UNDATED PENCIL SKETCH FOR “DEATH’S DOOR”

Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. Frederic J. Shields

Let us linger a minute over another of what I may call Blake’s shorthand sketches in the Print Room collection. It is undoubtedly the first idea for the picture entitled “The Spiritual form of Nelson guiding Leviathan, in whose wreathings are enfolded the nations of the earth.” The finished picture appeared in Blake’s own exhibition in 1809; it is now in the possession of T. W. Jackson, Esq., of Worcester College, Oxford.

In the sketch, “Nelson” is drawn symbolically as a young sea-god, nude and commanding. He stands firmly on a coil of Leviathan’s body, which rearing and circling surrounds him like a frame. We can just distinguish the human forms caught in the serpent’s toils, and its great mouth is in the act of devouring a man. The mouth is bridled, and the reins held by Nelson’s hand. The symbolism is easy enough to understand and requires no explanation.

A carefully shaded and conscientious drawing of a naked man with arms upraised testifies to the fact that Blake did work from the model sometimes. But how cold such work appears—valuable and necessary as it is—compared with the passionate half-defined sketches, the mood of which transfers to us something of the high pleasure that Blake himself felt in making these burning transcripts from his imagination or visions.

I had much ado to make out the subject of the pen-and-wash sketch of a woman and man with a group of people on their knees in a cornfield. In the distance a thunder-cloud emits a lightning flash. Mr. Shields tells me that he and Dante Gabriel Rossetti spent an evening trying to decipher a larger and more definite sketch of the same idea, and finally decided that it was an illustration of the following verses (1 Sam. xii. 16-19): “Now therefore stand and see this great thing which the Lord will do before your eyes. Is it not wheat harvest to-day? I will call unto the Lord and he shall send thunder and rain; that ye may perceive and see that your wickedness is great, which ye have done in the sight of the Lord, in asking you a king. So Samuel called unto the Lord, and the Lord sent thunder and rain that day; and all the people greatly feared the Lord and Samuel.”

Among the many other sketches which space does not permit me to comment on, are two very beautiful studies in red chalk, showing Blake to be a master of line indeed. Of his engravings after designs by Stothard, Romney, Flaxman, Hogarth, examples of which the Print Room possesses, it is not necessary to speak, for this book is not concerned with engraving or any other technical branch of art. Its purpose is merely to examine into, and if possible lay bare, the nature of the artistic impulse that makes the work of Blake—as we may all know it in our public collections—so rare and so precious a thing. But though we shall not concern ourselves with these engravings, as they contribute nothing to our purpose, it is interesting to look at the numerous copies which our artist made from prints of Michael Angelo’s frescoes on the roof of the Sistine, from drawings after the antique, and from Cumberland’s “Designs for Engravings.” These latter are pen drawings of Greek figures—similar to those represented on old black and yellow vases—and display the Greek ideal of form, so beautiful yet so passionless and un-individual, when compared with the figures of the great Florentine, in which the soul with all its struggles is apparent. Copying such diverse work faithfully—“for,” wrote Blake, “servile copying is the great merit of copying”—must have made him think, compare, choose. Goethe says that his study of the ancient classic literature convinced him “that a vast abundance of objects must lie before us ere we can think upon them,—that we must accomplish something, nay, fail in something, before we can learn our own capacities and those of others.” And this was much more the case with Blake and his art than might be supposed. It was not ignorance of other ideals, of other methods of thought and work, that caused him to take the artistic path he did; it was definite choice, the ratification of his innate, strongly individualistic tendencies, resulting from comparing them with the characteristic principles of art exhibited in other ages, other masters. Blake in fact copied a good deal; he himself writes in his notes on Reynolds, “the difference between a bad artist and a good one is: the bad artist seems to copy a great deal, the good one really does copy a great deal.”

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HEAD OF AN OLD MAN