Portrait of Wilson Lowry. By John Linnell. Engraved by Blake and Linnell.
These drawings were mostly executed in 1819 and 1820. In the latter year Blake lost his chief patron Butts, whose walls, indeed, had become so crowded with his works that he had almost ceased to give him commissions. The greater part of the collection was dispersed in 1852, but the zeal of Mr. W. M. Rossetti traced most of its constituents out, and reference to his notes, printed in the second volume of Gilchrist’s biography, will enable us to convey some faint notion of its manifold opulence. Putting the Job aside for the present, the most remarkable appear to be the nine designs for Paradise Lost, the property of Mr. J. C. Strange, in which, says Mr. Rossetti, Blake is king of all his powers of design, draughtsmanship, conception, spiritual meaning, and impression. Another set, belonging to Mr. Aspland, of Liverpool, omits one subject and adds four. Another set of Miltonic designs for Comus, rather distinguished by grace than grandeur, has been recently published by Mr. Quaritch. Another set of no less than one hundred and eighteen designs for Gray’s works, in 1860 in the possession of the Duke of Hamilton, are reputed to rank among Blake’s finest productions, but have not been inspected by any one competent to describe them. Among others especially commended by Mr. Rossetti are The Sacrifice of Jephthah’s Daughter, Ruth, The Judgment of Paris, The Wise and Foolish Virgins, Fire, Famine, Samson subdued, The Finding of Moses, Moses erecting the Brazen Serpent, The Ghost of Samuel appearing to Saul, The Entombment, The Sealing of the Sepulchre, The Angel rolling the Stone from the Sepulchre, The River of Life, and Hecate. To these may be added The Resurrection of the Dead, now in the British Museum, reproduced by us. Many others, not belonging to the Butts collection, are described with equal enthusiasm; and, apart from all questions of technical execution, usually splendid, but lost upon those who have not access to the original works, it may be said that the conceptions, as described by Mr. Rossetti, would be impossible to one unendowed with the highest artistic imagination, and that the body is worthy of the spirit.
The Resurrection of the Dead. From a water-colour drawing by W. Blake. British Museum.
Prominent among these designs are the set of illustrations to Job, now the property of the Earl of Crewe. A duplicate set belonged to Mr. Linnell, who, “discounting as it were,” says Gilchrist, “Blake’s bill on posterity when no one else would,” commissioned this from him, tracing the outlines from Butt’s copy himself, and handing them over to Blake to complete. This was done in September, 1821, and when the drawings were completed in 1823 Linnell went further still, and commissioned Blake to engrave them, a stroke which has probably effected more than anything else for the artist’s fame, for the drawings which have set him on such a pinnacle, if unengraved, would have remained virtually unknown to the world. The terms also were liberal. Blake was to receive £100 for the twenty-two plates and £100 more out of the profits. When the publication barely covered its expenses, Linnell, reflecting that the plates remained in his possession in virtue of the agreement, not unreasonably but very handsomely allowed Blake £50 more. But for this manna from heaven Blake’s last years would have been spent in engraving pigs and poultry after Morland. Linnell, who was himself an excellent engraver, further conferred an important benefit upon him by making him acquainted with the best style of Italian engraving. Blake proved a docile pupil at sixty-five, and his plates to Job are not only technically the best he ever executed, but occupy an important place in the history of the art.
The glory of Job, however, is not in the engraving, but in the invention, which, beautiful in the soft and idyllic passages, rises into sublimity when the theme appeals strongly to the creative imagination. It is especially remarkable as being one of the very few instances of a worthy representation of the Almighty. The tender humanities of Christian art are absent: all is awful, Hebraic, and strictly monotheistic. Among the most remarkable designs may be noted that where the exulting fiend pulls down the mansion upon Job’s sons and daughters (reproduced here); the frantic speed of the messenger of evil, who bursts out with his tale before he is well within hearing, while another follows with equal haste hard upon him, and the uninterested sheep graze on undisturbed; the terrible scene where Satan, a figure repeated in essentials from works of earlier date, smites the prostrate Job with sore boils; Eliphaz besieged with phantoms, to all seeming not less real than himself (also given here); the morning stars singing together; the downfall of the wicked; and the Lord answering Job out of the whirlwind. Passages even of the less striking designs often have a singular fascination, such as the night-piercing stars in the Elihu scene, which would be impressive in the absence of any human figure; Behemoth and Leviathan, the ne plus ultra of grotesque grandeur, which we have also given; and the bowed backs of Job’s accusing friends when the Lord blesses him.[8] On the whole, though others of Blake’s designs may be more transcendent of ordinary human faculty, he has scarcely executed anything displaying all his faculties so well combined and in such perfect equilibrium; and, were it necessary to rest his fame upon one set of works, this would probably be selected. As a scriptural theme it appealed with especial strength to English sympathies, and having been selected by Gilchrist for reproduction, it is more widely known than any of his works except the illustrations to Blair’s Grave. “The original water-colour designs,” Rossetti says, “are much larger than the engravings, and generally pale in colour, with a less full and concentrated effect than the engravings, and by no means equal to them in power and splendid decorative treatment of the light and shade. On the other hand, they are often completer and naturally freer in expression, and do not exhibit a certain tendency to over-sturdiness of build and physiognomy in the figures.” Fine as is the figure of Satan in The Destruction of Job’s Sons and Daughters, it is, Mr. Rossetti thinks, much finer in the water colour. On the other hand, “the effect of sublimity and multitude in When the morning stars sang together is centupled in the engraving by adding the upraised arms of two other angels to right and left, passing out of the composition.” The whole account suggests how desirable it would be to have many of Blake’s unpublished water colours translated into black and white, could engraver or etcher of the needful force be found.
Woodcut from Thornton’s Pastoral.