Another splendid composition in this work are the two angels pouring out the black-spotted plague upon England, on page 9; in which the fore-shortening of the legs, the grandeur of their positions, and the harmony with which they are adapted to each other and to their curved trumpets, are perfectly admirable. The subject-matter of the work is written in the same wild and singular measures as the preceding, and describes, in mystical language, the terrors of plague and anarchy which overspread England during the slumbers of Enitharmon for eighteen hundred years; upon whose awaking, the ferocious spirit Ore burst into flames 'in the vineyards of red France.' At the end of this poem are seven separate engravings on folio pages, without letterpress, which are colored like the former part of the work, with a degree of splendor and force, as almost to resemble sketches in oil-colors. The finest of these are a figure of an angel standing in the sun, a group of three furies surrounded by clouds and fire, and a figure of a man sitting beneath a tree in the deepest dejection; all of which are peculiarly remarkable for their strength and splendor of coloring. Another publication by Mr. Blake consisted only of a small quarto volume of twenty-three engravings of various shapes and sizes, colored as before, some of which are of extraordinary effect and beauty. The best plates in this series are—the first of an aged man, with a white heard sweeping the ground, and writing in a book with each hand, naked; a human figure pressing out his brain through his ears; and the great sea-serpent; but perhaps the best is a figure sinking in a stormy sea at sunset, the splendid light of which, and the foam upon the black waves, are almost magical effects of coloring. Beneath the first design is engraved 'Lambeth, printed by W. Blake, 1794.'
Blake's modes of preparing his ground, and laying them over his panels for painting, mixing his colors, and manner of working, were those which he considered to have been practized by the earliest fresco painters, whose productions still remain, in numerous instances, vivid and permanently fresh. His ground was a mixture of whiting and carpenter's glue, which he passed over several times in thin coatings: his colors he ground himself, and also united them with the same sort of glue, but in a much weaker state. He would, in the course of painting a picture, pass a very thin transparent wash of glue-water over the whole of the parts he had worked upon, and then proceed with his finishing.[10]
This process I have tried, and find, by using my mixture warm, that I can produce the same texture as possessed in Blake's pictures of the Last Judgment, and others of his productions, particularly in Varley's curious picture of the personified Flea. Blake preferred mixing his colors with carpenter's glue, to gum, on account of the latter cracking in the sun, and becoming humid in moist weather. The glue-mixture stands the sun, and change of atmosphere has no effect upon it. Every carpenter knows that if a broken piece of stick be joined with good glue, the stick will seldom break again in the glued parts.
That Blake had many secret modes of working, both as a colorist and an engraver, I have no doubt. His method of eating away the plain copper, and leaving his drawn lines of his subjects and his words as stereotype, is, in my mind, perfectly original. Mrs. Blake is in possession of the secret, and she ought to receive something considerable for its communication, as I am quite certain it may be used to the greatest advantage both to artists and literary characters in general.
That Blake's colored plates have more effect than others where gum has been used, is, in my opinion, the fact, and I shall rest my assertion upon those beautiful specimens in the possession of Mr. Upcott, colored purposely for that gentleman's godfather, Ozias Humphrey, Esq., to whom Blake wrote the following interesting letter.
TO OZIAS HUMPHREY, ESQ.
'The design of The Last Judgment, which I have completed by your recommendation for the Countess of Egremont, it is necessary to give some account of; and its various parts ought to be described, for the accommodation of those who give it the honor of their attention.
'Christ seated on the Throne of Judgment: the Heavens in clouds rolling before him and around him, like a scroll ready to be consumed in the fires of the Angels; who descend before his feet, with their four trumpets sounding to the four winds.
'Beneath, the Earth is convulsed with the labours of the Resurrection. In the caverns of the earth is the Dragon with seven heads and ten horns, chained by two Angels; and above his cavern, on the earth's surface, is the Harlot, also seized and bound by two Angels with chains, while her palaces are falling into ruins, and her counsellors and warriors are descending into the abyss, in wailing and despair.
'Hell opens beneath the harlot's seat on the left hand, into which the wicked are descending.