Frontispiece to “Europe: a Prophecy,” printed 1794
Print coloured by hand
This was the last design to be repeated by his hand. On his deathbed he executed it for his young friend Mr. Tatham. The latter refers to the incident in a letter published in 1803, in the “Rossetti Papers”:
“The Ancient of Days with the compasses was the subject that Blake finished for me on his deathbed. He threw it down and said, ‘There, I hope Mr. Tatham will like it,’ and then said, ‘Kate, I will draw your portrait; you have been a good wife to me.’ And he made a frenzied sketch of her, which, when done, he sang himself joyously and most happily—literally with songs—into the arms of the grim enemy, and yielded up his sweet spirit.”
The conception is of sublimity and boldness, and in the execution of this particular plate the colour is laid on with great care, being shaded and stippled to a high degree of finish. The attitude of the Architect of the Universe is heroic, and is characteristic of Blake in his best manner. Leaning far out from the centre of the sun itself, a grand male figure, with hair and beard streaming in the wind of cosmic motion, measures the space below him with a compass, indicating the orbit on which the world is to travel.
The Museum possesses another edition, as a separate drawing, in one of the portfolios, which we shall examine later. Mr. Sydney Morse possesses yet another, which was on view at Messrs. Carfax’s Gallery; and a fourth, probably the finest of all these different renderings, was sold with the title-page and three plates of “Europe,” at Messrs. Hodgson’s sale for £80.
The frontispiece to “Europe” has a magnificent evil-looking snake on the centre of the page, blue hills and distance seen through its mottled coils.
“The Pilgrim,” some verses by Ann Radcliffe, are scrawled on the blank reverse of the leaf. The first and last time it may be supposed that Ann Radcliffe found herself in such august company! All of the plates in this book are defaced by the same handwriting.
Blake’s writing and the engraved outlines are of a bluish green colour.
“Red Orc” is seen in the second plate climbing up the sky and about to take his station on a bank of cloud outlined boldly against the blue. Below him, in a limbo of darkness, three naked passions in the form of demons are struggling together and falling down into the nether heavens.
On the page entitled “a Prophecy” a lovely angel takes her despairing flight through the sky. Her wings merge from white and mauve to a deep blue like that of a pigeon’s neck, her beautiful feet gleam white against the rosy cloud behind, and her hair falls over her face in abandon of grief or fear or despair—we know not which. All the different and delicate shades in an hydrangea are to be found in this plate, and would seem to have suggested its subtle colour harmonies.