albion
rose, which, as I argue
below, was in 1795 and not 1794, as is supposed (Butlin, "Physicality" 3;
Bindman 476), and which was executed with small Pity (illus. 10), the trial proof for the
large color print. Until then, Blake had color printed only illuminated books
with relief-etched plates. He inked outlines with dabbers and on and in small
areas added colors, probably with stump brushes (brushes with the tips cut off)
or poupées (tightly rolled felt), to small, well-defined forms. This is, as I
have demonstrated elsewhere, a variation on à la poupée printing, in which an intaglio plate is
inked in numerous colors (Blake and the Idea of the Book,
chapter 13). It differs from conventional color printing, however, in that Blake
put colors in spaces meant to be white and negative spaces defining forms,
whereas in conventional color printing colors are applied to the lines of the
design itself and not surfaces or white spaces. Adding colors to shallows and
printing them with inked outline is radical, but, in terms of performance, it
is still more printing than painting. The result is indeed a monotype, in that
the prints are never exactly repeatable, but Blake is still thinking—given the
medium, size, and tools—more like a printmaker coloring plates than a painter
working broadly with brushes on a large, flat surface, blocking out forms by
colors as well as line.
At least one of the 12 large color-printed drawings, however, was not printed planographically. God Judging Adam (illus. 24) has traces of an embossed
outline, indicating that the support was metal, probably copper, and that the
outline was etched in low relief; it also has a platemaker's mark (illus. 25),
indicating that it was printed from the sheet's verso. For the only color-printed
drawing known for sure to have been relief etched to be on a sheet's verso
suggests that Blake was probably unsure of himself, continuing the experiments
started with the small trial proof for Pity, which was also etched in low relief
(see below), and intending to preserve the recto, the side normally used for engravings
and etchings, should the experiment not work out. God Judging Adam is 43.2 x 53.5 cm. Because it is the
only impression certainly to have come from a metal plate—and metal is much
more expensive than millboard—Essick believes it was most likely the first of
the large color-printed drawings executed ("Supplement" 139).[11]
This is probably so, as will be shown below, but its place in the sequence is
suggested by its technical connections to earlier experiments in color printing
and not by its support, for two other designs may also have been printed from
metal. Though printed planographically, Satan Exulting over Eve, at 43.2 x 53.4 cm., and Elohim Creating Adam, at 43.1 x 53.6 cm., are the same size
as God Judging Adam,
raising the possibilities that one of these designs is on its recto and the
other on a copper sheet acquired at the same time.[12] If either Satan or Elohim was printed from a copper matrix, then
Blake not only used metal before millboard, but he also printed
planographically from metal before millboard.
The detail of the horses' heads in the
first impression of God Judging Adam (illus. 26) reveals clearly that Blake applied a black
paint to the low relief outline and shallows simultaneously and then added a
brownish red to the shallows forming the neck and shoulder and a bright red to the manes. These steps in the
painting process are even clearer in the second impression (illus. 27), which
is, as noted, proof that both outline and colors were printed simultaneously
here as well as in the first impression (see note 7). He probably applied the
black with a small dabber, as in the illuminated plates, touching down in the
shallows but not depositing color along the base of the relief lines, which
produces a thin unpainted line on both sides of the outline. A yellow wash
applied over the colors on the second impression is very bright in this line
because it adheres to the untouched white of the paper. This halo-like line is
evidence of a relief outline as well as of outline and colors' having been printed
together, as is demonstrated by an impression printed in one pull from a design
etched in low relief, inked with a dabber in black, and painted in brownish red
(illus. 28a). Had outline and colors been printed separately, the fine white
line could not parallel the outline exactly, even with perfect registration,
because the paper's shape and dampness are slightly altered by its being pulled
through the press, which is particularly noticeable in large sheets. Even when
paint is deposited with a brush along the base of a relief line, paper is
unlikely to pick the color up as it bends over the relief line onto the
shallow, unless the paint is very thick. On plate 7 of The Song of Los copy E, for example, Blake most likely
used a brush to apply color to the tendrils dividing the verses, depositing
paint on both sides of the relief line (illus. 28b), which, when printed,
produced the telltale white lines and two tendril-like lines that printed from
the shallows. Had Blake deposited color on one side of the outline only, the
tendril-like line would appear as the result of a misregistered second pull, an
easy misreading of the material evidence.
As noted, Blake did not need or intend to
print outlines separately, not in illuminated books or color-printed drawings. In
the latter, he only needed fixed
guidelines for painting and for ensuring that the design, however it was
colored in and/or finished, was repeatable. But when and how did Blake realize
that if he "drew . . . his design . . . [and] then painted upon that" he could
take "a print of that on paper," that outline and colors could be on the same
surface and he could paint over the outline with a brush rather than use a
dabber? When did he realize that he was no longer painting a print but printing
a painting? To answer these questions requires knowing where God Judging
Adam fits into this
evolution and how it connects to Albion rose and the small trial proof of Pity, which have a heretofore unknown
connection to Blake's intaglio books of 1795.
III. The
Book of Los, The Book of Ahania
Three color-printed drawings, God, Satan, and Elohim, possibly all from metal and the first
executed, are approximately 43.2 cm. x 53.5 cm. This is a large but apparently
not uncommon sheet size. Blake's engraving of Beggar's Opera Act III (1788) is 40.1 x 54.2 cm.; Job and Ezekiel engravings of 1793 and 1794 are 46 x 54
cm. and 46.4 x 54 cm. respectively; the plates for Stedman's Narrative, 16 executed by Blake between 1792-94,
average 27 x 20 cm., which suggests that they were quarters of a 40 x 54 cm. sheet
of copper.[13] The larger
widths, up to 60 cm. for Newton,
Lamech, House of
Death, and Nebuchadnezzar, are presumably from millboards and
likely come later in the series. Recall that the two The Song of Los text plates share the same width, 27.2
cm., though they vary in height by about 8 mm. If joined at their shared
measurement of 27.2 cm., then they formed a sheet of copper approximately 43.5 x 27.2 cm.
(illus. 29), which is half the size of these large metal sheets. The full sheet
would have been 43.5 x 54.4 cm.
That two plates are 27.2 cm. wide is unlikely to be a coincidence. The
shared measurement strongly suggests that the plates are quarters of a sheet
the size of those used for the first color-printed drawings. But if so, what were
the other two quarters? I initially suspected the quarters were the sheets that
yielded the plates for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania, not because they are also 1795 productions, but because
both sheets are 27.2 cm. wide. The
former sheet was 19.85 cm. left, 19.60 cm. right, 27.2 cm. top, 27.25 cm.
bottom; it yielded plates 3-2/4-5 (illus. 30), with plate 1 etched on the
verso of plate 4. The latter sheet was 19.65 cm. left, 19.75 cm. right, 27.2
cm. top, 27.25 cm. bottom; it yielded plates 4-3/6-5 (illus. 31), with plates
1 and 2 on the versos of plates 6 and 3 respectively.
These plate arrangements are not from Blake
and the Idea of the Book, where
I used just two measurements per plate and thought the sheet was larger and cut
into sixths rather than quarters (414n26); they are from research done soon
afterwards for David Worrall's The Urizen Books. I used four measurements per plate and tracings of their shapes to
reconstruct the sheets, the technique I had used to reconstruct the sheets that
yielded the 27 plates of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.[14]
Worrall agreed with The Book of Ahania arrangement (191) but not with The Book of Los arrangement (223n13), which is
understandable since measurements, even with tracings, can support different
results. With digital imaging, however, and the expert assistance of Todd
Stabley, media consultant for my university, I was able to verify my earlier
findings and to raise the bar for proof. Though it was no easy task, we were
able to put the pieces back together. We verified the recto/verso plates by
superimposing them, as with The Book of Ahania plates 3 and 2 ((illus. 32), to reveal
their matched shapes. We demonstrated, by revolving the plates, how their edges
fit together, as evinced by the inside edges of The Book of Los plates 3 and 4 (illus. 33) paralleling
one another exactly, one curving with the other.
With four plates 27.2 cm. in width (two
for The Song of Los,
one each for The Book of Los
and The Book of Ahania),
it seemed reasonable to assume that they were quarters of a sheet the size
of—and perhaps acquired at the same time as—those used for the first color-printed drawings. The problem here, though, was an approximately 8 mm. difference
in the heights of The Song of Los
plates. If the measurements were correct, then one or both did not fit into the
larger sheet. Moreover, the small, unfinished color print of Pity (illus. 10), recorded as 19.7 x 27.5 cm.
(Butlin, cat. 313), was the same height as The Book of Ahania sheet, though 2 or 3 mm. wider, which I
suspected was mistaken. The similarity of its size to the size of The Book
of Ahania made small Pity seem likely to have been one of the
quarters or, possibly, a quarter that was cut up to provide the plates for The
Book of Ahania.
Superimposing small Pity
over The Book of Ahania
plates revealed no convincing traces of small Pity. The digital reconstruction was
beginning to reveal what combination of quarters was likely and unlikely to
have come from the same sheet, as well as to reveal exactly what works I needed
to reexamine. In the Morgan Library, I reexamined the height of the
text plates in The Song of Los
copy C, along with the size and shape of proofs of The Book of Los plates 4 and 5, and The Book of
Ahania plate 5; in the
Library of Congress, I reexamined The Song of Los copy B and again made tracings of the
plates of the only complete extant copy of The Book of Ahania; most importantly, in the British
Museum, I examined The Song of Los
copies A and D, traced the plates of the only extant copy of The Book of Los, and determined exactly the size of the
small Pity and Albion
rose plates.
This new data enabled me to disprove my
initial hypothesis that The Song of Los plates 3-4 and 6-7 and the plates for The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los were quarters of the same large sheet. It enabled me
also to ascertain that small Pity
was not the exact
size of The Book of Ahania
sheet but that it was one of the quarters. Two measurements for small Pity proved insufficient to see this
connection, but with four it became clear: 19.75 cm. left, 19.5 cm. right, 27.2
cm. top, 27.4 cm. bottom. These are approximately the same measurements as the
color-printed impression of Albion rose, which are 27.2 cm. left, 27.3 cm. right, 19.75 cm. top,
19.95 cm. bottom.[15] Turn small Pity upside down and Albion rose on its left side, place them on top of The
Book of Los and The
Book of Ahania sheets
(illus. 34), and you have the four quarters of a sheet that is 39.35 cm. left,
39.7 cm. right, 54.7 cm. top, 54.5 cm. bottom. Along the middle, vertically and
horizontally, the sheet is 39.4 x 54.4 cm. This sheet was cut exactly in half
and each half was cut in half, hence each of the four quarters has a side 27.2
cm. wide or high.
Why did Blake purchase a 39.4 x 54.4 cm.
sheet of copper? At first, it may seem that he needed copper plates for his two
new poems, The Book of Ahania
and The Book of Los.
The former has 239 lines and the latter has 176 lines, for a total of 415.
Urizen is on 28
plates, 11 of which, including the title, are full-page illustrations, leaving
17 text plates for 517 lines. If Blake intended to etch his new poems in relief
to match the style and structure of Urizen, then he would have needed at least 22 plates for the two
books. Quartering each quarter of the large sheet produces 16 plates (or 32 if
versos are used), slightly smaller than Urizen, whose size was determined by its being
on the verso of Marriage
plates, the size of which was determined by Approach of Doom quartered (see Viscomi, "Evolution"
307).
Deducing motive from end results,
however, clearly does not work here. The sheet does not produce plates exactly
the size of Urizen,
forcing one to ask why not if that was Blake's intent. More troubling is that
Blake appears to have changed his mind after he quartered the sheet. Three of
the quarters he intended to use for etchings or engravings, as indicated by
their rounded corners and beveled sides, features designed to remove sharp
edges that could tear the paper when intaglio plates are printed under the
required pressure. One quarter he intended to use as a relief etching, as
indicated by the absence of these features, which are unnecessary for relief
etchings, because they are printed with less pressure. Given the manner in
which the quarters were prepared—whether by Blake or a platemaker following
Blake's instructions (see note 13)—Blake appears not to have acquired this
copper sheet as a poet needing many small relief-etched plates for an
illuminated book; he appears to have acquired it as a printmaker, with at least
two designs, Albion rose
and small Pity, in
mind, as a creative graphic artist who, to date, had executed many separate
etchings and engravings, including Head of a Damned Soul (c. 1790), The Accusers (1793), Edward and Elenor (1793), Job (1793), and Ezekiel (1794).
What Blake originally intended for the
other two quarters prepared for intaglio designs is not known. It is
interesting to speculate, though, that the designs may have been The Night of
Enitharmon's Joy (24.2 x
27.8 cm.) and Newton
(20.4 x 26.3 cm.), which are the only other drawings extant that fit the
quarters—or could be trimmed to fit—that were also executed, like small Pity, approximately four times their size as
large color-printed drawings. But whatever the original plans were for these
quarters, Blake changed his mind. He quartered the two quarters and used the
resulting plates for The Book of Los and The Book of Ahania. This sequence of events is indicated by the fact that each
small plate has just one rounded corner (illus. 35), that of its original
sheet, which, in addition to the plates' uneven and rough inside edges (illus.
33), is why the plates can be reconstructed like pieces of a puzzle back into
their original quarter sheets (illus. 30, 31). The edges are rough because
Blake did not file them at an angle (the bevel), and though he appears to have
pounded down the sharp edges of the new corners, he did not round them. In
other words, Blake did not prepare the small plates for etching.
Was he in such a hurry to print his new
poems and designs that he ignored these crucial steps in preparing plates for
intaglio printing? Or did he know that he would print with less pressure than
normal since he planned to use the surface area for color printing, which he
did with The Book of Ahania plates 1, 2, and 6 (illus. 36), and The
Book of Los plates 1, 2, and 5?[16]
In The Book of Ahania and The Book of Los title plates, Blake etched the letters and inked them
locally, wiping the surface around them clean of ink and painting the image
between the inscription and title, presumably following a lightly scratched
outline. Blake used the same combination of printing from the surface and
incised lines in the endplates to both books. He knew printing from the surface
of an etching would work, since—as I argue below—he had already done so with Albion
rose (illus. 37), and
knew also that he could print surface areas with incised lines because he had
done so in Europe and
Urizen.
Using the small plates for intaglio
etching instead of relief etching enabled Blake to condense his texts,
averaging 59.5 lines per plate for The Book of Ahania and 58.6 for The Book of Los, versus 30.4 for Urizen, and thus use far fewer copper plates.
Using two of the quarters initially prepared for single intaglio designs (as is
indicated by the four original rounded corners per quarter) from this sheet for
illuminated plates appears to have been an afterthought, perhaps reflecting a
decision to enlarge the designs originally intended for the quarters in another
medium. Blake's decision to etch the small plates in intaglio rather than in
relief appears to reflect the influence of another quarter from the sheet, Albion
rose. But before we can examine how those
three quarters as used connect with one another, we need to understand the role
played by small Pity,
the quarter that appears to have been the first executed.
IV. Small Pity
For small Pity to have been printed from a quarter of a
large copper sheet means, of course, that its matrix is copper and not
millboard, but neither is it a "completely bare plate" (Butlin, "Physicality"
4). The evidence that small Pity
is from a metal plate lies also in the faintly embossed lines in the horses'
hind legs, tail, and front leg, and at the head of the supine figure (visible
in the verso), the very slight embossment of the relief plateau. Knowing that
small Pity is from a
copper plate in slight relief and not completely bare helps to explain an
apparent anomaly in the sequencing of the large color prints and to verify
Butlin's initial intuition regarding their evolution.
Butlin initially believed that Pity was Blake's first large color-printed
drawing, because it "developed from the small trial print, the only such try-out
that is known, and this in turn was preceded by two composition sketches ... the
first of which is an upright composition, showing that at this stage Blake had
not yet evolved the format for the series of large prints." In these works (sketches, trial proof,
finished impression), "one does seem to see Blake developing a completely new
composition in a relatively short time from upright drawing to large horizontal
color print in a way that suggests a direct evolution rather than the reuse of
earlier material as found in others of the prints, and hence the real point of
origin for the series." And yet, if so, why is small Pity, "the ... trial print," followed by God
Judging Adam, the first
color-printed drawing, and not Pity?
This Butlin cannot answer: "Whether this origin, in a totally new design, has
any significance for the meaning of the series as a whole I leave for others to
speculate" ("Physicality" 5).
Treating small Pity as a sketch that immediately preceded
the larger Pity is
logical, especially if you think that it too is from a "bare plate." On the
other hand, placing the trial proof after the first color-printed drawing makes no sense, especially if
it is the "real point of origin for the series," for it then becomes a
"try-out" for Pity
alone and not the "experiment" in color printing "on a larger scale" that
Butlin also assumes (cat. 313). The material evidence, however, indicates that
both the experimental small Pity
and the first color-printed drawing are from copper plates, each etched in very
slight to low relief, the former leading technically and materially to the
latter. Indeed, small Pity
is the "experiment" and "origin" that Butlin assumes. The mystery, however,
lies not in Blake's following small Pity with a "totally new design" (many sketches are not fully
realized until much later), or moving from "bare plate" to relief outline to
bare plates or millboards (that progression is an illusion), but rather in his
following small Pity's
failure at defining form through blocks of color with a return to relief-etched
outline, as used in illuminated books, before figuring out true planographic
printing. As an experiment, small Pity is specifically about working out how best to define forms
in large color prints, which is to say, less about format and composition than
technique and style.
True, small Pity differs in format and design from
everything color printed to that point; it is horizontal and a tryout for
prints four times its size. It borrows from earlier works, though, even while
attempting new things. Small Pity
is divided into top and bottom halves that were inked in different colors
(illus. 10). This in itself was not unusual, since two inks, as in sky and
ground, were commonly used in color printing aquatint landscapes. Moreover, in
1794 Blake had color printed Urizen
in this style, with page designs divided into texts and vignettes and inked in
different colors. For example, he inked the bottom half (text) of plate 19 from
Urizen copy C (illus.
38) in an olive green and the top half (figures) in yellow ochre; one can see
that his dabber inked the figures' outlines and touched down in their shallows,
creating a wide white line along the base of the outline, indicating that he
inked shallows and outlines together and that the relief was slightly higher
here than in God Judging Adam.
He went over the background in an olive green ink or color, defining the yellow
ochre figures as negative spaces, or cavities within the ground. Plate 23
demonstrates more clearly this style of defining form (illus. 39). Again, Blake
inked the plate's top and bottom halves in different colors and went over the
bottom with a darker color to differentiate background and figure, carefully
leaving the white of the paper to form Urizen's robe (it is finished in white
and gray colors in other impressions). Note, from the waist down, Urizen is
a blank triangular shallow defined by its background, by solid blocks or areas
painted in stop-out varnish and etched in relief (illus. 40). Blake had
used this style of defining form in Europe, also of 1794, plates 5, 8, and 14, and very
rudimentarily in America
plate 2.
Small Pity uses this style to define form on a
larger scale. Instead of bold outlines to delineate figures, it uses blocks of
colors, leaving the forms as white or negative space to be finished in pen and
ink and watercolors (illus. 41). In other words, production is divided into two
stages, each stage producing a different visual effect: in the print stage, forms are
blocked out in thick, mottled colors printed from the relief surface; in the finishing stage, forms left unprinted are washed
in and defined in pen and ink. Small Pity fails as a technical experiment because too much is left
unprinted—nearly 50% of the composition—leaving too much for finishing,
resulting in white areas whose flat, thin watercolors contrast poorly with
thick, mottled, alla prima paint surfaces. The combination of watercolors over
or adjacent to thick colors in the smaller illuminated plates works well, but
here, on the larger surface plane, the allocation of the different media to
different areas makes the surface visually incoherent.[17]
In short, small Pity
printed but left uncolored is incomplete in ways that are not true of
illuminated plates, etchings, or color-printed drawings.
Large color-printed drawings require finishing in pen and ink and watercolors (particularly in second impressions), often to keep the images from looking like blots and blurs, but it is just that, finishing; printing and coloring are not separate stages, but are instead integrated in the initial execution of the design in paint on the plate. Form is defined through line and colors together on the plate and then clarified, strengthened, and/or adorned further on the paper. The design on the matrix, in other words, already closely resembles the painting it will become
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}
){kind=link}