William Blake and the Art of Engraving

WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE ART OF ENGRAVING

The History of the Book

Series Editor: Ann R. Hawkins

Titles in this Series 1 Conservatism and the Quarterly Review: A Critical Analysis Jonathan Cutmore (ed.) 2 Contributors to the Quarterly Review: A History, 1809–1825 Jonathan Cutmore (ed.) 3 Wilkie Collins’s American Tour, 1873–1874 Susan R. Hanes Forthcoming Titles Negotiated Knowledge: Medical Periodical Publishing in Scotland, 1733– 1832 Fiona A. Macdonald On Paper: The Description and Analysis of Handmade Laid Paper R. Carter Hailey Reading in History: New Methodologies from the Anglo-American Tradition Bonnie Gunzenhauser (ed.) Charles Lamb, Elia and the London Magazine: Metropolitan Muse Simon Hull

www.pickeringchatto.com/historyofthebook

WILLIAM BLAKE AND THE ART OF ENGRAVING

by Mei-Ying Sung

london PICKERING & CHATTO 2009

Published by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited 21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH 2252 Ridge Road, Brookfield, Vermont 05036-9704, USA www.pickeringchatto.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without prior permission of the publisher. © Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Ltd 2009 © Mei-Ying Sung, 2009 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sung, Mei-Ying William Blake and the art of engraving. – (The history of the book) 1. Blake, William, 1757–1827 – Criticism and interpretation I. Title 769.9’2 ISBN-13: 9781851969586

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This publication is printed on acid-free paper that conforms to the American National Standard for the Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. Typeset by Pickering & Chatto (Publishers) Limited Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

CONTENTS

Abbreviation List of Figures Acknowledgements

vi vii viii

Introduction 1 The History of the Theory of Conception and Execution 2 The Evidence of Copper Plates 3 Blake’s Engraved Copper Plates 4 Copper Plate Makers in Blake’s Time 5 Blake’s Virgil Woodcuts and the Earliest Re-engravers Conclusion

1 19 45 61 119 141 165

Notes Works Cited Index

169 199 211

ABBREVIATIONS Locations & Collections: Beinecke: Bodley: BL: BM: BMPD: Cleverdon: ESSICK:

Beinecke Library, Yale University, New Haven CT, USA Bodleian Library, Oxford University British Library, London British Museum, London British Museum, Prints & Drawings Room Douglas Cleverdon private collection Robert Essick’s collection, Los Angeles CA, USA (to differentiate from Essick’s works) FMC: Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge Fogg: Fogg Museum of Art, Harvard University, Boston MA, USA Houghton: Houghton Library, Harvard University, Boston MA, USA Huntington: Huntington Library, San Marino CA, USA Leeds: Brotherton Library, Leeds University Lewis Walpole: Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, Yale University, CT, USA McGill: McGill University, Montreal, Canada NGA: National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, USA Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia PA, USA PM: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, USA Tate: Tate Gallery, London Texas: University of Texas, Austin TX, USA V&A: Victoria & Albert Museum, London YCBA: Yale Centre for British Art, New Haven CT, USA YUAG: Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT, USA

References: BIQ: E:

Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, ed. Morris Eaves and Morton D. Paley, published under the support of Department of English, University of Rochester. Erdman, David V., (ed.) The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake, New York, London: Doubleday, 1988 (revised edition of 1982 and 1965).

– vi –

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Copper plate verso and the print from its recto on silk, An allegorical subject showing eight young girls circling a woman seated among clouds Figure 2: Blake’s Job copper plate, Plate 7, recto Figure 3: Blake Job copper plate, Plate 7, verso Figure 4: Blake’s Job copper plate, Plate 11, recto Figure 5: Blake’s Job copper plate, Plate 16, verso Figure 6: Plate maker’s mark on the copper plate verso of the title page of Blake’s Job Figure 7: Anonymous woodcut after Blake’s design for Thornton’s Virgil, no. 2 Figure 8: Two woodcut illustrations of Virgil by and after Blake

– vii –

56 95 96 101 106 124 144 149

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research of this book extends from my PhD thesis (Nottingham Trent University, 2005). The sequential outcome has been delivered in several conferences in the last few years. It started from a joint paper with David Worrall, ‘A Reconsideration of the Execution and Conception: The Evidence of Blake’s Job Copperplates,’ presented in the conference ‘Friendly Enemies: Blake and the Enlightenment’ at Essex University (2000). It has become the core of this book. Another paper, ‘The Experiments of Colour Printing and Blake Studies,’ presented at the ‘Blake Symposium: Large Colour Prints’ at Tate Britain (2002) has developed into another chapter. ‘Blake’s Copper Plates’ was presented at Tate Britain for ‘William Blake at Work’ (2004), a conference mainly concerned the conservation scientists’ work on Blake. ‘A Virgil Woodcut after Blake,’ presented at the ‘Blake at 250’ Conference, York University (2007), was also the outline of a chapter in this book. In terms of funding, the research and completion of this book has to thank the Overseas Research Student Award from the Universities UK in paying a part of my PhD tuition fees and supporting my project of examining Blake’s Job copper plates in the British Museum. A trip in 2002 to the United States, the Houghton Library (Harvard University), Yale University Art Gallery, and National Art Gallery (Washington DC) to examine Blake’s other original copper plates, was supported by a Stephen Copley Award from the British Association of Romantic Studies and research funding from St. Mary’s College, Twickenham, research funding. In 2003, the Paul Mellon Centre for British Art approved my project of visiting the Beinecke Library (Yale University) to examine a newly rediscovered set of Job proofs with their research support grants. Partly with St. Mary’s College research funding, I was also able to visit the Bodleian Library (Oxford University) to examine Blake’s early Richard Gough plates and W. E. Moss’s manuscripts, the Brotherton Library (Leeds University) for Ruthven Todd’s manuscripts, and Fitzwilliam Museum (Cambridge) for Blake’s Job proofs and the electrotypes of the Songs. The Eleanor M. Garvey Fellowship in Printing and Graphic Arts from the Houghton Library, Harvard University (2006-07) enabled me to study 200 or so printing copperplates in their collection. In 2008, the BSA-ASECS Fellowship for Bibliographical Studies in the Eighteenth Century

– viii –

Acknowledgements

ix

from the Bibliographical Society of America, and the UK Printing Historical Society Grant also supported me with further research in this book. Thanks to Angela Roche and Antony Griffiths at the Department of Prints & Drawings, British Museum, permission to take photographs of Job copper plates was granted. Kind permissions to photograph for study purposes Blake’s and his contemporaries’ copper plates were given by the Prints & Drawings Room in the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Art Gallery, Washington DC, and Yale University Art Gallery. Generous help has been given by Craig Hartley at Prints and Drawings of Fitzwilliam Museum, Alan Jutzi at the Ahmanson Room of Huntington Library, and all the staff in the Rare Books Room of British Library, the Beinecke Library, the Rare Books of Bodleian Library, the Special Material of Brotherton Library, Fogg Museum of Art, Houghton Library, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Preston Library at Westminster Archive, St. Bride’s Printing Library, Tate Britain, the National Art Library at V&A, and Yale Centre for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut. Particular warm thanks are to all the friendly staff at the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, and the Houghton Library, Harvard University, especially Hope Mayo and Caroline Duroselle-Melish, the curators of Printing and Graphic Arts, for giving me the most delightful experience of examining the uncatalogued (hence unknown to the public) copperplates in the Houghton collection. My personal thanks are to Professor Christopher Todd for sending me as a stranger a list of his father’s works, Ruthven Todd (1914-1978): A preliminary finding-list (2001). Professor Ian Short’s warm friendship came at my most helpless time in UCL. My photographer friend Amingo (Yu-Ming Tsau) took photographs of the Job copper plates for me. Professor Robert Essick gave me the opportunity to see his great Blake collection and information about them. Dr. Steve Clark and Dr. Keri Davies generously gave me numerous and very useful information, support and help in the process of my research. My deep gratefulness is to Professor Edward Larrissy for his support and countless references for my research applications. I would also like to pay tribute to Professor Robert N. Essick for his great contributions to Blake studies and generosity as a collector. Much the same, Professor G. E. Bentley Jr.’s monumental works on Blake and his kind encouragement and suggestions to my PhD thesis are precious to me. Finally, my most deep-hearted appreciation is for David Worrall and my parents, Ping-Yuan Sung and Ying-Mei Chung, as well as all my family in Taiwan, who give me everlasting support in every way. This book is dedicated to them. Grantham UK, 2008

INTRODUCTION: THE TECHNICAL ARGUMENT

This introductory chapter is intended to announce the scope of this project and to give an indication of the range of issues it will discuss. The principal elements of my argument concern the current debate surrounding William Blake’s techniques of relief etching and engraving and their context in the survival of the important, yet neglected, archives of his original copper plates in major museums and art galleries. One of the reasons for the neglect of Blake’s copper plates is that nearly all modern scholars interested in Blake’s printing techniques have focused on his relief etching while ignoring his engraving. This is due to a relative devaluation of the technique of engraving which is often regarded as an obsolete means of reproduction and which was replaced by other techniques during the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, modern Blake scholarship on engraving has reproduced the very arguments about its low aesthetic valuation which Blake’s Public Address (1810) did so much to refute. With their concentration on etching rather than engraving, notable scholars such as Robert N. Essick, Michael Phillips and Joseph Viscomi may have worked with a contrary emphasis to much of what Blake had to say in the Public Address, his most elaborated discussion of the role of engraving amongst the fine arts.1 Although there have been well-defined competing interpretative theories about the literary aspects of Blake’s works (e.g. David Erdman versus Northrop Frye, historicism versus proto-structuralism), nothing has generated so much controversy as academic discussion about Blake’s artistic processes. The chief aspects of the arguments have gathered around the production of the illuminated books, particularly those produced between 1789 and 1795, and Blake’s use of relief etching and colour printing. Nowhere are these encounters between competing views of techniques made more apparent than in the catalogue and content of the Tate Britain Blake exhibition held in the year 2000, co-curated by Michael Phillips and Robin Hamlyn, and made accessible by its associated catalogue, William Blake (2000). Some of the more controversial suggestions included in the exhibition concerning Blake’s methods of colour –1–

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William Blake and the Art of Engraving

printing were further elaborated in Phillips’s book, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (2000). Publication of Phillips’s book led to a riposte offered in an article by Essick and Viscomi published in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 35:3 (Winter 2002), and in their elaborate online edition of the same essay, ‘An Inquiry into William Blake’s Method of Color Printing’ (http://www.blakequarterly.org).2 Perhaps something of the heat of the debate is characterized by the title of former Tate curator and Blake editor Martin Butlin’s essay in the same journal, ‘“Is This a Private War or Can Anyone Join In?”: A Plea for a Broader Look at Blake’s Color-Printing Techniques’. With hardly any compromise or mediated conclusion being reached, the argument about process was further complicated by Butlin’s support of Phillips’s theory in his essay ‘Word as Image in William Blake’ published in Romanticism and Millenarianism.3 In the issue of Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly containing Butlin’s essay, there are also G. E. Bentley and Alexander Gourlay’s reviews of Phillips’s book as a part of the controversy. This ongoing debate demonstrates the importance of the issue about Blake’s reproductive techniques and printing processes and the profile of the academic currency amongst some of the most distinguished Blake scholars in recent times. Not least, the public aspects of the Tate exhibition brought the controversy before tens of thousands of visitors, irrespective of whether they perused the accompanying catalogue.4 The core issue between Phillips on the one hand, and Essick and Viscomi on the other, is whether Blake used a ‘one-pull’ method or ‘two-pull’ process to print in colour his relief etched copper plates for the illuminated books. In other words, their debate is about printing rather than about etching or engraving although, as I will argue below, the techniques Blake used in producing his copper printing plates are the fundamental underlying basis for the production of all the prints produced from them, by whatever means, and by whatever printing method. In other words, not only has there been a tendency for engraving to become subsumed under the category of etching, both of these techniques have become less closely scrutinized than Blake’s printing methods. The exhibition of Blake in the Tate Britain from November 2000 to February 2001 aroused much controversy for its central section, ‘The Furnace of Lambeth’s Vale: Blake’s Studio and his World,’ the part of the exhibition understood to be organized by the exhibition co-curator, Michael Phillips. As Essick and Viscomi write, ‘in 2000, … printing techniques rose to the forefront of attention among the small band of scholars interested in how Blake made his books as the material foundation for interpretations of what they mean’.5 Despite the words ‘small band of scholars’, these include the most influential and currently best-known leading authorities in the study of Blake’s art. For example, one of the disputants is Martin Butlin, the scholar whose two volume catalogue raisonné, The Paintings and Drawings of

Introduction

3

William Blake (1981) is the necessary handbook for all studies of Blake’s art. As an art historian and (now retired) senior curator, Butlin is regarded as authoritative with his eye very much on artistic techniques and so his entry into the debate is a crucial indicator of the significance of the controversy. Phillips is similarly a well established bibliographic and historicist scholar of Blake works. Just as Bentley’s Blake Records (1969), Blake Records Supplement (1988), Blake Books (1977) and Blake Books Supplement (1995) are essential for every Blake student, in much the same way, the meticulous historical and material studies of Essick and Viscomi have established highly regarded reputations in the same field, with their work being based on material evidence with wide-ranging and historically empirical scholarship. Moreover, with their exceptional experience in printmaking, Essick, Viscomi and Phillips combine their specialities in literary discussion with practical experimentation, producing a kind of reconstructive archaeology of Blake’s printmaking techniques. Phillips, in the exhibition and in his contribution to its catalogue, William Blake (2000), as well as in his book, The Creation of the Songs (2000), advocated a ‘two-pull’ theory without arguing or even mentioning the earlier ‘one-pull’ theory substantially presented by Essick (1980, 1989) and Viscomi (1993). As the latter two writers point out, ‘the two-pull theory is described [by Phillips] in a straightforward manner that implies it is a generally accepted fact.’6 Indeed, there was significant omission of the relevance of the arguments of Essick and Viscomi in the Blake exhibition at the Tate Britain. Visitors to the exhibition and purchasers of the catalogue were not made aware of the competing interpretation of technique put forward in Essick and Viscomi’s work. The ‘one-pull’ theory represented by Essick and Viscomi assumes that Blake printed his illuminated books by passing the inked text and coloured image through the rolling press simultaneously, in one pass. Both Essick and Viscomi carried out their experiments of relief etching in an attempt at reconstructing Blake’s printing methods, and argued against their precursor Ruthven Todd’s theory (1948) that Blake used transfer techniques (Essick 1980, ch. 9; Viscomi 1993, ch. 1). Viscomi’s Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993) received great attention from Blake scholars during the 1990s, and is still regarded as a seminal work on Blake’s techniques. Indeed, there can be no doubting the contribution to Blake studies made by Essick and Viscomi. Their work is founded on a practical emphasis on empirical evidence drawn from reconstructive printmaking techniques allied to a profound knowledge of the range of Blake’s works. However, neither the section ‘Blake’s Illuminated Printing’, written by Phillips in the Tate Britain exhibition catalogue, nor his British Library monograph study, The Creation of the Songs (2000), refers to Essick’s or Viscomi’s theories. Not only does Phillips display a multistage process of relief etching on the copper plate,7 but he also posits a multistage method of colour printing achieved by passing the etched

4

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

copper plate through the press more than once to print text and image separately using an accurate process of registration.8 Again, the public status afforded by the Tate Britain exhibition, accompanied by the eminence in bibliographic study implied by the British Library imprint makes the exclusion of a considerable body of alternative research endeavour all the more significant. Not least, although it may prove to be only of tangential relevance to the discussion of printmaking, the Blake Tate Britain exhibition – and its catalogue – is bound to become a standard reference point for establishing matters of both provenance and economic value. It is safe to predict that, as this is one of their major modus operandi in estimating the market, the Tate catalogue will in future be frequently used by dealers, auctioneers and the public and private collectors whom they serve. Again, it is important to stress the intensity of the scholarly debate the Tate Blake exhibition engendered and how hard fought were the attempts by all parties to establish the validity of empirical evidence based upon competing studies of Blake’s extant artefacts. The evidence Phillips provides in The Creation of the Songs (2000) includes the pinholes he claimed existed on some copies of Blake’s Songs for the purpose of registration during printing, and the printed word ‘1794’ which shows up beneath colour printing under ultraviolet on Songs of Experience Copy T (Ottawa), as well as the mis-registered Nurses Song in Songs of Experience Copy E (Huntington). Studying pinholes, like counting angels on pinheads, may appear irretrievably recondite yet it alludes to a technique for establishing accurate registration for multi-pull printing. Even in today’s technologies of computerized printing, accurate registration to ensure separate colours or images do not blur by being misaligned still remains a challenge. Pinholes through which string was pulled to exactly align multi-pull printings, preventing the paper in the press from moving relative to the printing surface, was quite conceivably a technique Blake used. Indeed, such a technique may be alluded to in William M. Ivins, Jr’s manuscript comments in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, discussing William Savage’s printing methods in Practical Hints on Decorative Printing (1822), one of the more notorious of the early nineteenth-century experimenters in colour printing. However, upon examination – and as was evident at the exhibition itself – the so-called ‘pin-holes’ proved to be merely inkblots and Phillips subsequently published a retraction of this component of his evidence base in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly. Similarly, it needed Alexander Gourlay’s review of the exhibition in the same journal to make it clear that (with the exception of a single Blake’s original copper plate from Illustrations of the Book of Job), the copper plates on exhibit were made not by reconstructive etching techniques but by photogravure, a photographic facsimile technique used in this case by Michael Phillips and Christopher Bacon,

Introduction

5

a printmaker known through his work for the Thomas Bewick Birthplace Trust established in 1982. In Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 35:3 (2002), Essick and Viscomi illustrated new experiments arguing against Phillips and defending their earlier theories in the essay, ‘An Inquiry into William Blake’s Method of Color Printing’. Their experiments were to print from electrotypes using both one-pull and two-pull methods to show their differences, also using the aid of devices such as magnification and Adobe PhotoShop computer software to reveal colours in detail on Blake’s prints. The motive behind these detailed experiments was to argue against every point of Phillips’s theory and to insist that Blake’s printing method is ‘one-pull’ and no other (except in the possible case of ‘Nurses Song’ in the Songs of Experience Copy E, Huntington). These scientific methods and empirical experiments present strong evidence to support Essick and Viscomi’s earlier arguments. Taking together Phillips’s ‘Correction’ essay, Butlin’s article supporting Phillips, Essick and Viscomi’s co-authored response, and mixing these with Bentley’s and Gourlay’s reviews, one can say that no other publication marks the peak of the controversy about Blake’s printing methods more than this single issue of Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 36:2 (Winter 2002). Of course there were also less partisan reviews of the Tate Britain Blake exhibition and its catalogue by Morton Paley (2002) and Jason Whittaker (2002), which followed in the wake of these controversies. In other words, at least eight of the most eminent contemporary Blake scholars were engaged in an increasingly heated debate, not about the interpretation of imagery or poetry but quite simply about technical process. Indeed, after 2002 the controversy arguably intensified still further with Martin Butlin’s online response ‘William Blake, S. W. Hayter and Color Printing’ (2003), Essick and Viscomi’s replies on the same website10 as well as Phillips’s most recent essay on Blake’s printing of the sole surviving America: A Prophecy (1793) plate fragment. Curiously, despite the febrile academic controversies described above, a factor which has been absent is the close examination of Blake’s original copper plates. The arguments of all the scholars referred to above rely on evidence based upon an examination of prints to the neglect of the thirty-eight engraved copper plates made by Blake which are still in existence, and in particular the twentytwo copper plates for Illustrations of the Book of Job. My PhD thesis, ‘Technical and Material Studies of William Blake’s Engraved Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826)’ (2005), which this book is based on, was the first to examine the material evidence of the extant copper printing plates. To those who have studied Joseph Viscomi’s Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993) with its groundbreaking evidence that Blake’s illuminated books were printed in editions and not ad hoc, customer by customer, the neglect of Blake’s original plates may be sur-

6

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

prising. While their existence has sometimes been noted in passing, my study is the first to analyze them in detail and to present the evidence they afford. On the face of it, this may seem an odd absence in Blake studies which, as has been shown, is a research field demonstrably amongst the most vigorously contested in Romantic studies. Similarly, contemporary critical investment in studying Blake’s prints made by relief-etching, the basis of the illuminated books of poetry, has been accomplished at the cost of neglecting his engraving, the technique which required greater professional skill and dexterity than etching. Not least, as Blake’s extant printing plates are physically robust and represent the artist’s last personal contact with the source of his images – very much an exemplar of a Romantic ideology of the artist – the neglect of the printing plates is all the more surprising. It is only very recently that Blake scholars have begun to notice the importance of his extant engraved copper plates. Following some time after my first paper on this subject, ‘A Reconsideration of the Execution and Conception: The Evidence of Blake’s Job Copper Plates,’ presented at the ‘Friendly Enemies: Blake and the Enlightenment’ conference at Essex University (August 2000), there has been increasing attention paid to Blake’s copper plates. Publications in the public domain include Michael Phillips’s ‘The Printing of Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job,’ Print Quarterly, 12:2 (2005), and G. E. Bentley’s ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal: The History, Weight, Uses, Cost, and Makers of His Copper Plates,’ University of Toronto Quarterly, 76: 2 (Spring 2007).11 At this point it may be helpful to summarize the extent of the known archive of Blake copper plates. There are thirty-nine known and traceable printing copper plates by Blake in existence, including thirty-two exclusively made by Blake and seven cooperative plates made by Blake and others. The thirty-two copper plates solely executed by Blake include a fragment of one etched plate, the America cancelled plate a (NGA Washington DC) and thirty-one engraved plates. These are the single plates of the Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims (Yale University Art Gallery), The Beggar’s Opera after Hogarth (Houghton, Harvard), seven plates for the Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy (NGA Washington DC) and the twenty-two Illustrations of the Book of Job plates (BMPD) (See Figure 1). In addition, there are six plates for Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (Bodley, Oxford) and the single plate Christ Trampling on Satan (Pierpont Morgan, New York), partially engraved by Blake. Among them, only the etched plate America a has received scholarly attention before 2000. Perhaps because of the critical and cultural capital invested within university English Literature departments, only the single surviving fragment of one of Blake’s illuminated books of poetry – a few centimetres across – has been thoroughly analysed. This plate, known as America a (which is actually only a fragment from Blake’s original piece of copper), has been examined, measured in detail, electrotyped, reprinted and experimented on in different ways (including some attempts at

Introduction

7

reconstructive printing) over a fifty-year period by W. E. Moss, Ruthven Todd, William Hayter, Robert Essick, Joseph Viscomi and Michael Phillips.12 Despite all of these experiments, this piece of copper plate has not been investigated for its own sake as also suggesting a body of possible evidence about Blake’s other techniques, but simply for furthering the project of the reconstructive recovery of his method of relief etching. For example, the deep gouge on the recto, and the engraving on its verso (possibly by Thomas Butts Jr) has not been properly explained or examined. In Chapter 2, I will show that these marks are those of the corrective technique of repoussage, a practice found in abundance on the Job copper plates (see Figure 2) Equally remarkably, none of the other thirty-one engraved plates by Blake has received the equivalent attention given to the single surviving etched plate fragment, with the possible exception of where, as with Blake’s plate after Hogarth located at the Houghton, modern restrikes have been taken (and have now found their way onto the print dealer market). Moreover, apart from the recently resurfaced Christ Trampling on Satan,13 there is an even more ready scholarly dismissal of the possible significance of six further copper plates, among four hundred for Richard Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (1786), which are only conjecturally attributed to Blake. They have been left neglected in the storerooms of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and for many years ignored by most Blake scholars.

 Although there was a short revival of interest in the technique in the late nineteenth century, engraving has lost its golden age forever and has been abandoned by most modern printmakers. By contrast, the less exacting medium of etching has won many modern artists’ favour and has been regarded as a free means of innovative creation. The rise of etching, and the comparable fall of interest in engraving, has influenced Blake studies in a subtle way, one not always made explicit to Blake students. It has also been less well understood that the group of twentieth-century scholars interested in Blake’s printmaking techniques themselves had a number of connections with modern artistic circles, either by directly cooperating with artists or practising printmaking themselves. Graham Robertson, who discusses Blake’s colour printing methods in his edition of Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1907), was an artist himself as well as being a principal benefactor of the Tate Gallery, London, where he bequeathed most of its important Blake collection, including the best known version of the iconic print, Newton (1795).14 Ruthven Todd, the mid-twentieth-century Blake scholar, who is arguably Essick and Viscomi’s most direct precursor, had a close association with Surrealist artists in the 1930s and 40s. Todd’s experiments on Blake’s printing and relief etching were made in cooperation with William Hayter (1901–1988) and Joan Miró

8

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

(1893–1983), two eminent Surrealist artists. Essick, Viscomi and Phillips all have experience in practical printmaking and experimenting on Blake’s making of relief etching and printing. The latter two refer directly to their experiences as artistic printmakers in their books, Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993) and The Creation of the Songs (2000). Of course, the artistic background of these scholars has substantially assisted their study of Blake’s techniques, helping validate their carefully formulated – if contrary – interpretations. However, they have also been less obviously – but nevertheless profoundly – influenced by modern artistic judgements about comparative value within their professional fields as university tutors of English literature. The focus on Blake’s relief etching to the neglect of his engraved copper plates is a significant consequence of an attachment to the processes which resulted in the illuminated books becoming works crucial to the position of Blake’s poetry within the English literary canon. Most of the scholars interested in Blake’s techniques are also, even if to varying degrees, collectors of his original works. Graham Robertson, W. E. Moss, Ruthven Todd, Geoffrey Keynes, Robert Essick and Michael Phillips were or are all collectors of Blake’s works. Even one of the least well-known collectors from this group, Ruthven Todd, owned a receipt signed by Blake to Thomas Butts, 9 September 1806,15 Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826) Plates 20 and 21,16 and five of Blake’s separate plates: The Fall of Rosamond (1783),17 John Caspar Lavater (1787),18 Christ Trampling on Satan (c. 1806–8),19 The Man Sweeping the Interpreter’s Parlour (c. 1822)20 and all four states of Wilson Lowry (1824– 5).21 Although implying himself to be financially precarious in a wartime letter to Graham Robertson, Todd still managed to acquire this small but important Blake collection.22 Between them, Robertson, Moss, Keynes and Essick have also owned, sold-on or bequeathed a number of crucial Blake pictures, books and artefacts. Recently, Michael Phillips – not without controversy on account of their unproven authenticity – exhibited three items from his own collection in the Blake Tate exhibition (2000), which he claimed contain Blake’s authenticated drawing or writing.23 Considering that he entitled one of his most celebrated and striking illuminated books Milton: A Poem (1804–20), one of these items, an 1732 Richard Bentley edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost alleged to be copiously annotated with marginalia by Blake, stands to be an undoubtedly significant find if authenticated. However, like the Phillips-owned so-called ‘Sophocles notebook,’ the attribution to Blake of the Paradise Lost annotations has been critically challenged, notwithstanding their exhibition at both Tate Britain and, subsequently, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.24 Further evidence, perhaps in the form of refinements in the technological investigation of graphic authenticity, must be awaited before these disputes are resolved one way or the other but there can be no doubting that the dual roles of collector and critic

Introduction

9

require some measure of caution when interpreting the subsequent hermeneutic of Blake’s work which results. The slightly parochial nature of the academic contestation – even if played out in the exhibition halls of the major international galleries – is a reminder that the interpretative high ground in the judgement of commercial and artistic value involves an untidy melee of public benefactors, private collectors, university academics and museum curators together with, not least, the exclusively recondite world of dealers and auction houses, a profession not unacquainted with criminal convictions in recent years (for example, in the case of Sotheby’s chairman Alfred Taubman convicted of illegal price fixing, see The Times, 23 April 2002). The interest and demand for Blake’s relief etchings raises their prices on the marketplace, therefore encouraging a hierarchical judgement of his art. Although there is an understandable reluctance to admit the hierarchical view of artistic technique, modern Blake scholars appear to always bear in mind that engraving as a reproductive technique is significantly less valuable than etching, which is seen as a better method of revealing an artist’s creativity in printmaking. In other words, by processes of either commission or omission, modern Blake scholars have been complicit in under-privileging Blake’s technique as an engraver. In fact, the decline in esteem of engraving started in Blake’s lifetime. The engravers’ dilemma was whether to consider themselves commercial or high artists. Many scholars have discussed the exclusion of engravers from the Royal Academy of Arts.25 As D. W. Dörrbecker (1994) points out, Robert Strange’s Inquiry into the Rise and Establishment of the Royal Academy of Arts (1775) and John Landseer’s Lectures on the art of Engraving (1807) represent the engraver’s protests against this discrimination. The notion of originality grew stronger through the nineteenth century26 and, by the twentieth century, innovation and originality became the core for the judgement of artistic value. Modern Blake studies reflect this evolution of the judgement of art. Certainly, Blake’s Job engravings were already highly admired by his contemporaries, even during the lengthy process of their execution.27 The nineteenth-century art critic John Ruskin regarded them as Blake’s best work,28 but the original copper plates have been under-examined in modern times. By contrast, because Blake’s illuminated books are today held in higher critical esteem, research into processes of relief etching and printing from relief etched plates has been pursued with the most noticeable vigour. To complete the paradox, etching is a technique which (then as now) is less skilful than engraving, arguably less a measure of Blake’s command of his craft technique. The term ‘original print’, distinguished from reproductive engraving, is attributed in the late nineteenth century to works of printmakers such as Dürer to define the prints made from the engraver’s own design.29 Blake’s Job falls into this category, and deserves the same attention as his relief etching. However,

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William Blake and the Art of Engraving

the traditional technique of engraving to which it applies is somewhat devalued and so Blake’s Job has come to be regarded by modern scholars, perhaps dismissively, as a ‘middle ground’30 between reproductive engraving and original relief etching. This hierarchical judgement of artistic value, although perfectly understandable once it has been historicized, has caused an unjustified neglect of Blake’s engraved copper plates.

 Among the extant copper plates of Blake, the twenty-two Job plates in the British Museum Prints and Drawings (hereafter BMPD) should be considered the most important material for investigation. This is not only because of the substantial number of the copper plates, but also because the Job plates are the most complete set that was made late in Blake’s life, they have the added scholarly attraction of having been the subject of well-documented records kept by the Linnell family. While other completed plates might have involved other hands in engraving or restoration, the Job plates are the best evidence of Blake’s technique untouched by others, thanks to John Linnell’s retention of them prior to their safe ownership by the British Museum from 1918. Of the others, the Dante plates are unfinished; the six Gough plates were executed during Blake’s apprenticeship cooperatively in Basire’s workshop and so are probably not entirely his work; Christ Trampling on Satan was engraved by Thomas Butts Jr with the assistance of Blake; the Hogarth plate was repaired by later commercial printers.31 A later impression of this last plate, in The Works of William Hogarth, from the Original Plates Restored by James Heath was published in 1822 by Baldwin, Cradock and Joy. Essick suggests that James Heath probably executed some work on the fourth state (1822).32 The Hogarth plate was also ‘thoroughly repaired by Ratcliff, of Birmingham’.33 In other words, the current state of the Hogarth copper plate does not contain Blake’s exclusive handiwork. The large plate of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims is perhaps the second most important copper plate worth taking into account as being representative of Blake’s technique and skill, except that its solitary status cannot compare with the twenty-two Job plates. However, despite the importance of the Job designs recognized by Linnell, the Job copper plates themselves have been paid little attention after they were deposited in the BMPD, and it is surprisingly easy to document this scholarly neglect. In all the past studies of Blake except the two recent essays by Phillips (2005) and Bentley (2007) mentioned earlier, the Job copper plates have only been mentioned by a few scholars in very brief accounts. Keynes mentions the existence of Blake’s copper plates in a short article in his Blake Studies but adds no description or other examination.34 Bentley noticed the two reused copper plates, Plates 14 and 16, in the Job series, and deduced that they were reused plates formerly used for A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759),35 a work published when Blake

Introduction

11

was only two years old. Bo Lindberg’s William Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job (1973), which is a combination of material, historical studies and iconographic interpretations, and usually thought to be the most exhaustive study on the subject, mentions and provides the British Museum location data for the plates but otherwise completely ignores them. However, Lindberg’s chapter on the engraving technique is not based on an examination of the Job copper plates themselves although he was obviously aware of their existence. After Lindberg’s book, William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, edited by David Bindman (London: William Blake Trust, 1987), is the most recent and ambitious work intended to cover all the materials available for the study on Blake’s Job engravings. However, it includes only a small section, written by Essick, on the copper plates which contains information (which can now be updated in the light of the evidence presented here) concerning ‘chisel marks’ on their backs, supposing that these marks were made during planishing, the process of hammering metal plates to make them flat and hard before engraving.36 Lindberg’s interpretations were made without the foundation of close material study and demonstrate the extent of the neglect of these copper plates. This amounts to the absence from scrutiny of the most basic material in these studies, namely the plates themselves, and it very largely accounts for the consequent tradition of misinterpretation.

 The neglect of Blake’s engraved copper plates has also resulted from the extensive elaboration of an expressly literary theory, the notion of the unification of invention or conception and execution, largely pursued by Essick and Viscomi. The theory, developed from the ‘one-pull’ theory of printing, is sought specifically to correspond to Blake’s claims for divine inspiration in his creative processes. Essick and Viscomi imply that Blake realized his theory of unifying invention and execution as a result of his practice of printmaking. The key statements for our understanding of how their argument emerged come from Blake’s own statements that ‘Invention depends Altogether upon Execution or Organization’ (E 637) in his annotations to Reynolds’s Discourses, and his antipathy to ‘the pretended Philosophy which teaches that Execution is the power of One & Invention of Another’ (E 699). The unity of invention and execution, hand and mind working as one, implies a ‘spontaneous’ and ‘immediate’ process of creation.37 This takes literally Blake’s own description in a letter to Thomas Butts of writing a ‘Poem from immediate Dictation twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even against [his] Will’ (E 729). Essick and Viscomi found that the best example of Blake’s unity of invention and execution is his direct use of the etching needle or brush to compose text and design on the copper plate without models. Essick claims:

12

William Blake and the Art of Engraving Blake’s unique method of relief etching provided a medium for his most radical experiments in the interweaving of graphic conception and execution within a seamless process of production. Rather than transferring a design prepared in a different medium to the copper, the relief etcher can compose directly on the plate.38

Viscomi says, ‘illuminated printing represents undivided labor, unified invention and execution, and unconventional production’,39 and claims that Blake’s ‘working without models’ in relief etching is ‘a composing process that enabled Blake to put his thoughts down on copper immediately’.40 Essick and Viscomi endeavour to prove that Blake designed and drew directly onto the copper plate without transferring from models. Directly designing on copper plate is like drawing and painting on canvas, thus unifying invention and execution.41 For Essick and Viscomi, it is in the same way that Blake’s supposed one-pull procedure of printing unifies invention and execution by colouring and printing in one go without separating this stage of the process into mechanical divisions. However, engraving does not fit into this method or the theory which is at the core of what Essick and Viscomi argue. The reason why engraving does not fit this theory is that engraving nearly always requires models and transfer techniques and, in any case, the ‘push’ and ‘pull’ process of moving the engraver’s burin is quite contrary to the fluent sketching with the etching needle, or writing with a brush dipped in acid-proof liquid. In an even greater distinction between the production processes of the illuminated books, even though they used Blake’s original design, the Job engravings were printed by another hand, the professional copper plate printers Lahee and Dixon. The division of invention and execution, as far as the printing of the Job plates is concerned, could hardly be greater. In other words, the paradigm of etching employed by Essick and Viscomi, while it may hold true for the illuminated books, cannot be followed in the engraved Illustrations of the Book of Job, a work printed by commercial copper plate printers. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, a major part of this study, close examination on Blake’s copper plates, especially on the Job plates, reveals for the first time that the technique of repoussage was extensively used by Blake on the versos of the copper plates to mend wrongly engraved lines. This is a very significant finding. As described in handbooks of printmaking, the technique of repoussage is used to correct serious mistakes occurring on line engraved copper plates by scraping and burnishing the lines and hammering up the area from the back of the plate to make it into an even surface for further re-engraving. Although mentioned by a few scholars, these hammer marks have never been taken seriously, or properly understood in their functions. The hundreds of hammered marks left embedded on the versos of the Job plates as traces of the repoussage technique are one of the most significant dis-

Introduction

13

coveries outlined in this book. The examination of Blake’s copper plates plays a central role in this study to draw attention to this important but much-ignored material evidence. With the aid of simple measuring tools, one can observe that the hammer marks on the verso of the copper plate correspond exactly to the engraved lines and figures on the recto of the plate. They also match the changes made by Blake noticed by Robert Essick on early print proofs to the final state. These prove that the hammer marks are neither random nor made by anyone other than Blake himself. They are indeed the traces of the technique of repoussage, the materially indelible process of repeatedly correcting and modifying original conceptions. As with most scholars of engraved prints, Essick’s method is to compare different proof states and to trace their development, systematically, from the first working proof to the final state.42 In this way, he has observed many important changes in Blake’s Job and other engravings. This methodology, which is used by most scholars of prints, directs us to the prints rather than the copper plates from which the prints were produced. However, the examination of copper plate and repoussage has revealed another important source for our understanding of Blake’s techniques as a craftsman. In addition, this book will show that repoussage is not only found on the versos of the Job copper plates, but also on most of Blake’s other extant copper plates. Chapter 3 will discuss the discovery of repoussage on the copper plate of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, The Beggar’s Opera after Hogarth, the plates for the Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, and even the early Gough plates. These discoveries tell us that Blake made mistakes in engraving throughout his career, right from the period of his apprenticeship work on the Gough plates to the end of his life when he worked on the Dante plates. These not only include commercial plates, such as the Gough plates and the Hogarth plate, but also the plates made to his own designs, such as Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, Job and Dante. Keynes mentions the technique of correction on copper plates by knocking the copper up from the back in his essay ‘On Editing Blake’,43 but only in working from an assumption that Blake might have used it on Jerusalem, Plate 37. Viscomi recognizes the existence of the technique of repoussage,44 but does not identify its actual use on Blake’s extant copper plates. A photograph of repoussage on a copper plate is shown by Morris Eaves45 to illustrate its function of mending lines and figures from the verso of the plate. The particular example is of a plate engraved by Blake’s acquaintance William Sharp after John Opie’s design, Edward Long, published in 1796. Around 1813, the Sharp plate was altered by Robert Graves (1798–1873) in order to delete the figure’s hat and the shadows on the sitter’s head and face and to change the inscriptions below the portrait, this job possibly being a commission from Edward Long’s family. However,

14

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

although Eaves discusses Sharp’s plate in the context of the engraving trade in the late eighteenth century in his monograph The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (1992), he made no examination of hammer marks or copper plates on Blake’s own work. It is clear that changing the images on copper plates requires the technique of repoussage. In Eaves’s example, the technique is not for correction but for revision. Blake’s designs of Job engraving, however, have no intention of revising the central images because they strongly resemble his early watercolours for Job made for Butts and Linnell. The repoussage on the versos of Job copper plates, therefore, bespeaks correction for detailed mistakes, as well as a hesitation in the skill and fluidity of his technique. It reminds us of a very early commentary on Blake’s Job engravings only two months after their publication, and the first and only printed reference in Blake’s lifetime, in a weekly journal The Star Chamber, 4 (Wednesday 3 May 1826), possibly by the later prime minister Benjamin Disraeli (1804–81).46 Remarkably, Disraeli not only wrongly – but revealingly – identifies the Job engravings as ‘etching’, he also comments on their perceived lack of ‘skilful execution’. Mr. William Blake, whose illustrations in outline of Young, Gray, and other poets have been long before the public, has completed his designs for the Book of Job. Some of the etchings are full of that remarkable wildness and singularity of conception, for which Blake is so well known. The embodying of the plagues inflicted on Job by the Almighty, the personification of a Night-mare, and the figures of the creation, are wonderful, although we do not think them equal either in point of originality or skilful execution to some of the earlier productions of this extraordinary artist.47

This verdict corroborates Blake’s earlier perception in The Public Address (1810) that: To what is it that Gentlemen of the first Rank both in Genius & Fortune have subscribed their Names [–] To My Inventions. the Executive part they never disputed the Lavish praise I have received from all Quarters for Invention & Drawings has Generally been accompanied by this he can conceive but he cannot Execute. (E 582)

Modern scholars, in defence of Blake’s art, tend to dismiss this kind of criticism. However, to place Blake in the context of his time and print culture, we need to reconsider Blake’s artistic skills carefully. In many ways, repoussage subverts the theory of unity of invention and execution which has been most influentially debated by Essick and Viscomi. The hundreds of hammer marks on most of Blake’s extant copper plates display many mistakes and reworkings by Blake. The techniques of engraving are far from being the spontaneous and immediate processes that Essick and Viscomi associate with Blake’s relief etching, neither are they from ‘immediate Dictation’, ‘without Premeditation’ as Blake claims about his writing (E 729). In other words, descriptions appropriate to explain relief etching cannot also be taken

Introduction

15

to encompass the very different technique of engraving, as if the spontaneity of etching was also a characteristic of engraving. Rather, the Job plates are a long term labour involving careful processes of composition, modification, resizing, reorganization, and trial and error. On these plates, Blake certainly did not unify his invention and execution. If Blake did succeed in the unity of invention and execution in his writing and relief etching, he did not achieve the same ideal in engraving, either for commercial plates or for his own designs.

 While tracing the background of the theory of the unification of invention and execution, I found a long history of argument in Blake studies, which reveals an unexpected source from the Surrealism movement of the 1930s and 40s. The ‘one-pull’ theory of Essick and Viscomi follows the experiments in 1947 by Ruthven Todd, who was inspired by Graham Robertson’s experiments of 1906 and W. E. Moss’s experiments around the same time. Against Frederick Tatham’s account about Blake’s process of printing in Rossetti’s ‘Supplementary’ chapter to Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake, Robertson held a ‘two-pull’ theory, thinking that Blake printed his Large Colour Prints (c. 1795–1805) in a multistage procedure. Todd held the opposite view, the ‘one-pull’ theory, echoing Tatham but (like Essick and Viscomi) mainly concerned with Blake’s relief etching of the illuminated books rather than the Large Colour Prints. This ‘one-pull’ theory, in turn, influenced Essick and Viscomi, although the latter two are against Todd’s transfer theory. What has not been considered thoroughly is that Todd in his experiments on Blake’s printing of relief etching cooperated with two important Surrealist artists, William Stanley Hayter and Joan Miró. Blake scholars have never paid much attention to the close relationship between Todd and Surrealist artists of the 1930s and 40s, and its influence and association with Blake studies. The history and contexts of these competing early and mid-twentieth century theories about printmaking, which will be outlined in Chapter 1, adds an extra dimension of complexity to the current debate. This Chapter traces the inheritance of early to mid-twentieth-century ideas in order to understand the background of the argument about Blake’s methods, which are a central concern in current Blake studies. It is not my attempt, however, to join in the argument about Blake’s printing methods, but to highlight the missing element in the Blake controversy: the neglect of Blake’s engraved copper plates, and to find out the reasons for such neglect. The overlooked examination of copper plates does not only happen to Blake, but also in other general studies of prints. Studies of prints tend to examine proofs on paper rather than the media they are printed from. In Chapter 2, to establish the historical context of printing plates and to compare with Blake’s plates, I start my examination on Blake’s contemporary copper plates by other

16

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

engravers in major collections, which have obviously also been ignored for a long time. These collections include the Bodleian Library Oxford, British Museum, Houghton Library (Harvard), Huntington Library (CA USA), Lewis Walpole Library (Yale), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, National Gallery of Art Washington DC, Pierpont Morgan Library (New York), Tate Britain, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. The aim of this book, therefore, is a reinforcement of material and historical studies. In the Blake conference during the Tate Exhibition of 2000, ‘Blake, Nation and Empire’, organized by David Worrall and Steve Clark on 8 and 9 December 2000, there were concerns expressed from the floor as to whether Blake studies had become too historical and should aim to go back to Frye’s interpretative methodology. In a recent study, Sheila Spector in ‘Glorious Incomprehensible’: The development of Blake’s Kabbalistic Language (2001) says ‘having re-introduced consciousness into the study of Blake, scholars have begun to explore nonmaterial aspects of the emotive and rhetorical approaches to Blake’ (p. 27). In the ‘Blake at 250’ Conference at York in 2007, there was also a heated debate from the floor between historical and hermeneutic approaches to Blake studies. The emphasis on nonmaterial aspects seems to reject material studies and suggest that there is an emerging view that the material studies of Blake have been over-stressed. This book will demonstrate the continued potency of material studies, whose importance as a foundation for interpretation of Blake’s works has for years been established by scholars, such as Geoffrey Keynes, David Erdman, G. E. Bentley, Jr., Robert Essick, Jon Mee and David Worrall. Close examination of firsthand material is essential before any interpretation can be made. At the very least, my book may serve as a record of an eyewitness, a potentially valuable contribution in a world where material artefacts, despite their physicality, do not escape destruction. The relative impermanence of Blakean artefacts has been highlighted in Robert Rix’s PhD thesis, Bibles of Hell: William Blake and the Discourses of Radicalism,48 which discusses the apparent deterioration of a pencil sketch drawn by Blake on his copy of Francis Bacon’s Essays Moral, Economical, and Political (1798). Blake’s annotated copy of Bacon in the Cambridge University Library shows a drawing on p. 55, described by Keynes and by Erdman,49 ‘The devils arse [with chain of excrement ending in] A King’ (E 624). However, Rix recently found that the original sketch has been erased at the top, where the words ‘The devils arse’ and the buttocks were originally evident.50 It is recovered by Keynes’s imitation in pen of Blake’s annotations on another copy of the same book.51 The erasure of the image is not mentioned by Keynes or Erdman, but only later noticed by Bentley.52 Although this erasure has been a mystery, and no explanation is offered, Rix’s observation tells us of the importance of an eyewit-

Introduction

17

ness account, at the firsthand, artefacts rather than dependence on secondhand records. With the same purpose, the exposition of copper plates in this book also serves as a record, or eyewitness, of important original materials by Blake’s hand which have not hitherto been collated. Should there be any deterioration of the material in the future, this record may at least preserve information for future studies. In art history, a recent scholarly tendency has similarly emphasized material studies and conservation. The exhibition of Blake’s contemporary, watercolourist Thomas Girtin (1775–1802), at the Tate Britain from 4 July to 29 September 2002, showed concern for his working methods in the studio as well as from nature. In the exhibition and its catalogue, Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolour,53 the study of materials and techniques, along with the display of unfinished works in progress, reveal artists’ working practice, the foundation of their ideas and achievement being equally important to the study of their lives and historical contexts. In addition, the unavoidable degradation of artworks shows the importance and urgency of conservation and how this exhibition and its material studies serve as an eyewitness at the present time. In this respect, the very physical permanence of Blake’s copper plates makes it even more extraordinary that they have been neglected. As the study of Blake reaches this scientific level, conservation of Blake’s works becomes essential. The need for the conservation of Blake’s work exists not only because of the quick deterioration of paper and the pigments on his temperas and colour prints, but it also gives an opportunity for the scientific analysis of the materials, which helps us to understand how they achieve their effect as works. The analysis of Blake’s media, for example, the binder and pigments Blake used for colour printing, becomes important for understanding of Blake’s techniques, the effect he achieved and the reasons why his choice was so different from his contemporaries. For example, Michael Phillips cites the chemical studies of Robert Essick, Anne Maheux, Joyce Townsend and Sarah L. Vallance on Blake’s media to explain how he made the mottled effect on colour prints.54 Essick and Viscomi also pay much attention to Blake’s printing media.55 These studies further indicate the significance of materials and the continuing demand for investigation. However, the paradox continues: despite the very fragility of paint and paper, Blake’s prints have received extensive consideration and examination. The extant copper plates, the most materially stable artefacts to have survived from Blake’s lifetime, have been neglected. Joyce Townsend and Piers Townshend, Tate conservation scientists, have undertaken the restoration on Blake’s Large Colour Prints described in William Blake the Painter at Work (2003). Discussions with them have benefited my study very much concerning Blake’s techniques. Although a very different

18

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

medium from engraving, the working method of the Large Colour Prints also shows some inconsistency, and breaks the ideal of unification of invention and execution, similar to the Job engravings. The printing of these works does not seem to be done totally in one-pull, nor with any evidence of two-pull with registration, but rather a middle-way method. Accordingly, more study of Blake’s materials is urgently needed. Most likely Blake did not insist using only one method but chose whatever was convenient to him. To summarize the plan of this book, starting with the current debate about Blake’s printing techniques in this introductory chapter, I will discuss a number of materialist problems in Blake studies, focusing on previous lacunae and on my examination of Blake’s engraved copper plates. Chapter 1 traces the early history of twentieth-century Blake studies, and discusses their association with Surrealism and automatic writing. Chapter 2 examines copper plates engraved by Blake’s contemporaries, especially with regard to the technique of repoussage. Chapter 3 examines Blake’s extant printing copper plates, especially the twenty-two Job copper plates with details of their size and marks, along with a comparison with their proof states to verify the changes and mistakes Blake made. Chapter 4 looks into the copper plate makers associated with Blake, who left their marks on the plates. Chapter 5 discusses Blake’s Virgil woodblocks, an early Virgil re-engraver c. 1821–43 and the contradictory views of contemporaries towards his works.

1 THE HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF CONCEPTION AND EXECUTION

Amongst studies of Blake’s etching and engraving techniques on copper, there is no doubt that the most important in recent times are those put forward by Robert Essick and Joseph Viscomi. Both of them have dominated discussion of Blake’s printmaking techniques, especially the technique of relief etching. Essick’s William Blake, Printmaker (1980) brings out the artisan’s life of Blake, his profession, his medium and technique. Throughout William Blake, Printmaker, we can see for the first time how Blake worked on copper plates.1 Essick successfully gives us a clear view of the life Blake lived as a professional engraver and printmaker under the general public taste of the eighteenth century, and his struggle to move from being an ordinary reproductive printmaker to being an original artist. Following Essick’s practical and detailed research, Viscomi’s influential Blake and the Idea of the Book has similarly become one of the most indispensable books for Blake studies. Working apparently increasingly interdependently, at least after William Blake, Printmaker, Essick and Viscomi have had intellectual collaboration and shared similar ideas. Their argument for the unity of invention (or conception) and execution has also become widely known,2 and cannot be ignored by anyone studying Blake’s copper plates and techniques. The theory of the unity of invention and execution is subtly presented in Essick but pushed to the extreme by Viscomi. This is most clearly expressed in Blake and the Idea of the Book (1993): With the exception of Experience, Blake left virtually no manuscripts of illuminated poems, let alone fair copies of them. … Like tracings in the production of an engraving drafts of poems appearing on illuminated plates may have been discarded after serving their purpose, replaced by the ‘printed manuscripts’. The poems – or at least the minor and major prophecies, texts whose forms were not externally structured by rhyme schemes and ballad forms – may have been composed just as the illustrations were, spontaneously and almost automatically. As persuasively demonstrated by Essick in Blake and the Language of Adam, Blake’s mode of literary production responsible for the prophecies was much as Blake himself described it – unpremeditated. Essick shows why Blake’s metaphor of ‘dictation’ was not mere topos, and how oral formulas and Blake’s aesthetic of uniting invention and execution made it tech– 19 –

20

William Blake and the Art of Engraving nically possible for Blake to write, as Blake told Butts, ‘twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even against [his] Will’ (E 729). Because illuminated printing and oral-formulaic poetry are both autographic, they technically could have occurred concurrently.3

It is clear throughout his book that Visomi’s assumption is that illuminated printing represents undivided labour, unified invention and execution, and unconventional production.4 Yet the assumption is extended to the whole of Blake’s printmaking so that his readers hardly notice that it only covers the relief etched illuminated books and not his engravings, which were Blake’s main career output. Similarly, Essick says in his William Blake, Printmaker that Blake’s graphic techniques (for relief etching in particular) are themselves claimed to possess intrinsic meaning as ‘activities of mind’.5 In Essick’s words, ‘when Blake exaggerates these commercial techniques and raises them so far above the threshold of vision that they replace representational forms and become that which is represented’.6 In short, ‘graphic method becomes part of verbal message’.7 With ‘method’ becoming ‘message’, Essick’s effort of building ‘conception’ into Blake’s ‘execution’ is clearly seen. His discussion of technique (the execution) is working towards the theory that Blake as an artist chose the technique with his mind, not as an artisan controlled by the mechanical. We should note, however, the word ‘execution’ here is restricted to relief etching, a technique which Essick and Viscomi noticeably privilege. Essick’s tendency to emphasize relief etching leads to the implication that Blake used it as his most successful way of combining invention and execution. After his return from Felpham to London in 1803, Essick claims Blake ‘return[ed] to his earlier graphic innovations as a means for communicating his renewed vision’.8 By this, Essick means the relief etching of both text and design. In the letter to Thomas Butts of 10 January 1803, Blake wrote he had resumed his ‘primitive & original ways of Execution in both painting & engraving’ (E 724). Essick is certain that ‘by this Blake must have meant relief etching’.9 Essick’s theory of Blake’s ‘unity of invention and execution’ is more fully presented in William Blake and the Language of Adam. Although William Blake and the Language of Adam is not particularly concerned with Blake’s craft techniques, it is clear that the preconditions for his interpretation of Blake were established and laid out in the primary work done for William Blake, Printmaker. In chapter 4, ‘Language and Modes of Production’, Essick argues that, for Blake, there is ‘no distinction between the source of conception and the medium of its execution: the medium is the origin’.10 This is taking the cue from Blake’s words that ‘Invention depends Altogether upon Execution or Organization’ (E 637) in his annotations to Reynolds’s Discourses, and his antipathy to ‘the pretended Philosophy which teaches that Execution is the power of One & Invention of

The History of the Theory of Conception and Execution

21

Another’ (E 699). Although William Blake and the Language of Adam does not refer much to Blake’s copper plates or practical techniques, it is based on the practical ground of his earlier research, and its influence has been continuing for more than a decade. In Essick’s theory, the ‘spontaneous’ and the ‘immediate’ played a major role in Blake’s inspiration of poetry as well as his pictorial production.11 However, the theory about Blake’s execution and conception was not Essick and Viscomi’s invention. It has a long history back in the early Blake studies and an artistic and literary background in the early twentieth century. This chapter will show how the Essick/Viscomi thesis of the unity of invention and execution in Blake’s relief etching is actually a later incarnation of early twentieth-century idealizations of automatic writing developed by 1930s and 40s Surrealists including, most notably, the Blake scholar Ruthven Todd who not only carried out reconstructive experiments (as Essick and Viscomi acknowledge) but who had close links with major Surrealist printmakers who were enthusiastic about the possibilities of automatic writing. The certainty with which Viscomi both assents to, and validates, Essick’s preliminary work is notable. As quoted before, Viscomi wrote in Blake and the Idea of the Book that ‘Essick shows in William Blake and the Language of Adam why Blake’s metaphor of “dictation” was not mere topos … Blake’s aesthetic of uniting invention and execution made it possible to write, as Blake told Butts … “without Premeditation” … Because illuminated poetry and oral-formulaic poetry are both autographic, they technically could have occurred concurrently’.12 Ruthven Todd’s Surrealist friends would have heartily agreed. While Joan Miró, William Hayter and, of course, Ruthven Todd actually experimented directly in reconstructing Blake’s methods of relief etching, Blake was already a much-celebrated figure amongst Surrealists fascinated by what they called, ultimately derived from their understanding of Sigmund Freud, ‘automatic writing’. The Essick/Viscomi thesis is not without its own, unacknowledged, genealogy in Surrealist practices. Ruthven Todd (1914–78), has been widely recognized as an important early twentieth-century scholar by Blake critics and collectors such as Keynes, Robertson, Bentley and others. Among scholarly circles around the time of the Second World War and during the post-war period, Todd was well known for his enthusiasm about Blake’s materials. Todd’s re-editing of Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1942) started his research work on Blake. His contributions to Blake studies are mainly material studies with exhaustive tracing of historical details. These can be found not only in his notes for the Life of William Blake, including published and unpublished manuscripts at Leeds University, his books Tracks in the Snow: Studies in English Science and Art (1946) and William Blake: the Artist (1971) but also in his extensive correspondence with many contemporary Blake scholars. Among them, Lt.-Col. W. E. Moss was especially important

22

William Blake and the Art of Engraving

as a major collector of Blake’s works as well as on account of his own studies of Blake. The correspondence between Moss and Todd reveals the exchange of ideas and sharing of interests. One crucial item originally in Moss’s collection is the unique fragment of the etched copper plate America plate a (NGA), which came to Todd’s attention and inspired his experiments in 1947. Todd was obviously animated by Moss’s experiments in printing from this etched plate, as well as Graham Robertson’s experiments with colour printing from millboard. This chapter will show the history and relationship of these early Blake scholars and how Todd played a central role as an influential figure. The chapter will also throw new light on the neglected figure of Moss whose crucial role in Blake studies still needs fuller research. It is rarely mentioned in Blake studies that the other, very different, part of Todd’s life distinct from the academic world of Blake scholarship was his involvement in the Surrealist movement. Todd’s involvement with the Surrealists has never been recognized as having any significance in relation to his Blake studies, but these two worlds of Todd coincided in the 1940s. Long preceding the post-war impetus to academic study given by the publication of Northrop Frye’s Fearful Symmetry (1947) and David V. Erdman’s Blake: Prophet against Empire (1954), Blake was a popular name during the important 1936 International Surrealist Exhibition in London, which was also a significant encounter between Todd and the Surrealists. There are many surprising similarities between Blake’s theory of conception and execution and the Surrealist manifestos. As the Surrealists found their echoes in Blake and other preceding artists’ works, Surrealism in turn influenced Blake scholars through Todd’s relationship with the artists from the group. Stanley William Hayter (1901–88), a prominent British printmaker of the twentieth century, was associated with the Surrealist group much earlier than Todd. His printmaking workshop, Atelier 17, was a major influence on many eminent modern artists, including Pablo Picasso and Joan Miró. With his new methods of engraving, Hayter spread Surrealist ideas of automatism and of the subconscious during the 1930s and 40s. It was in the workshop of Atelier 17, re-established in New York after moving from Paris, that Todd cooperated with Hayter and Miró in an experimental reconstruction of Blake’s processes of relief etching and printing.13 The similarity between Surrealist automatism and Blake’s idea of the unity of invention and execution strongly suggests a connection between Surrealism, Todd’s experiments and the one-pull theory of Essick and Viscomi. Hayter was known as a strongly philosophical artist, one who held considered theories about his artistic practices.14 Although experiments attempting to reconstruct Blake’s methods carried out by Todd, Hayter and Miró derive from Hayter’s professional experience of printmaking, there was also an ideology behind the idea of automatism in Surrealism which led their practice.

The History of the Theory of Conception and Execution

23

Despite their expertise in printmaking and Blake studies, the experiments of Todd, Hayter and Miró were largely discounted by Essick and Viscomi. The latter two reconstructed Todd’s experiments but claimed that Todd was wrong in saying Blake used transfer techniques because Todd doubted Blake’s ability to do mirror writing.15 Essick and Viscomi established their authority with powerful argument and historical and practical evidence. Nevertheless, Essick and Viscomi’s notion of Blake’s unity of invention and execution, and his one-pull printing process, appear to have been inherited from Todd and his Surrealist background without acknowledgement.

 The origin of one-pull and two-pull theories derives from Frederick Tatham and W. Graham Robertson.16 Both theories have little solid ground of proof. Robertson’s assertion of multiple printing was based on his own artistic observations; while Tatham’s description of Blake using one-pull method on his colour prints was from his fallible memory of distant conversations, bearing in mind that he was only three years old when Blake made his Large Colour Prints in 1795. The analysis of technique presented by Essick and Viscomi has its own history, which has been overlooked. Although Essick and Viscomi make reference to the experiments of etching and printing carried out by Ruthven Todd in the 1940s, they share with Todd a curious belief in the powers of automatic writing. The process of automatic writing was of enormous interest both to Todd and to the Surrealists of the 1920s and 30s. This appears to have prompted Todd’s interest in Blake as a possible automatic writer. Execution without premeditation, as Essick and Viscomi have described Blake’s relief-etching process, together with the legacy of Surrealist automatic writing has continued as a common feature in Blake studies from Todd’s time onwards. In other words, although Essick and Viscomi rejected Todd’s theories of Blake’s techniques, his legacy and the influence of the Surrealist group has been underestimated in the wider circle of Blake studies. Ruthven Todd was the editor of Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake, published in 1942 for the Everyman’s Library, a new edition following Graham Robertson’s earlier edition (London: John Lane, 1907). His Tracks in the Snow: Studies in English Science and Art (1946) and William Blake: the Artist (1971) were, in their time, two significant historical research works on Blake and his contemporaries. The Everyman’s Library edition of Alexander Gilchrist: Life of William Blake (1942) is the formal start of Todd’s work on Blake.17 Todd corrected quotations from Blake which were changed for the reason that ‘another word seemed ‘“better”’.18 Anne Gilchrist, Dante Gabriel and William Michael Rossetti finished Gilchrist’s work after his death and, for their own reasons, sometimes changed Blake’s words from those in Gilchrist’s manuscript. Todd was part of

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a scholarly trend in favour of authenticating Blake’s writing. ‘The great industry of rewriting Blake’ at the end of the nineteenth century, Todd says, was ‘culminating in the work of the late E. J. Ellis, who not only prepared a new text, but invented a new author for it, whom he called “the real Blake”’.19 Todd’s edition was intended to restore the original text of Blake, which is a historical attempt followed up by other Blake scholars. Todd’s Alexander Gilchrist: Life of William Blake of 1942 was revised in a second edition published in 1945 with expanded notes. For the next forty years, Todd continued collecting materials for a third edition of his Gilchrist. These appear in three volumes now in the Special Material Department of the Brotherton Library, Leeds University (MS. 470.292–4). The copyright page is amended ‘COMPLETELY REVISED, 1968’ indicating that Todd worked on it almost until the end of his life. There are leaves from Todd’s 1942 edition of Gilchrist, separated and pasted on large-sized paper, and bound in three albums, with Todd’s new addition of meticulous notes neatly handwritten in the margin. They have never been published, although Todd tried hard to arrange publication with the Clarendon Press.20 This is perhaps the most important work Todd did on Blake. G. E. Bentley’s article, ‘Ruthven Todd’s Blake Papers at Leeds’ (1982), comments that ‘The work he [Todd] did was detailed and valuable, and much of it is new and fascinating. … These fascinating materials for a new edition of Gilchrist are very extensive and very incomplete. They deserve to be brought into order and up to date and published’.21 Bentley at that time had agreed to serve as ‘midwife’ to the project if a publisher could be found. However, this never happened, and all the manuscripts of Todd on Blake studies, including his correspondence with many Blake scholars, were given to Leeds University Library by his son, Christopher Todd, a professor in the French Department of Leeds University. The importance of Todd’s role in early Blake studies may be discerned in his contribution not only to re-editing Gilchrist’s references to Blake’s writing, but also to cataloguing Blake’s art. Not only did he correct Blake’s texts in Gilchrist’s edition used by Keynes and others,22 his catalogue of Blake’s paintings and drawings later became the foundation for Martin Butlin’s The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (1981), which is the definitive catalogue raisonné of Blake studies. Todd says: The digging and nosing around which I was doing (Geoffrey called me ‘the Mole’) did more than correct Gilchrist. Out of my reading and routing came the material which I was later to use in parts of my Tracks in the Snow and also an enormous volume, which I typed on blue folio legal paper which came folded in quires. This is the foundation of what will one day be the definitive catalogue of all Blake’s drawings and paintings. On this last, I fell down in 1947, but Geoffrey kept his copy up to date and the job is now in the capable hands of Martin Butlin of the Tate Gallery. I had, in

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America, a revised and retyped copy of the catalogue and, since I did not know what to do with it, I gave it to the Library of Congress as everyone there had always been kind to me. As this contains much that is not in Geoffrey’s earlier version, I have now arranged for it to be lent to Martin Butlin. These two vast tomes contain, apart from anything else, the results of reading my way through every auction catalogue I could find from about 1790 on.23

In other words, as Butlin acknowledges, Todd made a major formative contribution towards the accumulation of the materials later assembled in Butlin’s catalogue raisonné.24 Although Butlin scrupulously acknowledged his debt to Todd, it is probably the case that relatively few modern scholars will be aware that Ruthven Todd – as much as Sir Geoffrey Keynes – played a formative role in the foundation of Butlin’s catalogue. Eventually, much modern historical research of Blake’s text and image can be traced back to Todd. As his friend Julian Symons described it, Todd ‘was not especially interested in Blake as philosopher or mystic, but in his artistic achievement and his quality as a technical innovator’.25 The introductory note and the endnotes of Todd’s edition of Gilchrist’s The Life of William Blake show that he had close relations with many Blake scholars and was in frequent contact with them. These included Geoffrey Keynes, Joseph Wicksteed, Graham Robertson, and W. E. Moss. The work of Anthony Blunt, a major British Blake scholar, was also an important reference for Todd.26 It appears that the experiments Todd did in 1947 with the Surrealist artists William Hayter and Joan Miró in reconstructing Blake’s printmaking technique had their early inspiration at the time Todd re-edited Gilchrist’s biography of Blake in the early 1940s. He knew that Graham Robertson did experiments imitating Blake’s colour printing with his friend Newton Wethered around 1905, and perhaps Todd even saw Robertson’s ‘fake’ Blake, King of the Jews, which came near to being sold as an original at Sotheby’s until Robertson’s intervention.27 The colour print used Blake’s design in watercolour in an attempt at imitating Blake’s printing technique.28 In a letter of 26 November 1941, Graham Robertson wrote to Kerrison Preston: I’m so glad that Todd’s letter interested you and that you like his Toddity. So do I. Yes, he’s a whale for work, isn’t he? About the ‘King of the Jews’, Todd is here referring to my fake ‘colour print’ offered for sale at Sotheby’s among the possessions of one Shaw and withdrawn at my request. I have the original watercolour and produced the ‘colour print’, not as a hoax but as an experimental attempt to imitate Blake’s queer process. Shaw bought it from Robert Ross, but as a W.G.R., not as a W.B. It looked so well, centred on the Sotheby wall, that I was quite sorry to expose it as a fraud. I wonder what became of it. It will probably figure as a Blake again some day, but it could easily be unmasked by the watermark on the paper.29

Graham Robertson was also an earlier editor of Gilchrist’s Blake biography, and bequeathed many works to Tate Britain which now form the core of their

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Blake collection. Ten of the twelve Blake Large Colour Prints, excluding Naomi Entreating Ruth and Orpah and Satan Exulting Over Eve, were given to the Tate Gallery in 1939 and in 1948 Christ Appearing to his Apostles was also given by Robertson. Graham Robertson was an artist, playwright, significant Blake collector, and had a large amount of correspondence with Todd and other Blake scholars and collectors, such as Keynes and Kerrison Preston.30 His friend Newton Wethered also wrote art historical books, including From Giotto to John: The Development of Painting (1926) containing a chapter on ‘William Blake and Imagination’. In other words, this whole period of early twentieth-century interest in Blake, culminating in Robertson’s bequest of the immensely influential Blake holding now in Tate Britain, was intimately connected with attempts to reconstruct Blake’s technical processes. Although now overlooked, Todd’s role and his personal interest in Surrealism were central to the whole episode. Todd’s notes also reflect his specific interest in such things as the copper plates, part of his emphasis on the materials and techniques of Blake. For example, to argue that Gilchrist is wrong in saying Blake could not find publishers for his Songs, Todd says, ‘A glance at the various publications of the late eighteenth century should convince the reader that Blake could have found an ordinary publisher if he had wished, and that Gilchrist’s theorizing is at fault; the cost of the copper plates, alone, must have been considerably greater than that of typesetting would have been’.31 In other words, Todd was always willing to consider the practical dimensions of William Blake’s work. Notably, much of his information about copper plates came from W. E. Moss. Lieutenant-Colonel William Edward Moss, another important but neglected contributor to Todd’s book, carried out his own experiments on Blake’s method of copper plate etching around the same time as Robertson’s experiments on large colour printing from millboard in the early 1900s. Todd particularly acknowledges Moss ‘for a most generous supply of unpublished information’, cited in the footnotes of his new edition of Gilchrist: Life of William Blake.32 In other words, Moss, Robertson and Todd were all intimately concerned with Blake’s techniques and corresponded with each other about their mutual interests. Moss manuscripts, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, have long been neglected. These include Moss’s accounts of Blake’s engraving and printing techniques and his correspondence with other Blake scholars in the early twentieth century.33 There is a need for further investigation once we realize the crucial role of Moss in Blake studies. Essick notices the significant role of Moss in print collecting aspects in Blake studies: Blake’s reputation as a printmaker grew slowly, if unspectacularly, through the nineteenth century. By its last years, several enthusiasts, notably W. E. Moss and W. A. White, began to build significant collections of Blake’s prints. They were followed

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in the 1920s by Lessing J. Rosenwald, whose great collection of illuminated books and separate plates is now divided between the Library of Congress and the National Gallery of Art, Washington; and by Sir Geoffrey Keynes, whose remarkable efforts as a collector and scholar have contributed so much to Blake’s modern reputation as poet, painter, and printmaker.34

Moss was once the owner of a crucially important collection of Blake’s works, which he sold in Sotheby’s auction on 2 March, 1937. The sales catalogue lists 129 original works and important early facsimiles of Blake (lots 138–263). Moss’s original Blake collections include The Gates of Paradise. For Children [A], ‘The Accusers’ Copy E, America (1793) Copy K, A Descriptive Catalogue (1809) Copy M, For Children: The Gates of Paradise (1793) Copy A, ‘Joseph of Arimathea’ (1773, c. 1785, c. 1809) Copy D, Letters: 1800 April 17 and 1803 January 30, Mirth (c. 1820) Copy B, Poetical Sketches (1783) Copy O, Songs of Innocence Copies B, C, Yb and Yd, engraving for William Enfield’s The Speaker [1774, i.e. 1780], engraving for Young’s Night Thoughts Census of Coloured Copies Copy B (see various references in Bentley, Blake Books, 1977, and Sotheby’s sales catalogue, 2 March 1937). Most importantly, in his collection was a fragment of the only surviving etched copper plate, America plate a (a cancelled plate), which he quite likely bought directly from the Butts family.35 It is now in the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection of the Library of Congress. Todd notes: P. 105, l. 22. All the copper plates for Blake’s illuminated books have now disappeared with the exception of a fragment from a cancelled plate of America, with an engraving by Thomas Butts, Jun., on the back, done under Blake’s tuition; this belonged to Lt-Col. W. E. Moss, and is now in the collection of Mr. Lessing J. Rosenwald, Philadelphia. The reference here is to the plates Frederick Tatham lent Gilchrist, from which electrotypes were made and impressions taken for the two editions of the Life, 1863, 1880. A set of these electrotypes, showing the depth of Blake’s bitings, recently came into the possession of Mr Keynes and myself, and has been deposited with the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.36

With this small piece of copper plate as a reference, Moss made experiments of etching on copper imitating Blake’s process. The information Moss gave to Todd shows his deep interest and committed scholarship to Blake studies. Todd frequently mentions Moss’s suggestions about Blake’s works, such as the identity of a printer,37 a possible misprint,38 the relationship between Salzmann’s Elements of Morality and Songs of Innocence, The Gates of Paradise, and The Grave,39 a possible misreading of the imprint on For Children: The Gates of Paradise,40 the census of the coloured copies of Young’s Night Thoughts,41 the cost of copyright,42 the price of the pictures displayed in the Exhibition of Count Truchsess in The Farington Diary,43 and his unpublished book, the Bibliography of the Classical Outlines of John Flaxman, R. A..44 Moss and Todd collaborated extensively on the bibliographical and material

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nature of Blake’s works. Moss’s role as the owner of what is still the only known extant example of a copper plate from the illuminated books should lead us to attend to his opinions. Moss told Todd about the location of some of Blake’s original copper plates, and had himself estimated the contemporary cost of the copper plates. Moss and Todd appear to have frequently discussed the whereabouts of Blake’s copper plates. A note for Gilchrist’s Chapter III mentions the portrait of Edward III, and relates that ‘Lt.-Col. W. E. Moss tells me that the original copper plates are in the Bodleian Library, having been bequeathed by Richard Gough’.45 In other words, Moss was an important source, mediated by Todd, for our tracing the history of Blake’s plates. For Chapter XII, Todd notes: P. 96, l. 2. While in 1805 Blake engraved three plates for Flaxman’s Iliad, receiving £5 per plate, this story has usually been discredited. However, recent researches by Lt.-Col. W. E. Moss, embodied in an unpublished study, would seem to show that Gilchrist’s account of the matter has, to say the least of it, a strong foundation of probability. … I gather that these coppers (presumably steel-faced) were in use until 1880. Messrs George Bell, whose predecessors published these belated editions, tell me, however, that the plates have since been destroyed.46

This information is valuable and has, in turn, been passed on by Essick in his William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations (1991) who pieces together further elements of the story that the copper plates of Flaxman’s Iliad engraved by Blake: were acquired by William Sotheby in 1832, but there is no record of impressions being taken from them until the 1870 Classical Compositions and Compositions from the Iliad (the latter simply a separate issue of the former).47

Essick continues that: According to Ruthven Todd, ‘Blake’s Dante Plates’, Times Literary Supplement (29 August 1968), 928, Bell and Daldy sold the plates as scrap metal in 1917.48

Moss and Todd are proper and exacting scholars in the contributions made by their research, and are still highly regarded by the best modern Blake scholars. However, on the important issue of Moss’s experiments, Todd offers very limited information, only directing the reader to Moss’s unpublished research: For an account of Blake’s method of engraving, and contemporary experiments in the same direction, I cannot do better than refer the reader to Mona Wilson, The Life of William Blake, 1927, pp. 318–9, and Laurence Binyon, The Engraved Designs of William Blake, 1926. A considerable amount of research into the contemporary experiments has been done by Lt.-Col. W. E. Moss, whose findings, unfortunately, have not yet been published.49

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Although Essick and Viscomi have emphasized the importance of Todd’s experiments, it is clear that Todd himself owed much to the example set by Moss. Todd’s account of Moss does not rule out that they both held extensive discussion or correspondence about their experiments. As a scholar of integrity, Todd would not have wished to have published details of Moss’s work if Moss contemplated publishing them himself at a later date. Exploring only a small way into Moss’s context throws up some remarkable details about the sociability and interconnection of beliefs and networks amongst early twentieth-century collectors interested in Blake. Looking into Moss’s background, the large amount of books in special bindings in his collection sold in 1937 Sotheby’s auction50 and his works on bookbinding, such as Bindings from the Library of Robt. Dudley, Earl of Leicester, K. G., 1533–1588 (1934) and The English Grolier, A Catalogue of Books in Gold-Tooled Bindings From the Library of Thomas Wotton,…at Canterbury, 1542–52 (1941–2), suggest that he was not only a collector himself but also an expert bibliophile, amateur bookbinder and printer. Moss was also a Freemason, a member of the Apollo University Lodge at the University of Oxford,51 and had published a book Freemasonry in France in 1725–1735 (1938), with printed ‘by Bro. W. E. Moss’ on its title page. A handwritten note in the British Library copy gives his address: ‘Lt. Col. W. E. Moss | Rivey Lodge | Old Woking Road | West Byfleet’.52 This work is a paper Moss had presented at a Freemasonry Lodge meeting. In the course of the Introduction, Moss mentions that: ‘Dring’ so often alluded to, is a Bibliography of English Masonic Literature before 1751, written for the Lodge Quatuor Coronati, London, by Edmund Hunt Dring, for some time head of the well-known firm of Quaritch, before 1912: off-prints dated 1913 are to be found.53

Interestingly, Bernard Quaritch (1819–99), the founder of the firm Moss mentions in Freemasonry in France, was one of the major dealers of Blake’s works in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The network of early twentieth-century bibliophiles, Freemasons and Blake collectors is surprisingly extensive. Quaritch bought Songs of Innocence Copy Yb from W. E. Moss at Sotheby’s, 2 March 1937, lot 145, for £50 (now in Harvard).54 There are both Blake books and Freemasonry books in Moss’s sales catalogue of 2 March 1937. A Freemason exhibition catalogue of 1885 implies on its title page that Quaritch was a Freemason: The List of Manuscripts and Early-Printed Books, exhibited and described by Bro. Bernard Quaritch, Librarian and ex-president of the Sette of Odd Volumes, at the Freemasons’ Tavern, on Friday, June 5, 1885, is presented to the guests on that occasion by his oddship the President James Roberts Brown, as a souvenir of an evening spent by them with The Sette of Odd Volumes.

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At the end of this catalogue is the list of the Freemason members, in which Bernard Quaritch is titled ‘Librarian (President, 1878, 1879, & 1882), 15 Piccadilly, W..’ Edmund Hunt Dring had a long connection with the firm of Quaritch from 1877 until his death in 1928 and, like Quaritch, was also a Freemason. The continuous interest in Blake within Masonic circles is quite apparent. This suggests that Blake’s work has long-held implications which might have appealed to Masonic interests. Quaritch’s role in stimulating and facilitating the sale of Blake works, both illuminated printing and commercial plates, may well have owed much to the philosophical context of dealers, buyers and sellers sharing a common interest in Freemasonry. Certainly, Moss’s unique collection, including the America copper plate fragment, has played a substantial role in forming the material foundation for much of the scholarship later extended by scholars such as Todd, Essick and Viscomi. There was also correspondence at the end of two parts of the book Freemasonry in France from other Freemasons commenting on Moss’s paper. Moss’s reply ends with a phrase from Blake: And may I close my long-winded remarks by thanking the Lodge most gratefully for according me the honour of two meetings ‘all to myself ’ and so patiently enduring the endless shower-bath of ‘Minute Particulars’ … for it is in these, witness the Poet William Blake, consists True Knowledge.55

This tradition of ‘Minute Particulars’ seems to be brought down from Moss and Todd to the historical research of Blake studies. At least, the insistence on following empirical modes of inquiry when concerned with printing techniques and Blake’s use of copper plate seems to be a consistent pathway followed by the best scholars after Moss. For Moss and Todd, the most important issues about Blake’s language were its implications for understanding artistic technique. Although Todd did not describe in detail about Moss’s experiment, we find the route which was to lead Todd to experiment on Blake’s relief etching.56 The close relationship between them prompted Todd to start his own experiment on Blake’s etching method in 1947. Todd’s interest in etching on copper plate is also reflected by the fact that Todd and Keynes together owned the electrotypes of Blake’s etching plates, later deposited with the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.57 These electrotypes had been reprinted and published for Todd and Keynes in their edition of Songs of Innocence and of Experience at the Chiswick Press in 1941. Only twenty copies were made (as noted by Keynes on one copy in the Bodleian Library, Oxford).58 Todd’s experiment was described in his post-war Print Collector’s Quarterly paper, ‘The Techniques of William Blake’s Illuminated Printing’ (1948). He

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mentions that Tatham’s first information about Blake’s printing for the twelve Large Colour Prints posits a single process, i.e. printed once, and hand-coloured afterwards. He also relates that Robertson was opposed to this thesis, and thought of it as a multi-printing process, printed firstly in outline, then in filled-in colours, stamped in other local colours when it is dry, and finally handcoloured. Todd, on the other hand, thought it a single printing process. From his own experiments, Todd says he ‘would doubt whether Blake made more than two printings with his millboard before finishing the work with pen and ink and water-color’.59 The intellectual context of Todd’s theory may well lie in the influence of the Surrealist printmakers such as William Hayter, who, in turn, was a friend of Todd’s. The technique of à la poupée, or simultaneous printing, for Hayter, is to print different colours in relief and intaglio on one plate at the same time.60 The inspiration of Robertson’s multi-printing theory allowed Todd and Hayter to find a way of inking which Blake might have used, using another blank copper plate to transfer ink to the relief-etched plate. In this way, the smearing of large white areas can be avoided.61 In other words, the basic foundations of the ongoing debate about single printing and multi-printing, namely one-pull and two-pull theories in Blake’s method, carried out by Essick, Viscomi and Phillips to the recent date, arises from debates first started by Moss, Todd and Robertson in the first half of the twentieth century. Although they are opposed to Todd’s theory that Blake used transfer techniques, both Essick in William Blake, Printmaker and Viscomi in Blake and the Idea of the Book appear to have inherited Todd’s one-pull theory. The significance of the complexities and intricacies of the two major groups of experimenters, where the individuals appear to have both inherited and disinherited each other’s theories, demands that more be explained about the context of printmaking inhabited by Todd whose work bridges the older work, done by Robertson and Moss, and the more recent work of Essick, Viscomi and Phillips.

 Todd lived in London both before and during the Second World War where he edited Blake’s biography and works. He was also a major member of the Surrealist movement in the 1930s.62 The literary and artistic circles of Surrealism and the scholarly circle of Blake studies seem to form not only two parts of Todd’s life, but also to integrate one with the other. In a photograph of ‘The Surrealist Group in London 1936’ (Tate Archive),63 Todd is shown standing among fourteen people, including Rupert Lee (secretary), Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Roland Penrose, Herbert Read, E. L. T. Mesens, George Reavey and Hugh Sykes Davies. These were the leading British

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and European Surrealists of their day. Todd stands beside the Spanish painter Salvador Dalí. This was commented on by Todd’s friend Julian Symons in his article ‘Ruthven Todd: some details for a portrait’ written in 1978 in memory of Todd: A group photograph that includes Ruthven is beside me as I write. It was taken at the 1936 London Surrealist exhibition. Between Salvador Dalí and a forgotten British surrealist stands an eager innocent figure, evidently much the youngest in a group that includes Paul Eluard and Herbert Read. This was Ruthven (the name was pronounced Riven) Campbell Todd, then 22, who had some unofficial and possibly unpaid job connected with the exhibition.64

In his posthumously published memoirs,65 Todd described his encounter with the Surrealists as a coincidence. Using this memoir, it is possible to reconstruct many of the details of Todd’s life at this time. Todd’s educational background was in fine art (he attended the Edinburgh College of Art) although he earned his living as a writer. After discovering that he ‘had no vision’,66 Todd gave up the idea of becoming a professional artist. As a young man aged twenty-two, Todd was staying in London trying out several jobs as editor, private tutor, book reviewer and gallery salesman without great success, except that he made acquaintance with several art dealers and artists because he was a frequent visitor to galleries. One day in June 1936, as he walked through the Burlington Arcade, Todd met Herbert Read (1893–1968), the influential art critic and important figure in English modern culture.67 Read took him to the nearby New Burlington Galleries, where he was appointed assistant secretary of the forthcoming International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936. This was, of course, no coincidence in spite of Todd’s description of himself in his humble manner. Todd’s enthusiastic interest and knowledge of art history were the main reasons he obtained this job. During the London International Surrealist Exhibition from 11 June to 4 July 1936, he met the Surrealist founder André Breton, and became acquainted with painters such as Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, and many other artists. Obviously this exhibition was a big event in Todd’s life, so much so that his memoir describes it in great detail. In terms of the British encounter with Surrealism, the 1936 exhibition was a seminal event. In fact, this was not the first time Todd had met Surrealist artists. In the early 1930s, while in Paris, Todd had been enthralled by Surrealist art.68 He was introduced to this world by the young English poet David Gascoyne, for whose A Short Survey of Surrealism (1935) Todd was to translate a few poems. While in Paris he met André Breton, Paul Eluard, Salvador Dalí, Benjamin Peret, Max Ernst, René Char, Hans Arp, René Crevel, Miró and many others. One early member of the French Surrealist group, Philippe Soupault, had already been interested, and found echoes, in William Blake. He translated

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Blake’s Songs into French in Chants d’innocence et d’expérience (1927), and wrote William Blake (1928)69 during the time between Breton’s two important Surrealist manifestos, Le Manifeste du Surréalisme (1924) and Second Manifeste du Surréalisme (1929). Soupault’s William Blake is a shortened version of Blake’s life based on Gilchrist, and displays the recurrent interest in Blake’s mental state and vision shared with other early Blake scholars, such as Joseph Wicksteed and Graham Robertson. The Surrealists have specific connections with Blake owing to the similarities they were thought to have shared. As David Gascoyne wrote in A Short Survey of Surrealism (1935), ‘the surrealists have always demanded the maximum amount of liberty in every field, and the field of sexuality is in no way an exception to this. Their attitude towards sex is almost identical with that of the Marquis de Sade or William Blake’.70 In arguing that the movement of Surrealism is not only French but also English or universal, Gascoyne says, ‘there is a very strong surrealist element in English literature; one need quote only Shakespeare, Marlowe, Swift, Young, Coleridge, Blake, Beddoes, Lear and Carroll to prove this contention’.71 The International Exhibition of Surrealism in London in 1936 appears to be an important event connecting Blake with Surrealism. In the Introduction to the Exhibition Catalogue, written by Herbert Read,72 Blake is seen as the English precursor of the ‘superrealist’ as Read termed it: ‘A nation which has produced two such superrealists as William Blake and Lewis Carroll is to the manner born’.73 Read’s term ‘superrealist’ is his attempt to establish an indigenous English identity for an international movement which originated in France and spread throughout Europe. Blake’s name was frequently mentioned during the exhibition and made an impact on many artists outside of England, such as Joan Miró and André Masson. It is, therefore, not surprising that after the 1936 exhibition, several Surrealist artists, having made the link Read described, began to use Blake as a theme in their work. During the Spanish Civil War, Joan Miró was stranded in Paris for more than a year. From 1937 to 1938, he painted a huge portrait of himself, the Self-Portrait 1 (The Museum of Modern Art, New York), three times larger than natural size. Compared with his portrait in 1919 (Musée Picasso, Paris), the later one is a more spiritual linear diagram than the realistic earlier portrait. The eyes are like burning stars, and flames are around his face and head. In his working notes on this portrait, Miró wrote ‘Think about William Blake when doing the self-portrait’.74 André Masson, a French acquaintance of Miró’s and also a Surrealist painter, did a series of visionary portraits inspired by Blake’s visionary heads of c. 1820. Masson’s Visionary Portrait of Heraclitus (1939),75 the pre-Socratic philosopher is close to Miró’s Self-Portrait I. The art historian David Lomas compares Masson’s Heraclitus to Blake’s The Man Who Taught Blake Painting in His Dreams

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of 1819 (Tate), a picture commonly assumed to be a self-portrait, with hair on his forehead resembling flames symbolizing inspiration.76 Miró had an opportunity to see this image at an exhibition of Blake and Turner in 1937 at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It also appears that Miró’s writing around this time is highly Blakean. Masson was also one of the first artists to respond to André Breton’s promotion of automatism. Masson had practised automatic drawing for a long time, but especially intensively during 1924 and 1927. The first manifesto of Surrealism announced by André Breton in 1924 gave the definition: SURREALISM, n. Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express – verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner – the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern.77

This definition of automatism clearly echoes Blake’s claim of his practice of writing, ‘twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even against [his] Will’ (E 729), which is emphasized by Essick and Viscomi as the central idea of Blake’s mode of printmaking. An even more remarkable similarity to Blake’s description of his method of writing can be found in Surrealist statements about automatic writing, in which rapid writing, writing without premeditation, and writing with spontaneity and liberation from reason are deemed to be essential. In the first manifesto of Surrealism (1924), Breton described how he and Philippe Soupault came to write the first automatic texts, Les Champs Magnétiques [The Magnetic Fields] (1920), using this method: Completely occupied as I still was with Freud at that time, and familiar as I was with his methods of examination which I had had some slight occasion to use on some patients during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what we were trying to obtain from them, namely, a monologue spoken as rapidly as possible without any intervention on the part of the critical faculties, a monologue consequently unencumbered by the slightest inhibition and which was, as closely as possible, akin to spoken thought. It had seemed to me, and still does, that the speed of thought is no greater than the speed of speech, and that thought does not necessarily defy language, nor even the fast-moving pen. It was in this frame of mind that Philippe Soupault – to whom I had confided these initial conclusions – and I decided to blacken some paper, with a praiseworthy disdain for what might result from a literary point of view. The ease of execution did the rest. By the end of the first day we were able to read to ourselves some fifty or so pages obtained in this manner, and begin to compare to our results. All in all, Soupault’s pages and mine proved to be remarkably similar: the same overconstruction, shortcomings of a similar nature, but also, on both our parts, the illusion of an extraordinary verve, a great deal of emotion, a considerable choice of images of a quality such that we would not have been capable of preparing a

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single one in longhand, a very special picturesque quality and, here and there, a strong comical effect.78

The crucial point of the automatic writing is the unpremeditated free-association that creates the basic text. Breton’s adoption of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic method aims at searching for mental liberation and the expression of true inner self, either from dreams in sleep or visions in trance, which are also sources Blake claims.79 The expectation to be able to reveal unknown depths of the subconscious in Surrealist automatic writing is remarkably similar to Blake’s idea of vision.

 Unexpectedly, one of Blake’s contemporaries, Horace Walpole (1717–97), was regarded as the precursor of the Surrealists. Breton thought Walpole’s novel, The Castle of Otranto (1764), used a purely Surrealist technique.80 The initial image of the book derived from a dream, which Walpole elaborated upon in a frenzy of writing which in only a few days resulted in the completed novel. In Breton’s view, The Castle of Otranto was also automatic writing.81 Such experience of writing was not unusual in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury England. There were contemporary studies of dreams and visions. For example, George Baldwin’s translation of the Italian La Prima Musa Clio (1802)82 by Cesare Avena de Valdiere (also known as The Divine Traveller [1810]), exhibits ‘a series of writings obtained in the extasy of magnetic sleep’ (on the title page). In 1813, Baldwin published The Book of Dreams 1811–1812–1813, editing and interpreting ‘dreams experienced in magnetic sleep’ (on the title page). In the practice of ‘magnetic sleep,’ the instructor magnetizes a person into sleep, and makes him or her talk, act or write in an automatic way. According to Baldwin: That the Soul being disencumbered of her earthly regards; thus loosened from her bonds; thus restored to her original purity, and power of action; being of illimitable essence, she would escape her mortal bounds, and range the wild sublime. That the means of disencumbering the Soul of her earthly regards, were repose, and solitude, and silence. That sleep is the measure of freedom of the Soul; but that the Magnetic Sleep is the essential measure to her elevation.83

Baldwin also described how he magnetized the poet Avena and told him in his sleep to play the harp and write verses, which afterwards almost made Avena cry when he heard his own writing.84 This method of liberating the mind by sleep almost resembles Freud’s psychoanalytic method as adopted by the Surrealists of 1920s and 30s. Despite Blake’s disapproval of being associated with Baldwin,85 there is no doubt Blake was familiar with the culture of ‘magnetism’. The similar notions

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of automatic writing shared between Blake and his contemporaries, as well as modern psychologist and Surrealist writers and artists, not only show a common interest in the mystical subconscious but also about exchanging ideas and influence within and beyond time and space. Viewed in the light of this eighteenth-century context of experimentation with automatic writing, Todd’s interest in both Blake and Surrealism seems natural. Not only was Horace Walpole considered by Todd’s Surrealist contemporaries to be an automatic writer, it is even conceivable that Todd was sufficient of a scholar to find his way through to identify ‘Baldwin of Egypts Lake’ (E 505) as a reference to the author of The Book of Dreams and Divine Traveller. Todd’s wartime novels also exhibit his interest in Surrealism. Some of his creative works were described as ‘Kafkaesque fantasy’, such as Over the Mountain (1939) and the later ‘part-Kafkan near-surrealist fantasy’ The Lost Traveller (1944).86 In other words, it appears to be the case that Surrealist artistic practices have been absorbed by two generations of Blake scholars, beginning with Todd in the 1930s and continuing with Essick and Viscomi from the 1980s onwards. Of course, Todd’s role as someone deeply involved with 1930s Surrealists, who also later developed into a pivotal figure in contemporary Blake scholarship, demands further examination. Unlike present-day Blake scholars, usually working from the comparative comfort of university departments at a time of world peace, Todd’s work on Blake awkwardly straddles the period of the Second World War and the period before the influential publication of Frye’s and Erdman’s books in 1947 and 1954. During the war, Todd was a conscientious objector and worked in the Civil Defence in Edinburgh. His thoughts had both political and psychological dimensions during this period. In a letter of 1940 to his writer friend Julian Symons, Todd wrote: Looking at the poems I’ve been writing recently I think that they are really all an Ode on I. of I. [‘Intimations of Immortality’],87 concerned with the shades of the prison-house. The older I grow the more I realise that upon the treatment of the child depends the whole of his life as a man. It is only within the last few months that I have been able to break down the hard shell that I have erected round myself and, in consequence, to know a little about myself and what I desire.88

This reflects Todd’s personal perspective on the Freudian theory popular in Surrealist circles. Although his poems themselves do not have many Surrealist elements in terms of their form, Todd’s thoughts were influenced by the Freudian self-realizations of childhood and subconsciousness. At the same time, however, Todd was also working on Blake. He describes his life during wartime:

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As a result of the war, I found myself for a period in the ARP (as Civil Defence was then called) in Edinburgh. Off-duty and bored with Edinburgh, which I thought I had left for good in 1935, I took to toting my annotated book [note: this would be Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake] round to the National Library of Scotland, adding odds and ends of extra information wherever I could find them.89

After being rejected as unfit to serve in the Civil Defence in 1943 (when he was found to be suffering from a duodenal ulcer), Todd moved to London and took a job in Zwemmer’s art bookshop. By this time, the first edition of Todd’s revision of Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake had been published, but Todd continued working on Blake intensely and was even beginning to be described as odd and enthusiastic by other Blake scholars.90 During his years in London, Todd wrote poems both on Romantic artists and contemporary Surrealist poets and painters. The Planet in my Hand (1946) includes poems on William Blake, Henry Fuseli, Samuel Palmer, John Clare, Edward Calvert, Arthur Rimbaud, Franz Kafka and the Surrealist artists Joan Miró, Giorgio De Chirico, Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso. The two sides of these interests come together in a poem titled ‘Various Ends’, treating all the artists and poets within the same theme of death. It ends with Blake, perhaps Todd’s favourite, whose death does not count as an ‘end’.91 His poem William Blake (1943; in Planet in My Hand, 1946, p. 57) gives Blake the highest attribute of admiration: Such balance of perfection few had dared, The morning stars sang evenly and sweet And those who lectured, sneered or stared Forgot the whole world lying beneath his feet. Inevitably, the fury of his course upset The amiable poet riding by the sea; Those who believed could only but regret So very few saw angels in a tree. When in the end the giants of Albion strode Along the pillared heights of Primrose Hill, All Eden’s fruits were his, nothing the gods forbade, Death could not count his riches in the till. Despite his errors he was bound to win, Knowing that no good could flourish without sin.92

His research work Tracks in the Snow (1946), a comprehensive account of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English art history and antiquarianism, in which a principal chapter ‘William Blake and the eighteenth-century Mythologists’, was obviously in progress at the same time as his Surrealist days in London.



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In 1947 Ruthven Todd moved to the USA and carried out important experiments on Blake’s relief etching with Surrealist artists William Hayter and Joan Miró in New York. Sometimes called ‘the father of modern printmaking’,93 William Hayter is important not only in the achievement of his own prints, but also for his lasting influence as a technician and historian of printmaking. His influence had already been recognized in the 1950s, not long after his workshop, Atelier 17, was moved from Paris and re-established in New York. His contemporary John Buckland-Wright wrote: Hayter has probably had more personal influence on the course of engraving than any artist in the history of art. In 1927 he set up a workshop in Paris called Atelier 17, after the number of the house in which it was situated, and artists of every nationality and category came there to learn, to practise and to pool their ideas. In 1940 the Atelier was transferred to New York and its influence has been directly responsible for the renaissance of print-making in the United States. Most of the well-known artists from Picasso downwards have at one time or another made plates under the inspiring impetus of its founder.94

Hayter came from an artistic family background, which included his father William Harry Hayter, a painter. Although interested in art since childhood, his degree in chemistry and geology from King’s College London would have gained him some insight into printmaking materials. In 1926, Hayter exhibited his paintings and drawings at the Anglo-Iranian Headquarters in London. In April 1926, he moved to Paris, obtained a studio and attended the Académie Julian for three months, under Paul-Albert Laurens. There he first made drypoints, woodcuts, aquatints and lithographs. At the time, he also met Joseph Hecht, who taught him the use of the burin, and made friends with members of avant-garde artists including Balthus, Alexander Calder, Anthony Gross, Joan Miró and Giacometti. In the 1930s, Hayter’s workshop Atelier 17 attracted many artists to work there, including Miró, Tanguy, Masson, Ernst, Giacometti, Hecht and Picasso. The first show of Atelier 17 artists was in 1934 at Galerie Pierre, Paris, and at the Leicester Galleries, London. Hayter also helped the Surrealist exhibition in London in 1936, and exhibited his own works in it, which is where he met Ruthven Todd for the first time. Hayter’s relationship with the Surrealists is described clearly by Peter Hacker in The Renaissance of Gravure: The Art of S. W. Hayter (1988): Although many of his friends belonged to the Surrealist movement, Hayter did not exhibit with the Surrealists until some time after the second Surrealist manifesto. The first, with its emphasis upon oneiric (dream) material, did not strike him as valid. But his interest in free association, dissociation, decomposing and reconstructing reality, visual metaphor and simile shows him to be moving on parallel tracks.95

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In particular, Hayter was attracted by the second Surrealist manifesto (1929), with its emphasis on automatism. His close association with the Surrealist group ceased in 1938 over the Eluard affair concerning a political dispute within the Surrealists.96 The Surrealist leader André Breton excluded anyone who had connections with Paul Eluard, a communist supporter, but Hayter continued working with several artists from this group. In 1940, Hayter moved to New York, and reopened the Atelier 17 workshop. Artists working with him included Calder, Chagall, Le Corbusier, Dalí, de Kooning, Masson, Miró, Pollock, Tanguy, Todd and many more. Together with Max Wertheimer and Ernst Kris, Hayter conducted experiments on the psychology of visual perception at the New School. At the same time, he worked extensively on the development of colour printing from intaglio and surface simultaneously, a technique he had been experimenting with since 1930 which echoes Surrealist automatic writing and drawing in the way of their aim at spontaneous execution. In 1946, Hayter exhibited Cinq Personnages. It has been recognized to be ‘a landmark in the history of printmaking’,97 and thought to be the first large print in the history of gravure combining intaglio with surface colours printed simultaneously from the plate. Hayter’s fascination with automatism influenced his printmaking. The history of Hayter’s Surrealist period, written by Graham Reynolds, states that: Hayter has made a regular and systematic practice of automatic drawing. These exercises have a direct bearing on his work as a printmaker. It is evident that such unconscious drawings are likely to be linear; they are the results of a sort of planchette or Ouija-board put into direct contact with the ideas which lie below conscious recall. Hayter has reflected deeply about the significance of the line, from its origins as the means by which man first orientated himself in the external world. In particular he distinguishes between the drawn line, which is not hidden by the draughtsman’s hand, and is a visible record of the immediate past, and the engraved line, which is hidden by the hand which traces it on the plate, and explores the future. However complex the constituent factors of the prints in this exhibition, many enriched with colour and texture, it is evident that in them the line, subtle, sensitive, and expressive, is the dominant feature.98

Hayter wrote about the unconscious roots of creativity on the execution of his colour print Cinq Personnages (1946): Although, for personal reasons, I am no longer an active member of the Surrealist group, the source of the material in all my works is unconscious or automatic; that is to say, an image is made without deliberate intention or direction… I will try to explain this apparent contradiction. In the first project, a drawing perhaps, no conscious selection of form is exercised, although, as with a print, the proportions of the plate selected and the sort of colour to be used had been present in a nebulous state in my mind for a year or more. The hand that made the first study was, however, trained by twenty years of practice in line engraving, the mind

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William Blake and the Art of Engraving has assimilated all the mechanical processes involved in making the work until they became ‘instinctive’, and the areas of imagination that are provoked by the use of such means had been exercised for years.99

The influence of Hayter is mainly because of the impact of this theory. As documented in Peter Hacker’s The Renaissance of Gravure: The Art of S. W. Hayter (1988): Few have been unaffected by Hayter’s powerful argument that only when content and means of expression are inseparable and one conspires with a medium to realize its idiosyncratic possibilities rather than using it as a device to repeat previously formulated images, can there be true originality in printmaking. Without any doubt this attitude has led to a revaluation of printmaking as an art form capable of major statement.100

Hayter found that in the freer and more relaxed style of modern engraving (without its eighteenth-century exactitude) there is no more appropriate instrument for exploring the full possibilities of the line than the burin employed in line engraving. In his New Ways of Gravure (1966), Hayter declares, ‘My own conviction is that engraving and the related techniques constitute a very valuable medium for original expression’.101 In 1947, Hayter, with Miró and Todd, employed the method, devised from the technique they developed in 1944, of printing colours from a plate etched in relief. This is a part of the experiment in the attempt of recreating Blake’s methods of relief etching. Of course, what is remarkable is that both the theory and the practice of the integration of conception and execution, which Essick and Viscomi have argued can be applied to Blake’s relief etching, was already fully formulated in both the theory and the practice of William Hayter in the 1940s. This makes Ruthven Todd the essential connective component between 1930s Surrealist interest in Blake and modern scholars of Blake such as Essick and Viscomi. Essick and Viscomi, in their recent essays (2002), mention Hayter’s simultaneous printing of intaglio and relief to argue against Butlin and Phillips’s two-pull theory, and to claim that Blake’s one-pull method has been practised by modern artists.102 However, this was not highlighted in their earlier works, Essick’s Printmaker (1980) and Viscomi’s Idea of the Book (1993), when they aimed to argue against Todd and Hayter’s transfer theory. Moss’s experiment of etching before 1941, and Robertson’s experiment of colour-printing around 1941, inspired Todd’s experiment of etching on copper plate with the printmaker William Hayter in 1947. This in turn inspired experiments and argument by Essick for his book, William Blake, Printmaker of 1980, and by Viscomi for Blake and the Idea of the Book of 1993. This genealogy of Blake studies shows a tradition starting from artistic inspirations and

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practical experiments in artist’s studios, a genealogy which has not hitherto been fully explained. Todd himself was an exemplary student of Blake’s material artefacts. As he describes in the article ‘Miro in New York’: With Bill Hayter, I went to visit the Lessing J. Rosenwald collection of the works of Blake at Alversthorp, Jenkintown, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There we looked at the printed and illuminated poems and prophecies of Blake, paying particular attention to those which had not been coloured by him by hand in watercolour or one of his private varieties of tempera-gouache. In some of the writings and designs I was able to discern a faint reticulation, such as might have been produced by some inked surface being pulled away from the bitten surface of a copper plate. 103

In another article, Todd described how, in 1968, he managed to examine Blake’s illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy plates in detail to confirm there are only pure engraved lines without any etching.104 He even examined the back of the plates in order to make sure there is no foul biting. Indeed, this single action of Todd examining the Dante plates, front and back, propels him towards being one the earliest students of Blake’s printing surfaces. These researches mean that Todd had no prejudice against etching or engraving and treated them as possessing equal status. The experiment on relief etching rather than engraving arose from a curiosity about a technique invented by Blake without any exact and detailed record. Blake would never have imagined his experiments in relief etching would come to fame after two hundred years of his death, while his professional engraving technique would be ignored and devalued. Curiously, Todd’s combination of detailed historicism and ‘enthusiastic’ creativity seems to reflect Blake’s own characteristics as well as those of later Blake scholars. He had often been regarded as an amateur rather than a scholar. As he says in his article, ‘An Accidental Scholar’, ‘I never meant to be a scholar’.105 His work on Blake, however, is valuable and important in its influence. The correspondence between him and other Blake scholars106 shows his meticulous seriousness, quite different from the memoir he wrote about his relations with the Surrealists. In the latter case, Todd was a wild adventurer of fantasies in life, art, fiction and poetry. In Blake studies, however, he was endlessly patient and scrupulous, employing the most detailed available information and historical fact. These two sides of his character came together perhaps most completely in his experiments with the Surrealist artists about Blake’s technique.



Essick and Viscomi’s insistence on the unity of execution and conception has its ancestry in the experiments in automatic writing practised by the Surrealists

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in the 1930s. Their experiments enabled Todd, through his links with artists such as Miró and Hayter, to begin to try to reproduce William Blake’s methods in the mid-1940s. But even Todd was following an earlier example set by Graham Robertson in 1907 who was trying to reproduce the millboard colour printing of Blake’s Large Colour Prints. In a solo exhibition in 1906, Graham Robertson exhibited six colour prints under the collective title ‘The Experiments in search of the Lost Method of William Blake’.107 Among them were the print ‘King of the Jews’ he mentioned in a letter to Kerrison Preston, ‘Orc’ or ‘Flames of Desire’ after Blake’s Book of Urizen, Plate 3, and ‘Paolo and Francesca’ (Tate Gallery Archive), exhibited with Blake’s original pencil sketch of ‘Paolo and Francesca’.108 Essick owns an impression of the first state of Robertson’s ‘Orc’ and the thick cardboard from which the print is printed. According to Essick’s email to me about this object in his collection (13 February 2002), Robertson describes this as a cardboard, or ‘millboard’, ‘Block from which 12 impressions have been taken’. This ‘block’ shows the printed colours of red, green and black in the design. But the impression, inscribed ‘First impression from Block[.] Local colours to be added by further printing’, shows only one colour, the reddish brown. This indicates that Robertson was printing the image in monochrome as a first pull, and then registering the ‘block’ to the printed paper once again to print the colours. Robertson had a direct relationship with the Butts family. He knew Frederic John Butts (1833–1905), the son of Thomas Butts, Jr, and grandson of Thomas Butts, Blake’s patron.109 His association with Todd brings down to the present day the debate and experiments of Blake’s colour-printing technique from the Large Colour Prints to the illuminated books. Todd’s connection with Surrealism is reflected in his material and historical studies of Blake, in particular when analysing the relief etching techniques of the illuminated books, which came in turn from his friendship with Robertson and W. E. Moss. Essick, Viscomi and Phillips take their cue to expand the interpretation of Blake’s ideas of relief etching without being very aware of the legacy of Todd’s Surrealist ideas which are the historical origin, as I have shown, of their adaptation of the automatic writing techniques of printing so widespread amongst Todd/Surrealist contemporaries. The history of Blake studies tells us of a latent tradition as well as of the evolution of ideas. The interpretation of Blake’s ‘vision’, in relation to his word and image making in particular, develops from early mystic beliefs to the adoption of modern psychological ideas by the Surrealists, and on further to academic scholars’ debates about whether Blake achieved his ‘visionary hand’ (E 442),110 the unity of conception and execution. In the trend of such scholarship focusing on Blake’s relief etching or illuminated books, there has been an

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overlooked gap, namely the neglect of Blake’s engraving and of the importance of his existing engraved copper plates, which this book wishes to explore in the next two chapters.

2 THE EVIDENCE OF COPPER PLATES

Before examining Blake’s printing copper plates, this chapter discusses extant printing copper plates of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in major collections in the UK and USA. This sample comes from collections such as the British Museum Prints and Drawings, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the Huntington Library in California, the Lewis Walpole Library of Yale University, the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The principal examination of these copper plates will focus on the marks of repoussage, a corrective technique practised by engravers directly onto the printing copper plates. The examination is persuasive, on the evidence of the sample of plates inspected, that Blake’s contemporaries used repoussage far less than he did. In the light of the hard evidence of these copper plates made by Blake’s contemporary engravers, we can start to rethink his position relative to them. There are a number of extant printing copper plates dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries or even earlier, which can be used to compare with Blake’s surviving plates. Blake’s use of copper plates was mainly for engraving but occasionally he used copper as a support for his paintings. There are six known and traceable surviving temperas on copper by Blake. These are Eve Tempted by the Serpent (1799–1800, V&A; Butlin 1981 cat. 379), The Judgment of Solomon (1799–1800, FMC; Butlin 1981 cat. 392), Nativity (1799–1800, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Butlin 1981 cat. 401), The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes (c. 1800, ESSICK; Butlin 1981 cat. 416), Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem (1800, Pollock House, Glasgow; Butlin 1981 cat. 422), and The Horse (c. 1805, Paul Mellon; Butlin 1981 cat. 366).1 It is likely that some of the twentytwo untraced biblical temperas were also on copper.2 It is tantalizing that some of these copper plates may still have engraving evident underneath the painted surface if Blake, according to his known habit with illuminated books, reused copper plates.3 However, this book will focus on the engraved or etched copper plates for printing used by Blake and his contemporaries. It has been normal in the study of prints to work from early proofs to the final published state in order to understand their meanings, techniques or his– 45 –

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tory. The best way of observing the gradual changes and improvements engravers made to a print is, indeed, from printed proofs on paper rather than examining the copper plates (or steel plates in the later nineteenth century). Although some prepublication proofs are printed for print collectors or connoisseurs, they are mainly for the engraver’s own reference. For example, because of the unpredictable visibility of lines on metals, proof prints allow imperfections to be seen more easily. However, there is information on the metal plates which is not shown on the prints. Due to the rarity of these plates relative to the amount of prints made from them, together with print collectors’ and scholars’ relative neglect of them, they have hardly ever been examined.4 Relatively few original plates survive after they have been used for printing. They tend to be either erased for reuse or cancelled by scoring-through to prevent market devaluation through too many printings being available, or else they are simply discarded or sold as scrap metal. Some plates are preserved or bought for copyright purposes or later reprinting.5 In the latter case, this would involve cleaning or repair of the plates since they become worn after a certain amount of printing, and restoration often requires extensive labour and considerable expense. This means that, of those plates which survive, a proportion are no longer completely as the artist left them. The emphasis on the study of prints (rather than of printing plates) has meant that original copper plates, even in significant collections – such as that at the British Museum, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Houghton Library of Harvard University – remain under-examined materials. It is surprising that artefacts which survive better than paper proofs are not more taken into account in the study of prints or printmaking. In part, this seems to be because they are seen merely as part of the tools and materials preparatory to the final production of prints on paper. Arguably, this is exactly the denigration of engraving which Blake sets out most stridently to denounce. Even during the growth of print collecting, when there was special interest in objects like unfinished proofs showing expert knowledge among collectors, original copper plates have seldom been objects for collection except where reprinting has been anticipated. However, they often contain the artists’ most authenticated handiwork and embody the most basic information of practice not always observable from the print on paper. These include the source, size and thickness of the copper plate used for the print, the manufacturer’s mark, the burin and burnishing work on the recto and the mending marks of repoussage on the verso of the metal. This information shows how the artist obtained the plate from the manufacturer, and also the cutting, burnishing and hammering of the plate. Although subsequent reworking or repair may have covered earlier states, these practices often leave traces on the copper plate. In other words, the original plates themselves reveal the working process of the printmaker in the most tangible way.

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I have undertaken examinations of the original printing copper plates dating from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century in several major library and museum collections in the UK and the USA. There are about 250 printing copper and steel plates in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Among them are six unpublished engraved/etched copper plates for Diderot & d’Alembert’s Encyclopédie (1751–80), c. 170 copper plates by George Cruikshank, more than forty copper and steel plates by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), about twenty copper and steel plates by John Leech (1817–64), and miscellaneous plates including one of Blake’s engraved copper plate after Hogarth,6 a significant French-Chinese jointly produced copper plate of a battle scene,7 and a few plates by American and Mexican artists. There are also about 560 newly catalogued woodblocks plus some electrotypes and process blocks in their collection. However, the Houghton’s metal printing plates were largely uncatalogued and unstudied at the time I volunteered to help catalogue them in 2005. The Huntington Library in California has a large collection of engraved woodblocks, bought from an Englishman, James Tarbotton Armstrong, in 1917 which also remain largely uncatalogued at the time of writing. Chapter 5 of this book will discuss the Huntington woodblock collection along with one particular block after Blake’s Virgil (1821). There are also about twenty copper and steel plates, including a set of thirteen plates for the Twelve Stories of the Old Testament (1797), engraved by Thomas Piroli after William Young Ottley; a copper plate for the frontispiece of An Account of the Present War between the Venetians and Turks (1666), engraved by William Faithorne; The Gate of Calais or The Roast Beef of Old England (1749) by Hogarth and C. Mosley; an alleged copper fragment of Rembrandt’s The Night Watch; the large copper plate of The White Headed Pigeon, engraved by Robert Havell Sr for John James Audubon’s Birds of America (1833) and some modern American plates. Although with only under ten printing copper plates in their total collection, the Lewis Walpole Library of Yale University in Farmington, Connecticut, has two important Hogarth plates, The Sleeping Congregation (1736, 1762)8 and Hogarth painting the Comic Muse (1764),9 and a Rowlandson plate, Nap in the Country/ Nap in Town (1785).10 There are also two private plates associated with Horace Walpole, the Portrait of Horace Walpole (1796),11 and the portrait of his sculptress friend Mrs. Damer (1810), to whom he bequeathed his house at Strawberry Hill.12 The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, has about fifty copper plates and 100 woodblocks (some with uncut drawings), mostly dating from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The seventeenth-century copper plates of Rembrandt’s etching and the nineteenth century thick steel-faced copper plates of Edgar Degas’s etching offer an interesting comparison.13 The Museum of Fine Arts’s early nineteenth century copper plates include three etched plates

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by Francisco Goya and four plates for J. M. W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum. 14 All three Goya’s plates are etched both recto and verso: Witch on a Swing on the verso and Warlock on a Swing among Demons on the recto (1824–28); Maja on the verso and Maja against a background of Demons on the recto (1824–28); Andalusian Smuggler with Bull on the verso and the failed Andalusian Smuggler on the recto (1824–28).15 They demonstrate Goya’s attempts and experiments with the same subjects as well as trial and errors during the printmaking process. Much the same is true with J. M. W. Turner’s plates for Liber Studiorum. Among the two plates for Ploughing, Eton, one was a rejected plate etched by Turner. It shows that repairing and rejecting copper plates during the process of engraving or etching is a common practice. On this plate, the errors had caused so much damage that the plate was beyond repair. According to the staff at Prints and Drawings of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, there are approximately 170 copper plates and 173 woodblocks in their collection.16 Along with its collection of printmaking objects, it also demonstrates the whole range of detailed techniques, materials and processes of printmaking. The printing plates range from the age of Hogarth: e.g., Jacob Houbraken’s Portrait of Sir Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh (1743); to the late eighteenth century: e.g., John Hall’s Portrait of Issac Barre (1787), F. Bartolozzi’s Portrait of A. N. Caracci (1796) and Head of an old man after Carracci, James Gillray’s double-sided etching plate, A Peep into Lady W…y’s Seraglio (1782), and Apothecaries: Taylors & … Conquering France and Spain (1779); and plates from the Etching Revival of the late nineteenth century including George Thomas Doo’s Portrait of a girl (or The Fair Forester) (1835), Samuel Palmer’s cancelled plates The Willow (1850) and The Early Ploughman (1861–68), William Holl II’s double-sided plate of an unidentified young man and a man smoking a pipe; and limited editions of the twentieth century: e.g., Francis Job Short’s mezzotint A Woody Landscape after Peter de Wint (V&A 1925). Gillray’s Apothecaries: Taylors & … Conquering France and Spain (1779) and Peep into Lady W…y’s Seraglio (1782) is a reminder that copper plates could be re-used by artists over a considerable time period. The British Museum Prints and Drawings Department has about 200 copper plates and 100 woodblocks according to their online catalogue. The collection of printing plates includes those by distinguished engravers such as F. Bartolozzi, William Blake, Edward Calvert, George Cruikshank, George Thomas Doo, William Faithorne, Andrew Geddes, Francis Seymour Haden, William Hogarth, Charles Keene, Thomas Rowlandson, William Sharp, William Strang, J. M. W. Turner, George Vertue and David Wilkie. Although further examination is still needed, and museum and library collections of similar materials are still to be discovered from sealed boxes and dusty wrapper papers, my initial examination of these much-neglected printing objects

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can offer new insights into printmaking techniques and materials. The most significant finding of my examinations is the hammer marks on the versos of some plates. These are rarely mentioned or studied in printmaking scholarship. They are not simply a standard procedure of copper engraving but reveal physical evidence and vivid characteristics of how engravers worked with their hands. This will be the main concern of this book, and by comparing other copper engravers with Blake, we can put his skill in a proper context rather than isolating him as a relief etcher unique among his contemporaries. According to technical handbooks of printmaking, these verso marks on copper plates could have been made for two different purposes.17 The first is for the planishing of plates before they are engraved. Planishing is the procedure of levelling the surface of a copper plate to ready it for the purpose of engraving or etching. The Art of Graving and Etching, published by William Faithorne in 1662, describes how to planish and polish copper plates by hammering them: Those Plates which you intend to forge and Planish, must be fully as thick, as an halfcrown, because in their forgeing and planishing they will become somewhat thinner. You must planish your Copper cold, as the Silver-Smiths do their Plate: And the more it is beaten or planished with an hammer, the firmer it is, and lesse subject to holes or flaws. Your Plate being well planished, make choice of the smoothest side for polishing.18

The other function is the technique of repoussage for the correction of mistakes on the recto of the plate although, oddly, the terminology is not much used in early English manuals. The groundbreaking eighteenth-century L’Encyclopédie: Gravure-Sculpture (Geneva, 1772), by Diderot and D’Alembert, illustrates engraving tools, including a hammer, anvil and a pair of callipers used for repoussage.19 The account details the procedure of repoussage. A later English handbook, The Art of Engraving (1841) by T. H. Fielding, describes the whole of the technique, from receiving a plate from the coppersmith’s, preparing it for etching or engraving and, subsequently, the technique to be employed for correcting mistakes. Fielding’s description of the process is worth quoting in full because it reminds us not only of the basic intractability of working with copper plates but also because his account refers to the range of tools and techniques the engraver is required to master: Copper or steel plates are, or ought to be, sufficiently well polished when brought home from the coppersmith’s, to admit of having the etching-ground laid upon them without any further preparation; but the former being a softer metal, is extremely liable to get scratched, or the polish destroyed. When this is the case the scratches ought to be burnished, and the burnisher’s marks taken out by oil rubbing the plate with washed flour of emery and sweet oil; when the scratches are too deep to be effaced with the burnisher, they may be taken out with the scraper, which must be used very lightly, so as not to scratch; the scraper marks must then be taken out by

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William Blake and the Art of Engraving rubbing the place either with charcoal and oil, or a piece of cloth on the finger with emery and oil. … Sometimes, however, it happens that the scratch is too deep, or a line or point bit in so strongly as not to admit of being effaced either by the burnisher or the scraper. In this case recourse must be had to the process of knocking up, an operation requiring great nicety and dexterity, and which we shall briefly describe. The instruments required are – a polished steel anvil, a hammer (Plate I, fig. 13) having a head, with one end flat and the other with a rounded point, and a pair of calliper compasses. These last are easily made out of a pair of iron compasses, such as are used by carpenters and coopers, by heating the points, and then bending a quarter of an inch of each inwards, so that they shall exactly meet, leaving a space of half an inch between the two legs (Plate I, fig. 16). By placing the plate between the legs of the compasses, with one of the points on the spot to be effaced, you can easily mark on the back with the other point the place immediately opposite to it. The plate is then placed with the part to be effaced on the anvil, and struck at the back with the round end of the hammer, till the line or hole is filled up. The jarring of the plate in the hand, and the noise of the hammer, will sufficiently indicate when the part of the surface immediately opposite to where you strike is fairly on the anvil or not. Before, however, you proceed to the actual hammering, the work on the part to be effaced must be carefully taken out with an instrument called a scooper (Plate I, fig. 6), so as to leave a clean smooth hollow. When the part to be effaced is very minute, an iron punch is used, and the plate must then be held on the anvil by an assistant, whilst you hold the punch steadily with the left hand, on the spot marked at the back with the compasses, and strike it gently, but smartly, with the hammer, till the place is filled up. However neatly the operation of knocking up is performed, the lines of the etching in the immediate vicinity of the part knocked up will be more or less weakened or effaced, and will want re-etching with a transparent ground, or working up to their original strength with the graver. It often happens, also, that the part effaced is raised above the level of the plate, in which case, it must be brought down with the scraper, and afterwards finished with the charcoal.20

Similar descriptions have also been given in later books, including Etching, Engraving, and the Other Methods of Printing Pictures (1897) by H. W. Singer and W. Strang (Etching, Engraving, and the other methods of printing Pictures (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1897), pp. 28–9) with perhaps A. M. Hind’s A Short History of Engraving & Etching (1908) being the standard work in this area, a study written by a former keeper of the Department of Prints & Drawings of the British Museum.21 Nevertheless, traditional practices were not forgotten: Gabor Peterdi’s more modern Printmaking: Methods Old and New (1959) also mentions the term repoussage and explains that the technique is used to mend the indentation of copper plates caused by scraping and burnishing unwanted lines as a part of a process of correction. The methods Peterdi describes are either passing the plates through the rolling press or hammering the plate back from behind, his comments on the latter being that it is ‘much more difficult, and requires special skill’.22 The modern master printmaker Stanley William Hay-

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ter, in his New Ways of Gravure (1966), also points out that this technique is expressly used to correct ‘serious errors’ on the plate.23 The hammer marks on the surviving copper plates and steel plates, especially from the eighteenth century onwards, show little trace of planishing but more clearly reveal the technique of repoussage. The hammering of plates for planishing would have been done by a broad flat hammer which does not cause deep and obvious marks.24 On the contrary, repoussage is made by a small punch or hammer edge to mend a specific area, one which can be easily observed because it always corresponds to the engraved lines on the recto. Furthermore, hammer marks for planishing are found on early plates of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but rarely on any later than the eighteenth century. The technology of making printing plates was obviously much improved during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The plates were made thicker and smoother so as to endure more printing and be easier for engraving. The hammering marks for planishing are hardly visible on the surface, and even allow both recto and verso of the plates for use. Among the collections I examined, most surviving plates from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are thinner than the eighteenth and nineteenth century plates. For example, the copper plate for the frontispiece of An Account of the Present War between the Venetians and Turks (1666) engraved by William Faithorne in the Huntington Library collection, the twelve small copper plates for the series of Apostles by the German engraver Hans Sebald Beham (1500–50),25 and two plates by Rembrandt, Jacob Caressing Benjamin (c. 1645) and The Raising of Lazarus (1642)26 at the MFA Boston, are all extremely thin plates. Hammer marks for planishing are hardly visible on the versos of these plates. The most likely planishing marks are the random hammer marks which appear on the versos of the Italian engraver Stefano della Bella’s (1610–64) plate The Medici Vase (1656) at the MFA,27 and the Dutch engraver Jacob Houbraken’s (1698–1780) Portrait of Sir Francis Drake and Portrait of Walter Raleigh (1743) at the V&A.28 These marks resemble the hammer marks and rolling (under the press to flatten the plate)29 for planishing on the verso of the German painter Johann König’s (c. 1586–1642) painting on copper, Autumn, which is shown in the conservationist’s scholarly book, Komanecky’s (ed.) Copper as Canvas (Phoenix, AZ; New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press,1999), p. 67, Fig. 4.3. The thicker and more smoothly manufactured plates make both sides of the plate useable. Blake had obviously used both recto and verso of his copper plates to save on costs. He etched Europe (1794) on the versos of the plates for America (1793), Songs of Experience (1794) on the versos of Songs of Innocence (1789), The First Book of Urizen (1794) on the versos of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1790?), The Book of Ahania (1795) on the versos of Ahania, Milton (1804– c. 1811) on the versos of Milton plates, and most plates of Jerusalem (1804– c. 1820) on the versos of other Jerusalem plates.30 These are relief plates

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and Blake would not need to use the hammering technique for correction as on intaglio plates. Therefore, their versos would not be damaged (apart from the problem of avoiding the plate maker’s marks stamped on the versos)31 and could be used for other etchings. However, intaglio plates with double-sided etching are not rare in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries either. Surviving examples include James Gillray’s etched plate, A Peep into Lady W…y’s Serglio on one side, and Apothecaries: Taylors & … Conquering France and Spain on the other at the V&A;32 Goya’s three etched plates at MFA Boston: Witch on a Swing (verso) / Warlock on a Swing among Demons (recto), Maja (verso) / Maja against a background of Demons (recto), Andalusian Smuggler with Bull (verso) / Andalusian Smuggler (recto);33 William Holl II’s (1807–71) double-sided portrait plate of an unidentified young man on one side and a man smoking a pipe on the other at the V&A.34 These double-sided etching plates show that etching requires much less corrective technique of hammering from the back than engraving, thus the verso of the plate can be used for another etching. Of course, hammer marks made by small punches on the versos of copper plates are not always for correcting errors. Sometimes they were made to accommodate later alterations of words or images on the recto. Such an example is the copper plate of William Sharp’s (1749–1824) Edward Long (1796) (BM), altered by Robert Graves to change the image and inscription.35 Examples taken from both states, published in 1796 and 1813, still exist. The comparison of the two states shows that the hammer marks on the back of the copper plate36 are clearly for the purpose of re-engraving as they correspond exactly to changes in the main image, in this case the removal of the figure’s hat, and the alteration of the inscription. However, changes made by repoussage are not always shown on prints. They would only appear on some, but not all, of the prepublication proofs. This is amply demonstrated on Blake’s Job copper plates in accordance with their proofs, which will be discussed in Chapter 3. The hammer marks found on the versos of some surviving copper plates are similar to those on Blake’s plates in their characteristics. These are almost certainly made by the technique of repoussage despite the lack of corresponding proofs. Two copper plates engraved by the Dutch engraver Jacob Houbraken (1698– 1780), the Portrait of Sir Francis Drake37 and the Portrait of Walter Raleigh38 at the V&A show interesting contrasts. The former has no sharp hammer marks on its back, but the latter has a circular line of hammer marks on its verso corresponding to the oval frame of the portrait and outline of the figure on the recto. Both plates also have an uneven surface on their versos, showing dark random patterns contrasting with the smooth rectos. The circular marks appear to be repoussage for the correction of mistakes or revision of the composition, while the random patterns are probably the marks of planishing.39 These are parts of Thomas Birch’s volume, The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain (pub-

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lished 1743, pp. 47, 53), in which most portraits were sent to be engraved by Jacob Houbraken in Amsterdam and a few to be produced by George Vertue in England.40 The Portrait of Walter Raleigh, with the imprint of 1739, was engraved at an earlier time than most of the other portraits in the book. Birch might have later demanded a larger size for the frame, and so the hammer marks on its verso were made to change the size of the central image to match the other later portraits. Houbraken’s portraits in line engraving appeared during an age of changing fashion despite Birch’s expensive commission. The English portrait engraving in line yielded place in popularity to the mezzotint from the end of the seventeenth century onwards.41 The engraving of portraits in eighteenth-century England was largely in the manner of mezzotint and stipple engraving. Both techniques do not seem to require much repoussage. For example, Francesco Bartolozzi’s (1727–1815) stipple engraved copper plates show very few hammer marks on their versos. Despite the varied input of studio assistants, Bartolozzi’s plates show a good level of engraving skill with rare mistakes. Bartolozzi was the engraver of King George III, appointed from Venice in 1764, and later becoming a Royal Academician. Although he was first a master in line engraving, the over two thousand works in Bartolozzi’s name are mostly in the stipple or chalk manner.42 His two stipple copper plates in the V&A, the Portrait of A. N. Caracci (1796)43 and the Head of an old man,44 after Annibal Carracci,45 both with the plate maker’s marks of Pontifex,46 the copper plate maker used for Blake’s Job, show no significant signs of hammer marks made for correction, except that the former has some repoussage on the bottom of its verso corresponding to the imprint on the recto. These plates were Engravings from the Original Designs of Annibale, Agostino, and Ludovico Caracci, in his majesty’s collection, consisting of elegant compositions and studies for the various celebrated pictures in the different palaces and cabinets at Rome, Bologna, Parma, Milan, & c., published by John Chamberlaine, F. S. A. and Keeper of the King’s medals and drawings (published London, 1797). The current inscriptions read: ‘Portrait of A. N. Carracci | in his majestys collection’, ‘From the Original Drawing by An Carracci’, ‘Engraved by F. Bartolozzi | RA Historical Engraver of his Majesty’, ‘Published as the Act of directs May 13 1796 by I. Chamberlaine Brompton Midd’x.’. The imprint may have been changed from an earlier engraved date to the later published date. At the least, although it is beyond the scope of this book, the changes to Bartolozzi’s imprints made by repoussage show a different facet of the production processes leading to the final publication of Chamberlaine’s book. The relatively few marks of repoussage on the verso of its copper plate indicate that stipple engraving does not often cause serious mistakes requiring hammering. Stipple is also an easier technique, particularly as Bartolozzi’s plates were mostly finished by his

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assistants after the composition had been drawn.47 The shallow depth of stipple strokes can be easily removed by burnishing. Luigi (Lewis) Schiavonetti (1765–1810), the engraver who made famous Blake’s designs for Robert Blair’s poem The Grave, was one of Bartolozzi’s best pupils. The thirteen copper plates of his etching for The Grave (1808), including the portrait of Blake after Thomas Phillips for the frontispiece, are now in the NGA, Washington DC. The plates appear to be etched first in line manner, then followed by stipple engraving in details. Like the other copper plates in the V&A, they show similar hammer marks corresponding to the lines on the rectos. These are corrections intended mainly for the inscriptions and imprints, and relatively few relate to the figures. Hammer marks corresponding to the imprint are found on several plates, including Christ descending into the Grave, The Counsellor, King, Warrior, Mother & Child in the Tomb, The Soul hovering over the Body reluctantly parting with Life, The Soul exploring the recesses of the Grave, and The Death of The Good Old Man (NGA). The evidence from early proofs shows that these imprints have been changed several times. Extant proofs bear different publishers’ names such as Cromek, Cadell & Davies, and R. Ackermann, as well as different publication dates due to later restrikes.48 Some of these changes appear to require repoussage, but not all, such as the Death’s Door (NGA), perhaps because the etched depth was shallow and the following burnishing did not cause indentation on the copper. In other words, in this case, the hammer marks should not be seen as correction of mistakes, and were not all made by Schiavonetti himself. It is noticeable, however, that the copper plate of Death’s Door (NGA) contains more hammer marks than the others. A long curve of hammer marks on its verso corresponds to the old man’s bending back on the lower part of the recto. Two areas of similar marks correspond to the hand and the windblown hair on his forehead of the same figure. There are also marks for the word ‘Death’. Although lacking the proofs to compare with their published states, the exact positions of these hammer marks corresponding to the lines on the recto can hardly be anything else than the correction for the mishandled cutting, except that perhaps later reprinting caused wear of the plate and required hammering back and re-cutting. However, as a whole, Schiavonetti’s plates show relatively few corrections as such, and certainly much less than Blake’s copper plates. My comments on Schiavonetti’s practices, although only relevant to the related technique of line etching and stipple (rather than line) engraving, is the first time anyone has compared how Blake’s techniques for Job might be contrasted to the work of one of his contemporaries on a project in which they were both, at different stages, involved. In my consultation of a range of surviving copper plates made by Blake’s contemporaries, I found that most of them contain very few hammer marks that

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are likely to have been the result of the technique of repoussage. Many of the copper plates have no trace of hammer marks. The line-engraved Portrait of Isaac Barre (Isaac Barre, 1726–1802) (1787) – soldier and member of Parliament – engraved by John Hall (1739–97) after C. G. Stuart,49 has only one hammer mark on its verso, corresponding to the armpit of the man on the recto. This area was obviously mended and the lines were cut deeper than the other parts of the recto surface. John Hall had a good reputation as an engraver, similar to that of Strange and Woollett,50 around the period of the line engraving revival at the end of eighteenth century. Another stipple-engraved copper plate, Portrait of a girl or The Fair Forester (1835) after Henry Wyatt (1794–1840),51 engraved by George Thomas Doo (1800–86), an appointed Engraver-in-ordinary to King William IV and Queen Victoria, also has only two small areas of hammer marks on its verso corresponding to the white flower on the girl’s hair and the landscape at the lower part. The line-etched/engraved plate May Day (c. 1747) by L. (Louis?) Truchy52 and the stipple plate The fuit inutilement after Charles Monnet by Prot (early nineteenth century)53 have no hammer marks on the back of the copper plates. James Gillray’s double-sided etching for the caricatures, A Peep into Lady W…y’s Seraglio (1782) and Apothecaries: Taylors & … Conquering France and Spain (1779)54 has no hammer marks on either side of the copper plate. On this evidence, Blake is an unusually intensive user of the repoussage technique. The two closest examples to Blake’s intensive use of repoussage within the range of plates I examined can be found in the Victoria & Albert and the Tate Archive. One is a small anonymous line-engraved copper plate (approx. 9 × 9 cm) in the Victoria & Albert, An allegorical subject showing eight young girls circling a woman seated among clouds.55 Currently, the Prints and Drawings Department of the Victoria & Albert is not able to fully identify its subject, only noting that it is a ‘frontispiece to an unidentified work published by T. Cadell, London, 1788’, identified through the inscriptions on the plate: ‘To face the Title Page’ on the top, and ‘Published as the Act directs by T. Cadell, Strand, Feby. 1788’ at the bottom. The copper plate has many hammer marks on its verso corresponding to almost all the figures on the recto. The lines seem to be mostly engraved rather than etched. An impression on silk mounted on paper is kept alongside, which might have been printed as an individual ornamental piece rather than for illustrating a book. After searching through the collections in the British Library of books published by the London publisher T. Cadell in 1788, I have been able to trace the volume. The V&A copper plate, for the first time, can now be identified as a frontispiece for the second edition of John Sargent’s The Mine: A Dramatic Poem published by Cadell in 1788 (first published in 1785). There are four other illustrations in the book in the form of plates engraved by J. Collyer, Neagle (after Stothard) and Hall (after Stothard). The frontispiece may have been engraved

Figure 1: Copper plate verso, An allegorical subject showing eight young girls circling a woman seated among clouds, and a print from the plate on silk, V&A Prints and Drawings [E.3266-1948/V.6b.I]. The image was also used for the frontispiece of the second edition of John Sargent’s The Mine: A Dramatic Poem (London: T. Cadell, 1788). Photograph taken by Mei-Ying Sung, image reproduction courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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by any one of these engravers despite its slightly different style from their work. The flying figures on the frontispiece show a looser drawing style, one that is more free-spirited compared to other discreetly composed and framed illustrations in the book. The hammer marks on the verso of the copper plate show the same inhibited mannerism in terms of their large proportion relative to the surface area of the small copper plate. They appear as rough patterns made by a small hammer with a long sharp end. The extensive revision and correction by the use of burnisher and hammer show a similar attitude to Blake’s treatment of his copper plates. Another plate with similar amount of correcting hammer marks is a midnineteenth-century copper plate at the Tate Archive, London.56 The image is a woman, a central detail of The Wolf and the Lamb engraved by Charles William Sharpe after William Mulready, published in S. C. Hall (ed.), The Royal Gallery of Art, Ancient and Modern: Engravings from the Private Collections of the Queen and Prince Albert, 4 vols (London: P. & D. Colnaghi & Co., 1851–9). Curiously, the figure engraver C. W. Sharpe (1818–99) from Birmingham, later working in London, nearly always used steel plates.57 Hence this copper plate of a woman, a central detail from the original plate, is possibly a copy by someone else rather than a fragment cut from the original plate. There are about twentyfive areas of repoussage on the verso, corresponding to the figure’s face, eye, arm, hand, the cloth hung on her arm, the lines of staircase, the window at back, etc. The many hammer marks for correction also seem to be done by a novice who tried to practise the engraving techniques by copying others’ works. By far, these two copper plates contain the largest proportion of hammer marks in the museum and library collections I examined, ones where the use of the technique of repoussage is the closest to Blake’s. To place Blake in the context of copper plate techniques of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, his use of repoussage is apparently much more frequent than that of other engravers. This either means that Blake made many more mistakes in handling his burin than others (and so was not a very skillful engraver), or that he had a freer attitude towards engraving and did not mind making mistakes and subsequently correcting or revising them on the copper plate. One should bear in mind that repoussage also requires a high level of skill. However, it has to be considered that copper plate engraving is not like drawing on paper, which can be revised easily. In repairing plates, the correction process causes damage to the copper, which might limit the printing. It is recognized that skilled engravers tried not to make mistakes, since errors cost time and money.58 The burnishing, scraping and hammering all makes the copper plate thinner. The thinner and more irregular the plate, the fewer impressions can be printed from it.

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Printmakers’ copper plates dateable to after Blake’s lifetime mostly employ etching rather than engraving due to the relative decline of engraving (and rise of etching) in the nineteenth century. These show even fewer uses of the technique of repoussage than engraved plates. Etching allows amateur artists to create their own prints easily as it does not require professional handling of the burin but, instead, freehanded drawing skills with the etching needle on a soft ground prepared on copper. The etching revival of the late nineteenth century redeployed the reproductive technique of the eighteenth century for a new purpose for artistic design. Among the artists of this movement was Samuel Palmer (1805–81), the best-known printmaker among Blake’s followers, several of whose copper plates survive in the collections of V&A, including The Willow (1850)59 and The Early Ploughman (1861–8).60 The Willow is the first etching Palmer submitted in order to join the Etching Club (known as the ‘Old’ Etching Club to distinguish it from the Junior Etching Club and from the later Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers), which was founded in 1838 by a group of artists including Thomas Oldham Barlow (1824–89) and Charles West Cope (1811–90).61 The Early Ploughman is considered to be one of the greatest compositions of the later period of Palmer’s etching.62 Both copper plates have only a few small hammer marks made by a round punch on their backs, although The Early Ploughman has relatively more marks made by the technique of repoussage because it had been re-etched and reworked both by Samuel Palmer himself63 and by his son Herbert Palmer.64 Samuel Palmer regarded artistic technique as a component of authorship, especially the biting and working on the copper plates,65 and so had a different attitude than that of his contemporary Etching Club members, who entrusted the biting of their plates to a professional craftsman.66 Palmer’s etching needle and burin are well preserved in the V&A with a typed note inside the box by his son Herbert Palmer, which illustrates the importance and significance of these special tools and techniques in the art of printmaking.67 However, an amateur printmaker like Palmer, who had never been apprenticed as an engraver or etcher, would have been less familiar with the professional technique of repoussage.68 This probably explains his limited use of this technique. The V&A plates have been cancelled by defacing the recto with a deep straight cut preventing further printing. This illustrates the late nineteenth-century idea of a limited edition of an original print, distinct from the reproductive print of the preceding age aiming at mass production. Two other etched copper plates of the nineteenth century in the V&A show similar characteristics to the others. The etched ‘Portrait of an unidentified young man’, signed ‘W. Holl’ (possibly William Holl II, 1807–71),69 has another portrait of a man smoking a pipe on the back of the copper.70 Like the James Gillray example cited earlier, this etched plate shows that etching is less likely to require the technique of repoussage than engraving, allowing the plate to be used

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on both sides. However, etching can still cause errors which need to be mended by hammer. The etched copper plate Portrait of Turner by S. J. B. Haydon after Daniel Maclise71 shows on its verso a few punch marks in a small round shape corresponding to the brush stick held by Turner. The (approximately) 170 copper plates by George Cruikshank (1792– 1878) and approximately forty copper and steel plates by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne, 1815–82) in the Houghton Library, Harvard, have very little trace of hammer marks on their versos. This is due to the relatively easy technique of etching adopted on these nineteenth-century plates which requires less corrective hammering. However, two of J. M. W. Turner’s copper plates for the Liber Studiorum 79: Ploughing Eton, in the MFA Boston,72 show an extraordinary use of hammering for correction on etched plates. One of these is a rejected plate, on which the central image is erased. (The second plate shows the figure of a woman holding a child in this place.) On the verso are deep lines of hammer marks corresponding to the frame and all parts of images on the recto. Despite heavy mending, the plate was beyond repair and had to be discarded eventually. The other copper plate is an etching and mezzotint plate. On the verso are two different kinds of corrective hammer marks, one with broad round hammer like the ones on the first plate, and the other with small sharp punch.73 They correspond to the three central figures and the foreground outlines on the recto. These are the first and the second plates for Ploughing, Eton. This unpublished plate has a very complex history, and had obviously posed particular difficulties for Turner. There are in total three etched copper plates. The MFA has the first and the second plates. The first plate was etched by J. M. W. Turner, and the second etched attributed to Thomas Lupton and J. M. W. Turner and engraved by Thomas Lupton in mezzotint. After Turner’s death, Lupton etched and engraved a third copper.74 The particularly damaged first plate was abandoned and found in Turner’s house after his death. It was ‘not thought worth including in the (Turner) Sale’ in 1873,75 but was bought and passed to the Turner scholar William George Rawlinson,76 and later went into MFA’s collection. The story of these plates and the evidence of hammer marks on their versos show how Turner’s amateur etching skills required huge amount of correction and even used up a whole plate of expensive copper. As a whole, the examination of these British copper plates from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries tells us that the technique of repoussage is used largely for line engraving. It is rarely used for stipple engraving or mezzotint, and only occasionally for etching. In the latter case, mistakes by the etching needle can be corrected easily before the biting of acid by applying the wax ground once more onto the copper. In etching, repoussage would be made after the process of biting, assuming further correction of the etched lines is required. Line engraving, however, is more difficult to correct as the metal plate is cut directly with

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the burin. Thus, repoussage is required more for the correction of cut lines on line engraved plate than bitten lines on etched plate. The evidence of these copper plates shows the history of printmaking technique developing away from traditional slow (but highly-skilled) techniques within the exclusive engraving profession, to easy and quick methods for innovative amateur artists. Line engraving requires both drawing and cutting skills; stipple engraving and mezzotint require cutting or burnishing skills more than drawing; while etching requires more drawing than cutting skills. The newer techniques of aquatint, lithography and soft-ground etching77 involve nearly entirely freehand drawing techniques on the soft ground attached on metal plates or stones with the minimum of cutting techniques. As new methods of preparing plates before printing became technically easier with handcrafts, the execution of printmaking could be combined with artistic invention. Artists were able to execute their own ideas; they no longer needed to have their own designs engraved by professional reproductive engravers. However, for the amateur these new techniques were not taken seriously until the late nineteenth century. Even the long-used technique of etching was still seen as an experimental technique, one for caricature prints and amateurs rather than serious art, during the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Artists such as Thomas Gainsborough (1727–88), Andrew Geddes (1783–1844) and David Wilkie (1785–1841), who worked in London in the early nineteenth century, all experimented with etching although there was no market for it at the time.78 George Cumberland (1754–1848), Blake’s friend and also an amateur engraver, experimented with etching by writing words as normal onto the copper plate, and counter-proofing the reversed writing onto wet prints freshly printed from the copper. Cumberland called it ‘a new method of engraving’ for the same reasons of the quick and cheap effects Blake deployed in his invention of relief etching, but which Cumberland had partly inspired.79 In other words, in Blake’s time, engraving was considered a high art, whereas etching was either an easy and quick alternative method of engraving, or experimental in its premature stage. Changes in the notion of ‘experimental art’ did not happen until the late nineteenth century when experimentation was valued as representing the expression of innovative ideas. In the eighteenth century, experiments were merely private activities which did not gain public recognition, even though artists were keen to try out new methods. Like Cumberland and Blake, painters such as Alexander Cozens continued to experiment with variants of relief etching.80 However, it is important to remember that Blake’s printmaking techniques in this historical context should not be judged by twentieth-century aesthetic values but that his engraving should be regarded as important as his relief etching.

3 BLAKE’S ENGRAVED COPPER PLATES

This chapter begins with a synthesis of the current state of knowledge about the fate of those Blake plates about which some information was recorded. This is followed by an examination of all the surviving Blake plates, with an emphasis and detailed recording of those for Illustrations of the Book of Job. Rather more ignored than his paintings, drawings and prints, the copper plates of Blake are rarely mentioned in current literature. An early comment after Blake’s death shows an appreciation of the value of his copper plates. John Thomas Smith’s memoir, A Book for a Rainy Day: or, Recollections of the events of The last sixty-six years (published posthumously in 1845),1 records under the year of 1784 his acquaintance with Blake. Smith’s account notes that: A time will come when the numerous, though now very rare works of Blake, (in consequence of his taking very few impressions from the plates before they were rubbed out to enable him to use them for other subjects,) will be sought after with the most intense avidity.2

This rarely noticed remark by Blake’s immediate contemporary draws our attention to Blake’s use of his copper plates and their rarity even before Blake’s death. Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1863) tells that ‘the remaining stock of his [Blake’s] works, [are] still considerable, she [Mrs. Blake] bequeathed [them] to Mr. Tatham… They have since been widely dispersed; some destroyed’.3 Frederick Tatham’s manuscript Life of Blake (c. 1832) says that Mrs. Blake ‘bequeathed’ to him in 1831 ‘a very great number of Copper plates’.4 Unfortunately, almost all of these copper plates were, ‘it is believed, … stolen after Blake’s death, and sold for old metal’.5 Despite this general assumption about the demise of Blake’s plates, Geoffrey Keynes has a chapter on the copper plates in his Blake Studies as well as further notes in Blake’s Separate Plates. G. E. Bentley Jr. lists some, but does not give a complete list of the surviving plates in either Blake Records or in Blake Books. Robert Essick expanded the information, and offers further explanation, in his Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue (1983) and William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake

– 61 –

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after Designs by Other Artists (1991). In current scholarship, Essick’s exhaustive studies generally provide the most frequently updated and detailed research on the history of Blake’s graphic works and extant prints and copper plates. Thanks to the scholarship referred to above, we are now able to trace some of the Blake’s copper plates for which such kind of record remains. However, some are only traceable through their appearance listed in auction records of the nineteenth century (or even before Blake’s death), or on occasional markets in modern times. Only very few of them have survived to the present day, and even fewer are traceable to current locations. The following list shows Blake copper plates which have been discussed by scholars so far, except for Job, together with a commentary on their provenance. Currently, this information has not been collated and gathered into a single place. The plates are listed in the chronological order in which they were engraved or published but, of course, not all of them have survived to the present day. 1. Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion (1773, c. 1819–1820), untraced since 1828. 2. Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (engraved before c. 1779; published 1786), Bodleian Library, Oxford. 3. Morning Amusement & Evening Amusement after Watteau (1782), untraced since 1808. 4. The Idle Laundress & Industrious Cottager after George Morland (1788), untraced since 1808. 5. Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (published in 1789), untraced since 1818. 6. Plate 11 of The Beggar’s Opera (etched in 1788, published in 1790), Houghton Library, Harvard. 7. America cancelled plate a (1793), NGA Washington DC. 8. Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789, 1794), untraced since 1863, and electrotypes, FMC, V&A and Bentley collection. 9. The CLOD & the PEBBLE (1794, Pl. 32 of Songs of Innocence and of Experience), untraced since 1886. 10. Christ Trampling on Satan (c. 1800), Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. 11. Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims (1810), YUAG. 12. Plates 64 & 96 of Jerusalem (c. 1804–1820), possible reused plate by Blake. 13. Wedgwood’s Catalogue of Earthenware and Porcelain. (c. 1816), untraced since 1971. 14. John Flaxman’s Compositions from the Works Days and Theogony of Hesiod (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1817), untraced since 1917. 15. Mrs Q (1820), untraced since 1941. 16. Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy (1827), NGA Washington DC.

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17. George Cumberland’s calling card (1827), untraced since mid-nineteenth century. There now follows a more detailed synopsis of the current state of knowledge concerning these plates.

1. Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion (1773, c. 1810–20): Essick has traced important information about this copper plate although its current existence cannot now be confirmed. Among the earliest copper plates Blake executed, Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion could have survived after Blake’s death. An impression in Keynes’s collection bears an 1828 watermark, which suggests that the copper plate was in Blake’s possession until after his death in 1827. The copper plate of Joseph of Arimathea had probably been passed to Mrs. Blake, so that she (or Frederick Tatham) had the opportunity to take at least this one posthumous impression from it.6

2. Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (engraved before c. 1779; pub. 1786): Six of Blake’s early apprentice engravings, the large portraits for Richard Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (1786), were identified by Malkin.7 Among the twenty-three plates of monuments in Westminster Abbey signed by Basire, Malkin singled out the monuments of ‘King Henry the Third, the beautiful monument and figure of Queen Elinor, Queen Philippa, King Edward the Third, King Richard the Second and his Queen [Anne]’ (Plates XXII, XXIII, XLIX, LV, LXIII, LXIV), and stated that the ‘heads’ of these monarchs were ‘considered as portraits’ by Blake.8 Essick agrees that these six oval portraits have ‘the greatest likelihood of being in large part his [Blake’s] own production’.9 The preliminary drawings of these plates are in pencil, quite different from others in pen and wash. The engravings are in a distinct style from the typical techniques of Basire’s workshop. Essick describes them as ‘developed with bold and extremely simple patterns of hatching and cross-hatching – just what we might expect from an apprentice… the visibility of the hatching patterns gives them something of the graphic self-reflexivity distinguishing Blake’s later work’.10 Bentley says, ‘All the plates for Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments were given to Bodley in anticipation of a second edition’.11 Essick records that they are now in the Bodleian Library.12

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3. Morning Amusement and Evening Amusement after Watteau (1782) 4. The Idle Laundress and Industrious Cottager after George Morland (1788): Possibly surviving copper plates include those for Morning Amusement and Evening Amusement after Jean-Antoine Watteau (1782), as well as another set of companions The Idle Laundress and Industrious Cottager after George Morland (1788). They were in the possession of the publisher Thomas Macklin. The provenance of these four plates suggests that they were considered as parts of a similar project. After Macklin died in October 1800, the copper plates passed to his widow. They appeared in the sale of the collection of Mrs. Macklin in 1808 (2 April, lot 64 and 96), and were sold to an unknown purchaser.13

5. Lavater’s Essays on Physiognomy (published in 1789): John Caspar Lavater’s Essay on Physiognomy, translated by Henry Hunter, was published in 1789–98 and 1792 by John Murray, et al., and by John Stockdale in 1810. The three volumes have over five hundred plates. Four of them were signed by Blake as the engraver. Both Bentley and Essick record that the copper plates were auctioned by ‘Mr. Saunders’ on 29 January 1818, according to a prospectus, but they have since been lost.14

6. Plate 11 of The Beggar’s Opera (etched in 1788, published in 1790): The large plate of The Beggar’s Opera, Act III, after William Hogarth, illustrating ‘When my hero in court appears’, was etched by Blake in 1788, and first published in the engraved state in 1790.15 The information of this copper plate was further by Essick in his William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations (1991). Essick records that in the General Catalogue of Books (1880), item 3523, Quaritch offers a set of Hogarth’s works ‘printed for me from the restored coppers’, and that ‘nearly 1000 guineas have been lately expended on the restoration of the original coppers’. The copper plate appeared in Messrs. Quaritch’s catalogue 500 in 1935, and was acquired by Mr. Philip Hofer. Keynes in his book of 1956 and Bentley’s record of 1977 both say that the original copper plate was in the collection of Philip Hofer.16 Todd notes a modern restrike from the copper plate in an essay in English Language Notes: Romantic Movement (1966), noting that ‘Lewis, Wilmarth S., and Philip Hofer comps. ‘The Beggar’s Opera’ by Hogarth and Blake. Yale University Press; Harvard University Press, 1965; Portfolio of 11 Unbound pp.; pp. 30. $100.00,’ adding that ‘Plate 11 is a modern restrike of Blake’s original copper plate’.17 When Hofer

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died in 1984, the plate entered the collection of the Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.18

7. America cancelled plate a (1793): The only surviving relief etched plate from Blake’s illuminated books is recorded by Keynes as in Rosenwald’s collection.19 Bentley writes that, ‘The only survivors as far as 1861 were some of the plates of the Songs (of which electrotype copies were made before they too disappeared),20 and a fragment of a rejected plate for America which had been used for another purpose. No copper plate survives for the Illuminated works which Blake published’.21 This uniquely existing fragment of relief etched plate has received considerable critical attention, while the other surviving engraved plates (more than thirty of them) have been largely ignored. The America cancelled plate a has been called to the attention of scholars by the discussion of Blake’s printing and relief etching techniques. In 1947, Ruthven Todd, William Hayter and Joan Miró began to put Blake’s relief printing into practical experiments.22 They assumed that Blake had used transfer methods to put his design onto the copper before etching. The whole process they described involved relief etching, inking and colour printing. Hayter concludes that Blake was ‘never able to escape the discipline’ of ‘the mechanical methods of the Italian reproduction engravers’.23 Except for studying from Blake’s prints, the only physical evidence available to them for Blake’s etching processes was the small piece of fragment copper plate for America.24 As discussed earlier, this theory has provoked controversies about whether Blake used transfer techniques or whether, quite the opposite, he worked without models, the latter view being mainly represented by Robert Essick and Joseph Viscomi. The history and features of this fragment of copper plate have been examined by Bentley and Essick in detail. From the information given by them, the fragment of America cancelled plate a is believed to have been cut down in about 1805 by Blake, and given to Thomas Butts, Jr. who was taught etching and engraving by Blake in 1806. On the verso is a portrait, perhaps of St. Jerome or St. John the Baptist, engraved by young Butts.25 The fragment comes from the top right corner of this America rejected plate. The size measures 8×5.7 cm, and the thickness 1.41 mm.26 The text seems to have been partly cancelled. Lines 1 and 2 have crossing scratches on the last words on their recto, and lines 4 and 5 have what Bentley has rather unspecifically described as ‘heavy pounding’ marks on them. This fragment was sold anonymously at Sotheby’s, 22 March 1910 for £30. 10s. to W. E. Moss, and is believed to have come from the Butts family, sold with ‘William Blake’s Working Cabinet’ including copper plates engraved by both Blake and the young Butts which had been found in one of the cabinet’s

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secret drawers.27 In 1914, the fragment was lent for an exhibition in Manchester and in 1927 loaned to the Burlington Fine Arts Club. On 2 March 1937 it was sold by W. E. Moss at Sotheby’s for £50 to Rosenbach. Finally, it was acquired for the collection of Lessing J. Rosenwald.28 In the third part of William Blake, Printmaker, Essick re-examined Todd and Hayter’s etching and printing experiments, and argued against their transfer and counter-proving theory (see William Blake, Printmaker, ch. 9). By examining the fragment of the cancelled plate for America and using Linnell’s references,29 Essick concludes that Blake composed and wrote directly onto the copper plates and did shallow etching.30 Extremely careful examination has been carried out on the fragment. According to Essick’s observation, its etched depth is only from 0.12 mm to 0.05 mm below the relief surface, and ‘tiny patches of an intermediate step, bitten no more than 0.02 mm below the surface, are revealed by fifteen-power magnification of the original copper plate, particularly around the ampersand’.31 This ‘step-etching’ is ‘to reinforce his acid resist wherever foul biting, lifting of the ground, or underbiting might begin to appear while the acid was on the plate’. The intermediate steps are either ‘an attempt to create islands of protective resist around letters’, or ‘remnants of repair ground, applied to the relief surfaces, that flowed slightly beyond the borders of the letters’.32

8. Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789, 1794) and Electrotypes: The electrotypes are copies from the original copper plates of Blake. Sixteen of them were made for the publisher Macmillan in Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake.33 They are from Plates 3, 6, 8, 16, 18, 24, 27, 29, 33–4, 36, 43, 46–8, 53 of the Songs. The original copper plates disappeared after being electrotyped. Bentley’s observation on the electrotypes is that they ‘seem to be identical in form with Blake’s plates except for pl. 29 (the Title-Page to Experience), which lacks some details, such as the “1794” and the flourish on the “T” in the imprint, and [yet] adds others, particularly the shading on the couch-tomb’.34 Possible explanations for the variants on Plate 29 are that Blake could have engraved this plate twice35 or it is a facsimile, rather than an electrotype, made in the mid-nineteenth century.36 Bentley records their history as being preserved by Macmillan’s printer, Richard Clay & Co., until about 1961, when they were destroyed by Clay & Co. on instructions from Macmillan (according to Bentley’s letter from the firm). Before the destruction, further electrotypes of the Macmillan electrotypes were made for Keynes, and from which sets of prints were pulled for Keynes and Ruthven Todd in 1941. Keynes gave these electrotypes to the V&A in 1955. Plate 33 was acquired by the BMPD. The Fitzwilliam Museum acquired a set made from the V&A ones and a further set of electrotypes was made from the Fitzwilliam ones in 1964 for Bentley.37 In consequence, there are now three sets of extant

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electrotypes belonging to the V&A, Fitzwilliam and Bentley respectively. Essick has compared the three sets of electrotypes. But, as he admits, the electrotyping process38 makes them unreliable as indications of the physical appearance of Blake’s original copper plates. It was because Blake’s own copper plates were too shallow for commercial printing that Clay & Co. had to make electrotypes for Gilchrist’s Life, building up the moulds and gouging out the shells to give them a relief sufficient for rapid and numerous printing.39 The excessive depth on the electrotype of The Echoing Green (V&A) is evidence of gouging.

9. The CLOD & the PEBBLE (1794, Pl. 32 of Songs of Innocence and of Experience): A likely posthumous impression of this Song indicates the late existence of the copper plate. The impression, printed in black ink on wove paper, was once in the collection of Frederick Locker-Lampson in 1886,40 now in the Huntington Library, San Marino. Essick says ‘the quality of the rather flat and dull printing indicates that this is without doubt an impression printed after Blake’s death on 12 August 1827, probably pulled by his widow or by Frederick Tatham, ca. 1827–32. Tatham acquired Blake’s copper plates after Mrs. Blake’s death on 18 October 1831 and took impressions from them, many on paper watermarked 1831 and 1832’.41

10. Christ Trampling on Satan (c. 1800): Todd mentions that Christ Trampling upon Urizen (Satan) was in the Butts sale of 1903 as a copper plate.42 It was then acquired by the collector E. J. Shaw of Walsall.43 He appeared to have had the copper plate reprinted. After his death the plate was sold at Sotheby’s on 29 July 1925, and Todd in 1968, following Keynes’s record of 1956,44 says it is ‘now in America’,45 but without specific location. Essick’s record is more detailed than any former ones. He says the original copper plate of Christ Trampling on Satan was sold by Captain Frederick Butts, the grandson of Thomas Butts, at Sotheby’s on 24 June 1903 to Edward J. Shaw of Walsall. Shaw put it on auction at Sotheby’s on 29 July 1925. The New York dealer E. Weyhe acquired a number of impressions and the copper plate. This plate appears to be executed by Butts with Blake’s assistance after Blake’s watercolour, now in the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.46 Essick comments that ‘The vast majority of the etched and engraved lines in the print suggest the hand of an amateur, but it is possible that Blake helped to ‘lay in’ the basic outlines that carefully follow his drawing’.47 This copper plate has recently appeared to the public and is recorded by Essick in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 39:4.48 The plate was given by Gertrude

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Weyhe Dennis, daughter of the New York dealer Erhard Weyhe, to the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York in 2002 which is now its current location.

11. Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims (1810): Both Keynes and Bentley recorded that the copper plate of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims was in the Carnegie Institute of Pittsburgh. 49 The fullest and most upto-date account is in Essick’s Separate Plates of William Blake (1983) which has further traced the current location of the copper plate to Yale University Art Gallery. The large plate measured 14×38 inches (or 35.7×97.1 cm according to Essick’s measurement, The Separate Plates of William Blake, fig. 44) and was engraved by Blake in 1810. It was left to Mrs Blake after Blake died in 1827. This plate is probably the only one to be traceable to Tatham’s inheritance from Mrs Blake. According to Henry Crabb Robinson’s diary of the 8 January 1828, ‘Job is Linnell’s property and the print of Chaucers pilgrimage’ belonged to Mrs. Blake.50 Essick thinks Robinson probably meant that the copper plate and the remaining impressions of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrimage still in stock were Mrs Blake’s property After Mrs. Blake’s death in 1831, the plate may have passed to Frederick Tatham, who died in 1878. According to Essick: at an unknown time it was seen in a ‘shop window’ by John Giles, Samuel Palmer’s cousin and a friend of George Richmond’s, and purchased by Giles ‘for the rapturous “old song” so dear to the true Londoner of those days of amazing bargains.’51 Giles died in 1880 and the plate was sold with his collection at Christie’s, 4 February 1881, lot 483, ‘Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims, by W. Blake; and the engraved steel [sic] plate’ (£35 to Colnaghi). According to a brief announcement in Notes and Queries, sixth ser., 3 (5 March 1881), 200, Colnaghi’s had impressions taken from it ‘on Japanese paper’ (i.e., laid India).52

The copper plate next passed into the hands of the New York dealer Gabriel Wells no later than April 1940. Early in that month, William Hobart Royce, one of Wells’s representatives, sold the plate to Mrs A. Edward Newton, who presented it to her husband on their fiftieth wedding anniversary on 7 April 1940. After Newton’s death, it was sold with his collection at Parke-Bernet on 16 April 1941, lot 150 ($2,300 to Sessler’s on behalf of Charles J. Rosenbloom, Pittsburgh). Before delivery to Rosenbloom, Sessler’s reprinted the plate. In October 1973, Rosenbloom bequeathed the copper plate to the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut.53 Essick also carefully examined the Chaucer copper plate, and described it in detail. It is worth giving here Essick’s entire description since it constitutes what is probably the longest account of any of Blake’s copper plates. He says:

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The copper has crystallized, as is to be expected, but the plate is in good condition without much evidence of wear and no damage. The lines are clogged with old, solidified ink which permits one to see the image clearly.54 The areas where the drypoint inscriptions were added in the fourth state are now smooth and bare, showing no evidence of inscriptions, scraping, or burnishing. This suggests that the drypoint inscriptions, typical of preliminary trial lettering of the sort not intended to appear in published impressions without deeper and more careful engraving, were never purposely removed and simply wore off the plate after a small number of pulls were taken. Thus, the fourth state may have been the last executed by Blake. The verso of the plate shows a number of impressions from a ball peen hammer and chisels. None of these marks correspond to areas on the recto that could have required knocking-up from the back during the reworking of the design; they were probably made as part of the original planishing of the copper before Blake began work on the image. There are two plate maker’s marks on the verso, top right and bottom left. Both read HARRIS | No 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON.55

Essick’s observation of the hammer marks on the verso of this plate now needs revision. They are very likely the same repoussage marks found on the Job plates, which would surely not have been ‘made as part of the original planishing of the copper before Blake began work on the image’ as Essick presumed, but rather mending of mistakes occurring at the time of engraving.

12. Plates 64 and 96 of Jerusalem (c. 1804–20): According to Essick, the copper plate of Moore & Co’s Advertisement (c. 1797–8) was probably cut by Blake into pieces and etched on the lower left quarter, 20.3×14.4 cm, for Plate 96 of Jerusalem (c. 1804–20). Nearly identical plate dimensions and fragments of a plate maker’s mark suggest that Blake had first used the verso of this piece of copper for Plate 64 of Jerusalem.56

13. Wedgwood’s Catalogue of Earthenware and Porcelain (c. 1816 ): In English and Scottish Earthenware 1660–1860 (1961), Bernard Hughes says eight of Blake’s original plates for Wedgwood’s catalogue still remained in the Wedgwood Museum, but all possess alterations made during a catalogue reissue of about 1840.57 Keynes in Blake Studies (p. 65) also says eight of Blake’s Wedgwood copper plates survive, one of them with a central figure removed and a bedpan illustration substituted. Bentley confirmed that Keynes told him he saw the copper plates on the premises of the Wedgwood firm at Etruria, but according to the Museum Curator they were not in the firm’s museum.58

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14. John Flaxman’s Compositions from the Works Days and Theogony of Hesiod (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1817), The Classical Compositions of John Flaxman (London: Bell and Daldy, 1870), Compositions from the Works and Days, and Theogony of Hesiod (London: Bell and Daldy, 1870): The thirty-seven copper plates for Flaxman’s Compositions from the Works Days and Theogony of Hesiod (1817) were sold by Longman in 1838 to H. G. Bohn. Bentley thinks that Bohn reprinted the copper plates.59 Essick suggests that the impressions on thick, card-like paper and a rather soft, machine-made stock may be Bohn’s restrikes. The copper plates were acquired by Bell and Daldy for the new impressions published in the 1870 edition of the Classical Compositions and Compositions from the Works and Days, and Theogony of Hesiod. According to Ruthven Todd, Bell and Daldy sold the plates as scrap metal in 1917.60

15. Mrs Q (1820): According to Bentley, the copper plate (plate-size: 21.5×27.5 cm) of Mrs Q, i.e. Harriet Quentin, mistress of the Prince Regent, ‘Drawn by Huet Villiers’ and ‘Engraved by W. Blake’ (‘London, Published first June 1820 by I Barrow, Weston Place, St. Pancras’) survived until at least the early twentieth century and was reprinted in Joseph Grego’s twenty-seven-page work, Mrs. Q (1906),61 along with its companion, Windsor Castle, engraved by G. Maile after J. Barrow. The Grego book was printed by Gilbert and Rivington Ltd, which was taken over by Wm Clowes & Sons Ltd (of Dorland House, 14 and 16 Lower Regent Street, London) in 1907. The latter firm reports that their records were destroyed by German bombs in 1941, and the copper plate cannot now be traced.62

16. Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy (1827): The seven large plates for Dante’s Inferno have been even more ignored than the Job plates. Of Blake’s commercial copper plates, Bentley writes, ‘Though Blake designed or engraved over 800 plates which we can identify, few have survived. Linnell kept the plates which he commissioned or bought, those for Job, Dante, and Virgil’.63 Keynes has a chapter about John Linnell and Mrs Blake, which discusses the Dante plates. They were mentioned in a letter of 1831 from Linnell to Mrs Blake about the remaining payment on their original agreement dating back to when her husband was still alive. Linnell wrote, ‘the seven copper plates of Dante shall be given up to Mrs B. when the Drawings are sold’.64 They seem to have been in Linnell’s possession after Blake’s death. Due to some dispute between Linnell and Mrs. Blake about the Dante payment, the Dante plates were never passed to Mrs. Blake. Mrs. Blake moved to Linnell’s house at Cirencester Place

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one month after Blake’s death, and stayed for nine months before she moved to Frederick Tatham’s chamber at 17 Upper Charlotte Street in the summer of 1828, where she died in October 1831. According to several letters during 1831 between Linnell and Tatham, acting on Mrs. Blake’s behalf, Mrs Blake suspected Linnell had exploited Blake. Whether this accusation is fair or not, the Dante plates remained in Linnell’s family until he died in 1882. The last of the Linnell trustees, Herbert Linnell, died in 1937 without leaving any instructions in his will regarding the Linnell trust properties. The copper plates were discovered in an outhouse and were soon afterwards sold through Messrs Robinson to Mr Lessing J. Rosenwald. They were consequently in the Rosenwald Collection in the keeping of the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.65 Reprints from the Dante copper plates were made in 1954 and 1968 in two sets of twenty and twenty-five produced by Ruthven Todd and Harry Hoehn. The closest modern examination of these engraved plates to date is probably Ruthven Todd’s Blake’s Dante Plates (1968).66 The examination started from the proofs of The Devils Mauling One Another and The Whirlwind of Lovers, printed in 1954, which had been sent by the copper plates’ owner, Rosenwald, to Ruthven Todd. Harry Hoehn, an artist-engraver and printer, helped Todd to examine and reprint the plates. Hoehn proofed the whole set on two kinds of paper from the original copper plates in 1968. They discovered an almost invisible drypoint on the plate Whirlpool of Lovers that says ‘Whirlpool of Lovers Dante’s Inferno Canto V’. Hoehn, with his professional judgement, asserted that there is no etching on the plates. Hoehn’s letter to Todd of 11 August 1968 says: I have looked again and feel certain that these sketchy lines are definitely a kind of drypoint rather than etched. They have a sticky character which you get using a sharp hard steel point or even a diamond point. … I feel that if you could look [at the copper plates themselves] with a strong loupe [jeweller’s glass] as I have you would agree. These lines no longer have the slightest feeling of burr. Incidentally, when the plate is clean you would almost miss them in some parts.67

Very detailed examination of the plates was carried out, as Hoehn described: One other thing I did was to examine the backs of the plates for any suggestion of foul biting which might show from an accidental scratch or nick and so far as I can see there is none.68

Other than the Essick and Bentley’s accounts of the copper plates of Chaucer and Dante, Hoehn’s is the only other explicit examination of the backs of Blake’s existing plates. Some other remarks show Essick also examined these engraved copper plates, for example, ‘As the copper plates show, none of these [short strokes in a herringbone pattern] or any other lines is cut deeply into the metal’,69 and

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‘As a photograph [Fig. 233 in Essick’s William Blake, Printmaker 1980] of the [Dante] copper plate of the third print shows, the drypoint scratches to the left of the figures and all burr have been worn off the plate by later printings’.70 However, there are not many other references to these plates. On Blake’s techniques of engraving, Essick almost entirely depended on proofs rather than working from the copper plates themselves.

17. George Cumberland’s calling card (1827): Blake’s last engraving, the tiny calling card made for George Cumberland, was collected by Cumberland’s son from Mrs Blake after Blake’s death. Todd said that this too was ‘probably in America’.71 The copper plate has a well recorded history during 1827 and 1828 in letters by Blake, Linnell and Cumberland.72 Cumberland sent Blake a copper plate, possibly with his name already engraved on it, which Blake embellished during his last days in April 1827. After Blake’s death in August 1827, Mrs Blake took the plate with her when she went to live with Linnell for a short time. Cumberland’s son, George Cumberland Jr, paid Mrs. Blake £3 3s and collected the plate, which was sent to George Cumberland to be printed in late January 1828. Keynes believed it was still in existence and that many impressions were taken from it in modern times.73 Essick, however, claimed that there is no evidence that the plate still existed into the middle years of the nineteenth century.74 For the first time, the above account draws together the current state of knowledge and commentary on Blake’s copper plates. In addition, and as described below, there are a number of copper plates still surviving which I have examined firsthand. To summarise the current understanding of Blake’s original copper plates, there are thirty-nine copper plates known by their present locations: the fragment of America cancelled plate a (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), twenty-two of The Illustrations of the Book of Job (British Museum, Prints and Drawing Room), seven of the Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), The Beggar’s Opera, Act III (Houghton Library, Harvard University), and six of Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (Bodleian Library, Oxford), as well as the newly surfaced Christ Trampling on Satan (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York). Most of these copper plates have never been examined.

 The following section is a close examination of Blake’s thirty-nine extant copper plates. In addition to the twenty-two Job copper plates, there are another eleven plates extant known to be executed by Blake, plus six conjecturally attributed Gough plates. My research trips to the Bodleian Library, Oxford, the Houghton

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Library, Harvard University, Yale University Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, and to the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, allowed me to examine these copper plates. I have found that almost all the copper plates of the Beggar’s Opera after Hogarth, Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, and the seven unfinished Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy plates, bear hammer marks on their versos similar to those found on the Job plates. The remainder of this chapter will describe my findings relative to these extant copper plates by Blake.

America cancelled plate a (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) The relief-etched fragment known as America Plate a, the unique copper plate survivor from all of the plates Blake produced for the illuminated books, has long been an object of fascination. However, despite all of this scholarly attention due to what it may or may not tell us about the relief etching of America, hardly anyone has paid attention to its verso, which is engraved with a biblical figure of John the Baptist or St. Jerome, possibly by the young Thomas Butts Jr. (c. 1806). The fragment’s most extensive commentator, Robert N. Essick, notes ‘The deep gouges on the right of the plate … are unrelated to the plate’s original development, and must have been made after it was canceled’.75 Nevertheless, the well-documented fact that Blake taught engraving and etching skills to his patron’s son, Thomas Butts Jr (as well as quite possibly to Butts Sr), the plate ought to alert us that these marks are the traces of the skill of repoussage, the corrective hammering of a plate from the back, taught to Butts Sr and Jr by Blake. Having run into a problem whilst engraving his biblical head, Butts Jr placed his plate on an anvil, and knocked it up from the back, leaving the deep indentations visible today. Whatever the amateur status of the Butts’s (Bentley records eight surviving plates made by Butts Jr), there is little doubt that Blake was passing on a high-class engraving skill, one known almost exclusively to a practising professional engraver.76 The existence of repoussage on this unique plate, even though it must have been carried out by Butts Jr after Blake’s tuition, strongly suggests the high place this skill held in the corpus of technical practices Blake was accustomed to use himself.

The Six Gough Plates (Bodleian Library, Oxford) The six Gough plates possibly engraved by the apprentice Blake, now in the Bodleian Library of Oxford University, show rather few hammer marks on their versos. These copper plates were stored in the Bodleian for years, evidently corroded into near oblivion and seem never to have been examined before. When I examined them, the paper envelopes enclosing the coppers had stuck onto the copper surfaces, making it difficult to remove but they were full of interesting information.

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On three of them, no hammer marks at all were found on their versos. These are the portraits of Queen Eleanor (‘Pl. XXIII, p. 63’), Edward III (‘Pl. LX, p. 139’), and Richard II (‘Pl. LXIII, p. 165’). The copper plate of the portrait of Anne, Queen of Richard II (‘Pl. LXIV, p. 167’), contains two small areas of hammer marks corresponding to the letters ‘e’ of ‘Anne’ and ‘h’ of ‘Richard’ at the bottom. The portrait of Henry III, with ‘Pl. XXII, p. 57’ on its upper right corner, has hammer marks on four small and isolated areas corresponding to the recto, coinciding with the plate and page numbers, a spot over the top of the second spike of his crown, and two more at the lower left outside the oval portrait. The latter two do not correspond to any engraved lines and the recto is now a smooth surface. These specific hammer marks are probably for the purpose of levelling up the plate, i.e. as a part of the planishing process before any engraving started. The copper plate of Queen Philippa’s portrait (‘Pl. XLIX, p. 125’), probably the most certain of the plates attributable to Blake among the six portraits,77 has more repoussage on its verso than any other plate. Eight areas of hammer marks have been made to mend the shadow below her nose, the bottom lines of her right hair dress, five discrete areas following the lines of her hand, fingers and the hand’s shadow, one large area for the word ‘Philippa’. An early proof suggests that there has been a change of the spelling of this word.78 The wrong wording on Henry III, Queens Philippa and Anne seems to demonstrate that Blake’s training is mainly for figurative images rather than text. Even if the page and plate numbers for Henry III and the spelling of ‘Philippa’ were to change the words rather than errors in the engraving process, the mending for Anne’s portrait has no excuse for such a mistake. Blake had similar problems with engraving text in the Job series. Although the inscription for these portraits, as for the biblical texts in the Job series, are predetermined, Blake still made mistakes. As different skills are required for image and letter, engravers might find it difficult to succeed in both specialities. This is probably the reason why Blake chose to ‘write’ his own poems with a brush dipped in varnish liquid on the copper plate for his illuminated books, rather than ‘cut’ the letters with a graver on copper or even with an etching needle on soft ground. Writing on copper in the same way as writing on paper is an amateur skill which can be practised by any one with some practice in mirror writing, but cutting letters either on the copper or through the wax ground requires training and expertise. The innovative method of relief etching, therefore, shows Blake’s limits in his copper plate skills. Despite the small amount of repoussage, these early copper plates show characteristics of apprenticeship. Apart from what has been described by Essick, that is, that the engraved lines are ‘bold and extremely simple patterns of hatching and cross-hatching – just what we might expect from an apprentice’,79 the copper

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plates themselves also show burnishing on the recto, e.g. the portrait of Richard II, at the top left of the king’s hair, and even some scribbles on the back of Queen Anne’s portrait, presumably an apprentice’s practising of letters ‘I × B 1 2’ and some straight and curved lines with an instrument with a serrated end. The versos of Queen Philippa, Edward III and Richard II, which bear Basire’s signature are lightly scratched (‘W Basire’), as well as the words ‘Q Philipa’, ‘K Edward III’ and ‘Portrait | Richard | Queen’. There are additional letters showing ‘B ld[?]’ on the verso of Richard II’s portrait. These three plates and that of Queen Anne’s portrait bear the plate maker’s mark: ‘JONES No 48 | SOHO LONDON’ on their versos. There is an additional signature showing ‘T(J?) Baker | 1804’ on the verso of Edward III’s portrait. This curious signature remains a mystery because there is no later publisher or collector known by this name. These early apprentice plates, either completely or partly executed by Blake, show the consistent use of the repoussage practised by Blake from his early engravings to the very end of his career. The relatively few and careful hammer marks in his early plates grew more numerous, heavier and bolder in his later plates.

The Beggar’s Opera, Act III (Houghton Library, Harvard University) This copper plate was in a modern metal frame, with a wooden panel nailed on its back when I visited the Houghton Library in April 2002. According to the librarian, the plate had been mounted in this frame since it entered the library’s collection. This means that it has probably never been examined on its verso. It took the conservator a few months to take off the frame. According to later private correspondence with the librarians ( June 2002), there are several hammer marks found on the verso of the copper plate as is typical for correction of line engraving. In my recent revisit in 2006, the copper plate has been taken out of the frame at my earlier request and could be examined fully. On the recto of the large heavy copper plate, the etched background appears lower than the other surface with engraved lines. On its verso, there are three plate maker’s marks, some in parts, showing ‘JONES NO 4[7] | SHOE LANE LONDON’, on the upper right, centre and lower left of the copper in a diagonal line. A few hammer marks correspond to images on the recto and might be the technique of repoussage for correction. However, the marks on the verso of this copper plate were not completely done by Blake. According to Essick’s catalogue, this copper plate had been reworked and repaired by at least two printers after Blake.80 The history of the copper plate is recorded by Andrew W. Tuer in Bartolozzi and his Works (c. 1882) recounting that, like all the other Hogarth plates, it had been in the sequential

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possession of Mrs. Hogarth, John and Josiah Boydell, Baldwin & Co., Salt & Co. and Henry G. Bohn (i. p. 59). During the change of owners and subsequent reprinting, it had been repaired and rebitten by James Heath (1757–1834), the engraver, who had been employed by the publishers Baldwin, Cradock & Joy in 1820–2. Henry Bohn later had the plates thoroughly repaired by Ratcliff of Birmingham because the coppers had again become worn. The retouching of this copper plate makes the evidence on it less reliable, either as an indicator of the technique of repoussage or as evidence concerning the quality of Blake’s work. It is impossible to distinguish which hammer marks were done by Blake, by Heath or by Ratcliff. However, the Houghton collection of Hogarth plates demonstrates the importance of the evidence present on the Job copper plates, which are those most certain to have been only worked on by Blake. Issues surrounding the originality of the copper plates by Hogarth tell us much about the economic, aesthetic and scholarly value of untouched plates, that is, ones attributed only to the authorial hand. In the print catalogue of John and Josiah Boydell in 1803, a demonstration is given by Mrs. Hogarth who requested three eminent engravers of the time, Francesco Bartolozzi, W. Wynne Ryland and W. Woollett, who were asked to inspect the plates and give the testimony that they had not been retouched since Hogarth’s death.81 The later repair of Blake’s plate, although due to the unavoidable circumstances of wear, had apparently devalued the originality of the plate. It seems clear that Blake’s Job copper plates deserve more attention than they have had because of their embodying original evidence about the level of Blake’s skills as an engraver.

Christ Trampling on Satan (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) The copper plate of Christ Trampling on Satan shows a mixture of mature and amateur skills of line engraving. Some lines appear to be cut with hesitance and inconsistency, while others are more decisive. It is therefore convincing that, as Essick and Keynes surmised by studying this print, this plate was one used when Blake taught Thomas Butts, Jr. engraving.82 In other words, it is a mixture of both Blake’s and Butts’s work. The verso of the copper plate does not have any hammer marks, but a plate maker’s mark, ‘WILLM & RUSSL ⏐ PONTIFEX & COMY ⏐ NOS 46, 47 & 48 ⏐ SHOE LANE, LONDON’, in the centre. Pontifex was a family firm of copper plate makers, founded by William Pontifex, Sr before passing to his sons William Pontifex, Jr and Russell Pontifex. The Pontifexes worked in various partnerships within the family from the late eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth century basing themselves in Shoe Lane and in Lisle Street (see Chapter 4). William Sr’s and Russell Pontifex’s factory was probably at its largest in the early 1800s, occupying numbers 46, 47 and 48

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Shoe Lane, a thoroughfare off Fleet Street. The partnership at these premises came after ‘W. Pontifex Son & Co.’ worked from 46 Shoe Lane and before they split in the 1810s to become two firms, ‘William Pontifex & Co.’ at 47 Shoe Lane and ‘R. Pontifex’ at 22 Lisle Street. Certainly, William Pontifex, Sr appears in trade directories for 1794–1805 working from premises at 46 and 47 Shoe Lane.83 Old Bailey court records flesh out some further details. One Old Bailey case, dated 21 February 1810, concerns a trial for the theft of copper plates stolen from William and Russell Pontifex’s firm. Another trial (5 December 1810) similarly concerns the theft of copper plates, the property of William Pontifex. The trial details, which incidentally give a certain amount of information about location, imply that Russell Pontifex may have moved to Lisle Street during the year of 1810. Over a decade later, in a similar trial for theft held on 22 May 1822, Russell Pontifex acted as a witness for the prosecution, stating himself to be ‘a manufacturer of copper plates for engravers, and live[ing] in Lisle-street, Soho’. Pontifex’s presence at this trial must almost have coincided with John Linnell’s purchase in 1823 of copper plates from Russell Pontifex to enable Blake to work on Illustrations of the Book of Job and possibly also for the plates used for Blake’s Dante engravings which he is known to have worked on during 1826. By studying the copper plates, one learns much more about the intricate connections between apparently disparate artists working in contemporary London. For example, the same plate maker’s mark on the verso of Christ Trampling on Satan also appears on a copper plate used for J. M. W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum (1807–19). A copper plate for a mezzotint by Charles Turner (1773–1857), after J. M. W. Turner, Glaucus pursuing Scylla (Museum of Fine Art, Boston), no. 73 in Liber Studiorum, was purchased from Pontifex’s firm.84

Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims (Yale University Art Gallery) The copper plate of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims is probably the nearest example to Job of a finished engraved plate. Although having been passed from hand to hand and numerous posthumous reprints taken,85 this plate retains very well an idea of Blake’s original quality of work. In Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, William Blake’s Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims copper plate had been mounted in a light oak frame some time after Charles J. Rosenbloom of Pittsburgh bequeathed it to the Gallery in 1973. For making this study of the recto and verso, the copper plate was removed from its frame and mounted upright in clamps at the end of a table. Once available for scrutiny, it immediately became apparent that much of Robert Essick’s description in The Separate Plates of William Blake (1983) needed to be rewritten: The verso of the plate shows a number of impressions from a ball peen hammer and chisels. None of these marks correspond to areas on the recto that could have

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The marks on the verso are apparently indeed from a ball peen hammer and chisels but they very often correspond to quite identifiable images on the recto. Some of the burrs on the marks, where the indentations had made a relatively jagged edge, have been worn down either by Blake himself rubbing with a burnisher or else (more likely) as a result of general rubbing over time from modern storage or framing. Despite its nominal date of 1810, the marks made by Blake on the copper plate can only be firmly dated to 1820–23, the period during which, according to Essick, Blake returned to the plate to finish it to its fourth state. In the same way as has been found on the Job copper plates, the numerous marks of repoussage on the verso of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims copper plate correspond to the images and lines on its recto. From left to right (as on the print), hammer marks correspond to the areas on the recto described below: The face and shoulder of the most left child; The left hand of the second left girl; The Reeve’s hip; The space between the back foot of Chaucer’s horse and the pillar of the stone arch; Chaucer’s right shoulder, both hands, left side of his face, and his horse’s front legs and ears; The roof of the house above the inscriptions “THE LODGYNGE HOUSE”; The back and hip of the girl walking on the right side of Chaucer’s horse; The wine glass held by the Wife of Bath, her left shoulder, right lap and both feet; The Parson’s right arm and knee, his horse’s frontal hoof and neck; The frontal leg of the Plowman’s horse; The Physician’s horse head; The face, left arm and left knee of the boy who carries a flagon and cask standing in front of the Physician; The faces of two citizens, the Dyer and Haberdasher, under the gothic church; The tail and hoofs of the Shipman’s horse; The Host’s neck, his horse’s neck, head, and legs; The space on the sky above the Host; The back and frontal legs of the Pardoner’s horse, his right shoulder and drapery on his hip; Two houses in the distance above a monk and a priest; The neck of the Abbess’s horse and her hip; The space between two dogs underneath the Abbess’s horse;

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The Knight’s face, neck, right arm and right lap, his horse’s mane, hip, back right leg, frontal right leg, two areas of background underneath this horse; The Squire’s left shoulder, his horse’s mane and nose; Two areas of the sun ray on the sky above the Knight and Squire.

The series of marks on the verso of Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims copper plate fall into two groups. One is the light, broad impact of hammer or chisel strokes such as the one near the top right corner of the plate, at the top left of the plate maker’s mark ‘G HARRIS | No 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON’ (there is a further, identical, plate maker’s mark in the lower left corner of the plate). This is the same plate maker as provided the plate used for Job Plate 1. The other group are the smaller, deeper, more indented impressions, for example, as situated in the same area of the plate above the plate maker’s mark. There are probably a greater number of groups of the more deeply indented marks than there are of the shallower variety. This could be the result of use of different tools for hammering during the process of repoussage. Generally speaking, Blake cut most of the human figures without major correction. However, he needed to give repeated and extensive corrective attention to the imagery in the lower half of the plate which is mainly concerned with the lower limbs of the pilgrims or the legs of the horses on which they ride. The only exception to this (apart from light work to the faces of the Dyer and the Haberdasher) is the face, neck and chest of the Knight. But the front right leg of the Host’s horse, for example, caused him particular problems and comprises one of the most prominent areas of hammered marks present on the verso. This particularly large area of repoussage shows that burnishing on its own was not always sufficient to affect a repair or modify an image. Having darkened the area behind the hoof of the front right leg, Blake then wished to lighten it as part of a fairly comprehensive programme of burnishing which was aimed at emphasising contrasts of light and dark during its fourth state alterations. Having burnished the plate, Blake must have worn away too much copper to the near-triangular shape of the lightened area: the very heavy marks of repoussage here show that he may have worn away more than he needed and had to knock it up from the back at the fourth state. On the other hand, it is important not to assume that all emendations to Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims required repoussage. In the first, second and third states, in the right hand portion of the print, a typically south English wood clings to the low rising hill seen in the landscape between the heads of the Friar and Squire. For the fourth state (perhaps to differentiate his image still further from Stothard’s), Blake merges the wooded landscape back into the hillside so that it is only visible at the back of the Squire’s head. Where Blake had previously indicated the corner of the wood in earlier states where it connects with the Friar’s hat, in the fourth state the wood has disappeared, merged into the

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hillside at this point. Doing all of this required no repoussage at all. Indeed, some amount of straightforward planishing or plate levelling is probably also present on the plate. Perhaps the clearest examples are the indentations corresponding to the line of the ridged tiling and wood grained barge boards along the right hand slope of the Tabard’s roof. Blake made no visible alterations here after the first state and yet he still needed to knock the plate up from the back. The other possibility, and it is not one that should be dismissed, is that Blake made a mistake when he engraved it the first time and had to repair it. The principal features of the repoussage on this plate can be seen on the portion of the plate at the bottom left corner of the verso, corresponding to the children at the extreme right of the recto image (and on the left of the print).87 Here the plate maker’s mark, ‘HARRIS | No 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON’, in the bottom right is clearly visible. This area of the plate shows in close proximity four different types of hammer technique or process. Most recognisable are the wide, shallow crescent moon shapes caused by the edge of a hammer which can be seen to the top left of the end of the word ‘LANE’ on the plate maker’s mark. The marks are all aligned in one direction, showing that Blake held the plate stationary while striking the back of the copper. The marks approximately correspond to the area somewhat below the outstretched palm of the girl who is pointing to Chaucer. Immediately to the left, and slightly above these marks, is a further set of deeper indentations which are much more frequent and intensive. Here, individual blows are harder to distinguish because the copper ridges formed between the first marks Blake made have been flattened by further blows of the hammer. In this case, it can also be seen that the hammer has been turned onto its edge more acutely so as to deepen the mark and raise the recto side of the copper more radically. The way these marks radiate indicate that Blake either turned the plate in his hand as he struck it or turned the chisel around laterally (or else returned to the plate on more than one occasion and from a different angle). Just below this area of repoussage, and to the left, are another shallow set of the most readily identifiable and datable set of indentations that exist on the Chaucer plate because they correspond to an alteration made to the fourth state, c. 1820–3. In this state, Blake added to his image the additional feature of the right hand of the girl resting on the shoulder of the boy she is looking at, a detail absent from the earlier states. These are the most specific set of evidential markings on the plate confirming that repoussage was part of a process of revision rather than of planishing of the plate to make it true. At the opposite extreme of depth of intrusion is the set of very shallow marks, barely ten in number, which are directly above the first area of crescent moon markings referred to already. These are the barest, hardly visible, indentations most likely to be the traces of the ‘initial planishing’ Essick alludes to

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as part of the process of levelling up the copper plate before engraving began. Just above these marks are much deeper indentations, horizontal marks made with a chisel, where Blake adjusted his cutting of Chaucer’s saddle-back and the Reeve’s hip. Finally, to the bottom right of the plate maker’s mark are two areas where Blake’s use of the hammer’s edge has been supplemented by the application of a chisel. The topmost group of marks show where a chisel has been held in one direction, leaving its imprints as partially overlapping parallel grooves. These marks correspond to the upper right leg of Chaucer’s horse. In the lower set, once again the plate or the chisel has been rotated during striking leaving a series of radiant grooves. These marks correspond to the hoof of the right leg of Chaucer’s horse. An unidentifiable torn-off label is above the second plate maker’s mark stamped into the top right-hand corner of the plate and partially obscures some heavy corrective work to the sky which may have been done by a punch. Looking along the bottom of the plate from right to left, the diagonal foreleg of the Knight’s horse can be seen while the large vertical mark which is visible about two thirds of the way to the left, is the heavy amendment to the Host’s horse referred to above. The marks on the verso of the plate give a good indication of the overall extent of repoussage as a corrective technique on the Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims plate. It is a matter of judgement as to whether Blake’s claims to have ‘to Cut Cleaner Strokes’ (Public Address; E 582) than any man alive in Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims is substantiated by the amount of repair and correction needed to the verso of the copper plate.

Seven Plates for the Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC) In the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, the seven copper plates of the Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy are stored in a sturdy contemporary wooden casing (which is rather worm-eaten), sized to the plates. On one of the two sections of the case is fixed a card nameplate with ‘John Linnell Esq. | Red Hill | Surrey’ written on it. The seven Dante plates, in their unfinished states, bear relatively few hammer marks on their versos. All of them have the plate maker’s mark, ‘PONTIFEX & CO | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO · LONDON,’ the same copper plate maker as for Blake’s Job plates. The versos of all seven plates have been defaced by crossing lines to prevent their reuse, similar to those on the Job plates but more visible.

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Plate 1. The Circle of the Lustful: Francesca da Rimini (Paolo and Francesca) This plate alone has two plate maker Pontifex’s marks on its diagonal corners. It is the most finished plate by Blake among the seven extant Dante plates and so bears relatively more hammer marks than the others. They correspond to Virgil’s face and left foot; the face, back, knee and lower drapery besides her feet of the flying woman above fainted Dante; the face and back of a flying male figure lifting his arms at the left upper corner of the print; the face of a woman held with both her hands with an expression of horror at the middle bottom and, above this woman, the left arm of a floating female with her legs bent to the back. One hammer mark on the abdomen of an flying woman in the centre of the circle on the left side of the print, however, does not have any related lines on the recto. This is possibly a hammering for planishing. On the recto of the plate, there are inscriptions by drypoint on the lower left corner of the copper plate, which were discovered by Harry Hoehn when he reprinted the plate for Ruthven Todd in 1968.88 The present inscription (not recorded in Erdman) is ‘The Whirlwind of Lovers from Dantes Inferno Canto V’, written in reverse by drypoint. Another faint line, ‘The Whirlwind ….. Da …’, half-burnished, is written on the ground line above current position, i.e. in line with a half-sunken head. The word ‘The’ is right up against the left-hand margin of the copper (i.e. the right on the print). Plate 2. The Circle of the Corrupt Officials. The Devils Tormenting Ciampolo This plate has only two areas of hammer marks, corresponding to Ciampolo’s left hand and the curly hair of the devil sitting on a rock. Plate 3. The Circle of the Corrupt Officials. The Devils Mauling Each Other This is the only plate which has no hammer mark on its verso. There are some light drypoint traces on the recto which do not always print on paper, e.g. on the left of Dante and Virgil. The copper plate has bevelled edges on its verso rather than its recto. The plate maker’s mark has been stamped two or three times in slightly different angles. Plate 4. The Circle of Thieves. Agnello dei Brunelleschi Attacked by a Six-Footed Serpent Hammer marks on the verso of this plate quite clearly correspond to specific areas on the recto images: the line of Dante’s right hip; the bottom ground below two serpents’ heads and the platform on which Dante and Virgil stand; the right eye, jaw, right knee of Agnello Brunelleschi, and the lowest left foot of

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the serpent attacking him; the right shoulder, right and left sides of his hip lines and right knee of the left figure standing on the right of Brunelleschi. The recto of the plate also has some drypoint traces not often shown on printed proofs, for example, the tree outlines on the right upper corner of the plate besides Dante, and a spiky crown or flame on the head of the snake at the lower left corner. Plate 5. The Circle of Thieves. Buoso dei Donati Attacked by the Serpent The verso of this plate has hammer marks corresponding to Dante’s frontal drapery, the abdomen and left hip line of the central figure between Virgil and the serpent, the right eye, top of left leg, right knee and foot of Donati on the recto. In addition, on the recto, some light trace of drypoint is found besides Virgil’s lower drapery. Plate 6. The Circle of the Falsifiers. Dante and Virgil Covering Their Noses Because of the Stench The areas with hammer marks on the verso of this plate are the mountain top in the far middle background between the mountain in the centre and the cloud on the sky; a head looking upwards at the left bottom corner of the print; and the left arm, his half-face and left part of his hip of the figure scratching his back under Dante and Virgil’s feet. Plate 7. The Circle of the Traitors: Dante’s Foot Striking Bocca degli Abbati This plate, which is the most unfinished in the set, has only one area of hammer marks corresponding to Dante’s middle drapery. Lines cut by drypoint are visible around the head on the lower left corner on the print. The relatively few hammer marks on these Dante plates show that repoussage is used primarily near the finishing of the plate for refining light and shadows rather than initial outlines.

 My synthesis and updating of information on the status, locations and scholarly commentary on Blake’s copper plates provides a new and concise account of this important aspect of the work of a man who was apprenticed as an engraver and practised his craft throughout his life. This now brings me to an analysis of the Job copper plates, by far the largest group of surviving plates but a set which has received little commentary or scholarly evaluation. The next part of this chapter is, effectively, a catalogue raisonné of the copper plates for William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826). Apart from one

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or two scattered notes by other scholars, the present description and commentary on the plates represents the first time these objects have been analysed and recorded. Although it is inevitable that some of the individual features of the plates will be common to all of them, my plate-by-plate description is aimed at providing an account of these artefacts which can be both utilized and verified by others. At the end of the section, there will be a discussion of the implications raised by three sets of unresolved problems connected to the evidence that the Job plates provide. The existence of the Job copper plates, all twenty-two of them, in the British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings offers a new insight into Blake’s printmaking methods. The copper plates have been referred to in passing by Laurence Binyon and Geoffrey Keynes (1935, pp. 52–3), Bo Lindberg (1973, pp. 27–8), G. E. Bentley (1971, pp. 234–41) and Robert Essick (1987, pp. 49–50), but they have received little further scholarly analysis. William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, edited by David Bindman (1987), is the most recent and ambitious work intended to cover all the materials available for the study on Blake’s Job engravings. It consists of a nearly complete reproduction of the extant pencil sketches, the prepublication proofs and published states of the twenty-two engravings, and even the doubtful colour versions of the Collins engraving (private collection), New Zealand watercolour sets (Paul Mellon collection), and four Fitzwilliam colour engravings (FMC; Plates 11, 15, 18, 20). However, Bindman’s catalogue only pays very limited attention to the existing copper plates of Blake’s Job engravings. The neglect of the original materiality of the copper plates cannot be demonstrated more forcibly than by their neglect in this book, otherwise a comprehensive study of the series. Essick’s evidence for Blake’s technique in the Job series is based on the examination of the progressive proofs of different states. He says that ‘the best way to understand an artist’s execution of an engraving is to trace its development step by step from the first working proof to the final state’.89 There are some references to the copper plates, for example, when Essick says, ‘as the copper plates show, none of these [short strokes in a herringbone pattern on Job’s clothing] or any other lines is cut deeply into the metal’,90 but there are few additional comments in his William Blake, Printmaker. The information about the copper plates provided in a small section of Essick’s ‘Catalogue of States and Printings’ in William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job91 is mostly quoting from Bentley’s earlier essay of 1971 with slightly different measurements of the plate sizes. Essick implies that his theory of the technique of illuminated books also applies to the Job series. Noting the absence of evidence from transfer sketches, Essick writes that ‘The extant pictorial evidence suggests that even the central designs were composed in chalk or pencil directly on the plates prepared with a brief acid dip to roughen their surfaces’.92 Continuing further, Essick says that

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‘Blake’s experience as a relief etcher probably influenced his methods of composition in the Job plates, for as we have seen, the designs in the illuminated books were almost certainly composed on the copper plates’.93 The emphasis on the duality of execution/invention runs through his thesis, although he does not make a close examination of the original copper plates even in his 1987 work on Job. The evidence of the twenty-two copper plates suggests that a degree of caution is required before concluding that the creative process of invention/execution employed in engraving the Job plates was similar to what took place in composing the relief-etched illuminated books. The following part of this chapter, paying particular attention to the features of the copper plates, aims to point out that the evidence of the plates and Blake’s alterations to them shows not only the development of ideas but also modifications of errors, including hammer marks on the versos (the repoussage) and burnished light traces which can be observed on the rectos. Essick, in William Blake, Printmaker (1980), notes that in several cases, such as along the lines delineating the left arm of the shepherd farthest to the right, Blake has made a slight adjustment in the figure by engraving the continuous bounding line a fraction of a millimetre to one side of the first stipple sketch of Pl. 1.94 Blake consistently removed this double-line effect from the finished states by either covering the stipple lines with further work or burnishing them out. Essick’s observation of these alterations from early proofs can now be further demonstrated by traces on the copper plates. The methods of examination of the copper plates applied here are different for the rectos than for the versos. On the rectos, I looked very closely at the plates by lifting them to various angles which allowed the burnished traces of drypoint or graver to be revealed by the assistance of natural and artificial lights in the British Museum Prints and Drawings room. On the versos, the process was more complicated. The hammer marks found on the backs of the plates are the traces of corrections where Blake made serious enough mistakes in engraving to necessitate repair through a technique called repoussage. Repoussage is the process engravers use to knock the copper from the back of the plate to even-up the surface when they make serious mistakes with the graver and when a less intrusive repair by burnishing has indented the copper. To check which parts of the rectos the hammer marks corresponded to, firstly, I took photocopies of the prints on transparencies; secondly, I attached the transparencies to the versos of the plates. Since the versos are on the same right and left position as the prints, the transparencies should be attached on the verso as normal prints rather than the reverse image on the rectos. Finally, I checked if there are any other marks on the versos, such as plate maker’s marks or scratches or acid traces.

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The method of checking the position of the repoussage by attaching transparencies on the versos of the plates could, however, cause some errors. As all the prints appear to be smaller than the copper plates due to the shrinkage of dampened paper after printing, the use of transparencies cannot show the exact position corresponding to the images on the rectos. My examination therefore used transparencies with measurements made by the use of callipers, an instrument and method similar to those used by eighteenth-century engravers to locate the areas on the verso of copper plate for repoussage.95

 Description of Individual Plates A plate by plate description is given below. Although the ‘right’ and ‘left’ of the copper plates are opposite to their appearance on the prints, the following description will be from the viewer’s point of view, except in references to parts of a figure’s body (e.g. right arm, left side of head, right side of chest, etc.), where the figure’s point of view is maintained. References to proof states follow Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job’.

The Job Copper Plates as a Set There are twenty-two Job copper plates consisting of one title page and twentyone plates carrying the designs. One plate (Plate 1) bears the mark of the plate maker G. Harris, two plates (14 and 16) are reused plates showing engravings for Henry Louis Duhamel du Monceau’s A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759, 1762) on their versos. This reuse of copper plates was the subject of an essay by Bentley (1971). All of the remaining nineteen plates bear the plate maker’s mark of R. Pontifex. All twenty-two plates bear traces of two types of erasure or modification. The first type is the removal of the word ‘Proof ’ by burnishing, a process applied to the recto of the plate. The second type of modification relates to the imprint on the bottom of all twenty-two plates. Some early proofs noted by Essick (‘Blake’s Engravings’, pp. 61 [Pl. 2], 68 [Pl. 6], 76 [Pl. 11], 84 [Pl. 16], 90 [Pl. 19], 92 [Pl. 20], 94 [Pl. 21]) confirm that the imprint has been changed from ‘Published as the Act directs March 8: 1825 by J Linnell N 6 Cirencester Place’ to the current ‘London Published as the Act directs March 8: 1825 by William Blake No 3 Fountain Court Strand’. The hammer marks on the verso of the plates prove that this change was effected by the technique of repoussage. All the versos of the plates also show evidence of two intersecting lines marked out by a blunt tool or brush (see diagrams at the end of this chapter). These particular marks were probably not made by Blake but for the purpose of identification as

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to the verso side of the copper when the plate maker decided to polish up the other side of the plate. Their crossing point near the edge of the plate tells us the lines were possibly done before the copper was cut to the size Blake requested and perhaps even before the plate maker’s mark was stamped onto it.

 Title-Page (size 21.4×16.55 cm)96 The copper plate of the title page is different from all the others. In appearance it is not as red or as polished as the others. Also, its size is noticeably smaller and the bevelled edges are narrower than those of the eighteen plates, Plates 2–13, 15, and 17–21, which are supposed to have been those purchased by John Linnell on 2 May 1823 from the Pontifex plate maker.97 However, the title page bears on its verso the same mark of ‘R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON’ as the other eighteen Pontifex plates, although the intaglio lettering of the mark appears thicker and more blurred than the others. This suggests that it is one of the two copper plates purchased two years later in 1825, since we know that the title page was in the same style as the border design and was apparently done as an ‘afterthought’ according to Linnell.98 This plate contains the least mending in the whole series, which supports the assumption that it is the last plate Blake engraved. On the recto of the copper plate, there are some light sketch lines made by drypoint around the inner and outer frames, as well as curves inside the two ‘O’s of the word ‘BOOK’ at the centre. The hammer marks on the verso suggest that the areas corresponding on the recto might have been wrongly engraved before mending by repoussage. Such mending is visible at the area of the imprint at the bottom of the recto, ‘Act directs March 8: 1825’ and ‘No 3 Fountain Court Strand’. Essick mentions an early proof (Riches proof, FMC) which lacks the horizontal lines between the Hebrew inscription and the words ‘ILLUSTRATIONS of ’, as well as the imprint, the outline of a cloud extending from the lower sides of the inner frame and around the imprint, and some shading on the angels’ faces (Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings’, p. 57 and plate: first state). Since most of the early proofs of the other plates also lack the imprint at the bottom of their published states, the imprint must have not been engraved until quite late. But there was also a change of imprint from a Linnell’s address to Blake’s, observed by Essick, which explains the hammer marks at this area. This is the only copper plate of the set without the burnished word ‘Proof ’ at the bottom right. There is some glue- or varnish-like substance left on the edges and the verso of uncertain origin and date.

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Plate 1 (size 20.1 cm×16.65 cm) This copper plate is in a different size and thickness to all the others. It is lighter, thinner and smaller than the other plates. The mark of the plate maker on the verso is also different, being: ‘G HARRIS | No 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON’, which is on the edge of the plate with the top half of the words ‘G HARRIS’ cut off. This suggests that it is the remains of a larger piece of copper plate, like that used for Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, which bears the same mark of plate maker. The plate has no bevelled edges like those of the Pontifex plates. On the recto, there are blurred traces of burnished letters, perhaps ‘God’, under the altar, probably part of the inscription ‘Prayer to God is the Study of Imaginative Art’ which, uniquely, is on an impression of the print in Yale (Beinecke Library).99 This Beinecke impression lacks the later inscription on the altar, ‘The Letter Killeth | The Spirit giveth Life’. Light sketch lines of the clouds on the top border show that Blake made some alterations to create a perfectly symmetrical composition. Hammer marks on the lower part of the verso corresponding to the words ‘Willm Blake N3’ in the imprint on the recto confirm that there was a change of words, as with the title page, from Linnell’s imprint. There are on the verso of this plate three diagonal straight intersecting lines and two short strokes made by sharp gravers. In addition, there is the word ‘Cleand’ (i.e. ‘Cleaned’) with another capital ‘C’ underneath it written by a blunt instrument, probably a burnisher. These scratches and words are also found on the versos of Plates. 14 and 16, the old reused plates with the illustrations for Henry Louis Duhamel du Monceau’s A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759, 1762). Although it is difficult to judge this accurately, the handwriting of the word ‘Cleand’ is in a hand common to all three plates. It is assumed that, like the intersecting line on Plates 3, 5, 6, 9 and 19, this inscription was not made by Blake but by the copper plate merchant who sold Blake or Linnell the plate. If true, the presence of the word ‘Cleand’ on Plates 1, 14 and 16 may indicate a common source of origin, that is, a common supplier for these three plates. It is assumed that this word refers to the plate-merchant’s cleaning of old plates prior to resale. Hammer marks on the verso indicate that Blake had to make significant alterations to several areas of the plate, including the Gothic church at far left, the triangular harp on the tree, the circle of the moon, Job’s left shoulder and his lower drapery, the book on the knees of Job’s wife, the upper parts of all three daughters, the grass above the central sleeping sheep’s back, the drapery of the second right son and his face, and the draperies of the two sons at far left. The two sons’ draperies on the left were cut deeply on the recto and hammered up

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with heavy hammer marks on the verso, suggesting that Blake had made more than one alteration to them. The words ‘Willm Blake N3’ in the imprint also have hammer marks on their verso. However, compared to other plates of the series, this plate has relatively few and light traces of repoussage. Plate 2 (size 21.95 cm × 17.1 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. On the recto, there are blurred traces of burnished lines of radiance in God’s halo. The first state (NGA)100 shows an early version in which there is no sharp curve between God’s halo and the radiance. Sketch lines around the clouds and the scrolling vine on the left top corner of the inner frame are visible. Similar light lines repeat the letters ‘W’ and ‘l’ of ‘We shall awake up,’ and ‘y’ of ‘in thy Likeness’ to the right of the printed impressions. Hammer marks on the verso indicate highlighting or alterations. As is common on these plates, the white (uninked) areas on the impressions that correspond with hammer marks on the verso indicate that there has been heavy burnishing of lines on the recto where the plate has been hammered up from the back to highlight the area. Dark areas where there are hammer marks on the verso, on the other hand, imply alterations and reworking on wrongly engraved lines. Examples of such reworking on this plate include several central images: God’s right arm; the edge of the clouds on the upper left and right; the angel’s body on the top left, the right upper arm and the drapery beside his right leg of the third angel from the left, and the strip of space between him and the other angel on his right; the lower part of the angel’s body second from the upper right; the right leg of the angel third from upper right; the left leg and foot of the two angels under this figure; the face, the back and the hip of Satan, the flame or drapery under his crotch; the left face in the central flame; the whole body of the two angels at left bottom and Job’s son standing at right bottom; the face of the son sitting on Job’s left; Job and his wife’s legs as well as the books held by Job’s wife and the daughter at the far right. On the verso of the border design, hammer marks indicating repair appear only on one area corresponding to the word ‘Children’ under the inner frame. Including the repair to the text of the border, this amounts to twelve discrete areas (several marks of mending on one figure are counted as one area) where Blake has used hammer and chisel work to modify his original engraved lines. To any initial observation of the verso of Plate 2, the repoussage described above can be immediately recognized as the now-darkened areas of chisel indentation in the lower right-hand quarter of the plate. Also visible are several near-vertical marks which have not affected the repoussage.

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In addition, Robert Essick has also described the various proof states which reveal modifications to the original imprint ‘by J Linnell No 6 Cirencester Pl[ace].’ Essick has described the fourth proof state of Plate 2: ‘Imprint added, but clearly engraved only from the first word (‘London’) through ‘1825’. The remainder, almost completely burnished away and appearing only as a ghostly image, reads ‘by J Linnell No 6 Cirencester Pl[ace]’ (Keynes proof, FMC; Hanley proof, TEXAS)’.101 The next state shows ‘The ghost of Linnell’s name and address has been completely removed and Blake’s name and address engraved in its place’ (Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings’, p. 62). Although Essick only worked from printed impressions, and not from the copper plates themselves, further supporting evidence for the changes in the imprint which he records can be recovered from the versos of the copper plates where there are traces of burnishing under the imprint on Plates 3, 5, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, and the hammer marks on the versos at this area of the title page, Plates 1, 6, 8, 13, 17 and 18. Plate 3 (size 22.1 cm×17.3 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. On the recto, there are sketch lines visible around the inside of the inner frame, particularly on the right hand side of the plate. The border clouds in the top left quarter of the plate show evidence of alternative outlines to give shape to the clouds. Blurred traces of burnished letters ‘B(E?)l’ can be observed on the left side of ‘eldest Brothers house…’ at the beginning of the middle line of the three lines of texts at the bottom of the plate. This suggests, at the very least, that Blake has moved the positioning of this middle line by the entire width of the word ‘eldest’. However, a further possibility is that Blake initially began the line with an upper case ‘E’ before reverting to lower case. This is illustrative of the processes of trial-and-error which Blake employed in engraving writing from right to left. In addition, the third line shows evidence of repairs to the plate’s verso by repoussage at the words ‘faces of the’ in the phrase ‘& smote upon the four faces of the house’. The verso of Plate 3 displays a wealth of evidence as to Blake’s employment of the technique of repoussage. Particularly noticeable upon immediate inspection are the extensive and heavy indentations corresponding to the positions of the clouds and serpentine tails shown in Blake’s final printed image. These will be discussed more extensively below. Elsewhere hammer marks on the verso correspond to corrections made to the right half of the lightning bolts along the top inner frame; Satan’s left hand; a space between his right wing and the lightning; another space between his left wing and the column underneath; the top of a column underneath Satan’s feet; the strip between the column on the far right and the fire; the cloth covering the central figure’s sex, his left arm and right

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leg, right shoulder, the rims of smoke and flame on his right, the right arm, left foot; the face and left foot of the female pulled by him; the hair and leg of the uplifted female on her left; the lines of her arm and leg of the lying female on the foreground; both the arms and the head of a figure climbing on the stones between the central standing figure and the columns; a head underneath the central standing man’s feet and the right half body and leg of the upside down figure on the far right corner. These alterations amount to not less than twelve distinct areas of the central design of this plate. The two long strips of hammer marks on the verso along both sides of the border indicate an important alteration. The outcome of these changes effected by the technique of repoussage has resulted in the transformation of earlier design details into two tails of a serpent, extending clouds and downward flames. This evidence from the verso of the plate adds the empirical basis for Essick’s description of the different proof states of this plate.102 The development of this part of the border design, according to Essick’s study of the printed proofs, is that in the second state, ‘on both sides are steps, much as in the published states, with four large tongues of flames above them on each side’ (Linnell proof no. B–4151, NGA), in the third state, ‘additional flames have been cut in the border just above those in the second proof state’ (Riches proof, FMC, and the White proof no. B–4289, NGA), but in the fourth state, ‘the flames in the left and right margins below the cloud bands have been removed, except for two downwardpointing tongues of flame on the right. Above the steps in each margin Blake has engraved what look like the scaly tails of serpents, one on each side as in the published states’ (Hanley proof, TEXAS).103 Of course, the current state of the recto copper plate corresponds to the published state of the plate. The evidence of the scores of indentations on the verso areas corresponding to these parts of the plate gives an illustration of how strenuous Blake’s physical interventions had to be in order to bring about the changes Essick has described. These changes of motif carry an important message that Blake was able to compose and execute directly onto the copper plates, but that he also allowed himself to experiment and modify, and even make mistakes. Hammer marks behind the central images also tell the same story. Some modifications were made not to highlight the images but rather to darken them, such as those behind the areas of the dark stone at the left side of the upside-down cruciform figure at the right bottom corner, and the cloud at the left of the central male. These examples may tell us that on occasion, heavy reworking has been done to cover errors. Other hammer marks on the verso correspond to the words ‘faces of the’ at the bottom border and ‘invenit & sculp’ following Blake’s signature on the right corner. Finally, corrugations on the recto of the imprint ‘Willm Blake No 3 Fountain Court Strand’ indicate a change here from Linnell’s imprint as discussed above with reference to Plate 2.

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Plate 4 (size 22 cm × 17.2 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. On the recto are visible sketch lines around the clouds near the text in the top right hand quarter ‘& walking up & down in it’, as well as in the lines marking the flames in the lower right hand quarter of the plate. Unusually, as well as lines following the border, there is also a drypoint line on the central image tracing the upper part of Job’s wife’s left lap. With the exception of the title page, this plate has the fewest hammer marks on the verso corresponding to areas of the central image. Nevertheless, it is precisely because Blake’s emendations are fewer that their presence is all the more striking. These hammer marks appear on Job’s left forearm, the drapery under his left leg; his wife’s folding hands and right lap; the foremost messenger’s right knee and foot; two places along the bottom rim of the clouds on the left top which join the dark sky and the tree’s foliage. This plate also contains an extensive and quite deep series of hammer marks correcting the text: ‘slain the Young Men with the’ in the top right hand quarter of the plate. Plate 5 (size 22 cm × 17.2 cm) On the verso, there is again the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. Blurred traces of burnishing and uneven surface on the recto along the right half of the imprint suggest the words have been burnished and changed. The inscription now reads ‘by Willm Blake No 3 Fountain Court Strand’. On the recto, sketch lines are visible on the border design, for example, along the flame on the upper left border, the left angel’s leg, the right angel’s wing, the flames beside the words ‘Behold he is in thy hand; but save his Life’, and the lower left of the thorn intertwined by the serpent. Similar lines can be seen on the right side of the letter B of ‘Behold he is in thy hand’, and a short stroke upon the letter P of ‘the Poor’ in the upper border. Sketch lines above the angel on the top left suggest either that Blake reworked the shape of the flames in this area of the plate, or, more speculatively, that this angel was intended to have vertical wings. On the verso, an area of hammer marking between the upper inner frame and the words ‘Behold he is in thy hand; but save his Life’, confirms the removing of some flames in early proofs. This evidence of the copper plate confirms and provides the technical basis for changes to this plate described by Robert Essick in his account of the second and third proof states: ‘Flames, arching above the frame of the central design toward each other, appear below ‘Behold he is in thy hand: but save his Life’. These flames are erased in the third proof state’ (Riches proof, FMC; White proof no. B–4291, NGA) (Essick, p. 66). Essick also writes

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that the third state shows that ‘the flames beneath ‘Behold he is in thy hand: but save his Life’ have been removed, but there are tiny fragments of their outline below and to the left of the beginning of the quotation, touching the frame of the central design, and below ‘he’’ (Philip Hofer proof, HARVARD; El Dieff proof, TEXAS).104 The arching flame on the right was probably extended to the white area of the inner frame, where we find hammer marks in a slanting strip shape, but now burnished away. In the inner frame, there are also hammer marks on the verso continuing the curve of the clouds in the central design. Blake seems to have engraved (or drawn with a drypoint) the clouds in the shape of a linking curve, ignoring the border at first. The verso of the plate shows extensive evidence of repoussage affecting nearly all of the major elements of the composition, including alterations to the original engraving of God, Satan, Job and the angels. These can be detailed as follows: hammer marks on the verso correspond to the feet of the angel in the upper left border; the two semicircular armrests of God’s throne besides his both hands, God’s both legs; Satan’s loins, left leg, right hand and the smoke between his head and right hand; the leg of the right lowest angel above the cloud; the back of the angel fourth from top right; the arm of the third angel from top right; the brim of the cloud above the lower right angel; the front clothes of the lower left angel; Job’s face, the drapery between Job and his wife’s legs; and the distant mountain besides Job’s wife’s head. In other words, the evidence of repoussage made indicates that changes were made to nine of the twenty-one figures represented in the plate. In addition, there also seems to be further evidence of another technique of correction on the verso of this plate in the area to the left and to the right of the heavier indentations altering the fumes or smoke streaming out of Satan’s vial of boils. A range of isolated single indentations in this part of the plate appears to be evidence of where Blake has sought to level the surface of the plate in a more general manner. This technique may also be repeated in the area to the right of Satan’s outstretched leg. This evidence of both repoussage and these marks used to provide a general levelling of a broad surface of the recto, when they appear in such close proximity as this, show that the plate was subjected to a variety of distinct techniques. Plate 6 (size 22 cm × 17.3 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, lightly sketched lines are found under the upper outer frame, around the clouds in the upper border and the square stone at the lower

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left border. Among these sketched lines on the original, an entirely different version from the published print is one curved line of the cloud in the upper border on the left of the sitting bat-winged figure. This semi-oval curve opens to the right which presumably formed an awkward or unsatisfactory shape for the clouds and was changed to two curves opening to their left to correspond to the lines of clouds on the far left border. The evidence on the copper plate in showing the rejection of the curving cloud indicates the process of Blake changing to the more angular lines of the final cloud image. The first notable hammer marks on the verso of this plate are those on the main figures of the central design: Satan and Job. These include Satan’s face, his right upper arm, left chest, left hand, his belly, the genital area, the whole right leg, left knee and foot; Job’s belly, beard, face, upper left arm, his cloth, his knees and both feet. Other hammer marks on the verso correspond to the spider at the lower right border (an upward position perhaps changed from an upside-down one of the left spider to make differences and artistic variation); the rim of the cloud at the left top corner of the central design; the sea under the sun, and two shafts of the rays of light on the right and left above the sun. A line of hammer marks is at the back of the bottom imprint. The fourth proof state of this plate confirms the imprint was initially Linnell’s one: Published March 8: 1825 by J Linnell. 6 Cirencester Place (Linnell proofs, nos. B–4158, 4159, 4160, NGA). The repoussage made in this area further supports that Linnell’s imprint has been replaced by Blake’s in the fifth state (Keynes proof, FMC).105 These marks, including those on the central and border designs, amount to six areas on discrete images or words on this plate where Blake had modified. Plate 7 (size 22 cm × 17.2 cm): On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. On the recto, sketch lines are along the left frame, the ground on the bottom, and the clouds on top border. Traces show two burnished curve lines of cloud at the left and over the head of the mourning figure on top right border. These lines created a shape of cloud forming a symmetrical composition, while the current line, extending to the right and touching the right figure, breaks the strict symmetry and gives a freer rhythm. The uneven surface of the imprint beneath the bottom frame on the words ‘by William Blake N3 Fountain Court Strand’ shows traces of burnishing. It would have been changed from Linnell’s imprint as already described for Plates 5 and 6. Hammer marks on the verso of the border images include the small sheep on the lower right; a white area below the words ‘Patience of Job and’; the shoulder

Figure 2: Blake’s Job copper plate (BMPD), Plate 7, recto. © Trustees of the British Museum.

Figure 3: Blake’s Job copper plate (BMPD), Plate 7, verso. © Trustees of the British Museum.

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and chest of the lower left shepherd and the lower half of her/his staff. There are also hammer marks on the verso of the third line in the bottom border where the words read ‘upon their heads’. The central design was mended by hammer marks at the areas corresponding to the face of Job’s wife, her left forearm and lower drapery; Job’s feet, the straw between his left knee and left hand; the right half of grass below the dunghill; the lower drapery on the back of the right-most friend, his beard, and the spaces between the three friends. These amount to eight discrete areas that were modified by hammer or chisel by Blake. Plate 8 (size 22×17.1 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. On the recto, varied sketch lines are around the clouds on top border, the horizontal line of the upper inner frame, the vertical line along the right edge of the left outer frame, the vegetation at the bottom border, and around some letters on the third line in the bottom border: the ‘o’ of ‘a word’, the ‘y’ of ‘for they’, and ‘h’ of ‘his grief ’. These alternative lines were either Blake’s original sketch lines by drypoint, later burnished and followed by graver, or the double lines around letters were caused by a broad surfaced graver. Hammer marks along the copper edge on the verso and the double line of the left outer frame on the recto indicate the whole composition and the frame have been extended further to the left. Other hammer marks corresponding to the central design are at the areas of both sides of the rim of the smoke above the mountain on the left; Job’s hands, the lower part of his beard, the left half of his right knee, the edge of his left foot and the ground; the lap of Job’s wife and her lower drapery; the lower drapery of the foremost friend’s back; the right edge of the column above the three friends, and the left edge of the lintel above the column. The right half of the bottom imprint has hammer marks on its verso and corrugations on the recto. It would have been changed from Linnell’s imprint, the same as former plates. These amount to five areas of modification on the central and two for the border designs. Plate 9 (size 22×17.2 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. There is an ink-like trace on the surface. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, rough sketch lines are around the trees and the clouds in the border, and the inner and outer frames. The most obvious error and trace of cor-

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rection occur in the middle of the cloud ring at the right border, where a sketch curve line extends from the third curve from top next to the right inner frame, and crosses the word ‘chargeth’. Some zigzag scratches crossing the curve apparently indicate an error. This curve is shown on the Linnell proof in the British Library (K.T.C.7.b.4, not mentioned in Essick’s catalogue, 1987), yet without the zigzag scratches which would have been made during the last stage before they were burnished. Light traces of the word ‘God’ can be seen on top of the printed word ‘God’ at the upper left corner. This correction shows how Blake put this word in completely the wrong place in the finished version although this may mere simply indicate a shift in composition which has left only this word visible after correction. Blurred traces of burnished letters now unrecognizable are visible underneath the bottom line at the lower border. There could be a whole line of inscription which has been erased, possibly the next line in the Bible: ‘It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof ’ (Job 4:16) of the current inscription, ‘Then a Spirit passed before my face the hair of my flesh stood up’. Hammer marks on the verso are to highlight the left half of God’s halo; the rim of the cloud over the foremost friend’s lifted hand; this figure’s right forearm and the lap of Job’s wife. Other hammer marks for mending are at the areas of the dark cloud on the top right corner of central design; the strip of God’s drapery from his elbow to his feet; an implicit (or, rather, hidden) semicircle of radiance between God and the figure in bed; the area between the left inner frame and the right hand of Job’s wife; the foremost friend’s lifting hand, and the face of the friend on the far right. These six discrete areas have been darkened, rather different from the four areas described above which were burnished and highlighted into white colour in the finished prints. For the border design, hammer marks mend the words ‘invenit & sculp’ on the lower right, and the branches and trunks in the lower left. The hammer marks on this plate show they were made by different tools, a sharper one to level the surface for highlights (e.g. the ones on the white cloud in the middle), and a blunt one after burnishing for re-engraving (e.g. the ones on the dark clouds on the top right corner). The darkened areas with hammer marks on their verso show Blake’s reworking of mistaken lines. These are particularly obvious on the peculiar semicircle at the right margin of God’s radiance. This does not appear in the early impression (first state, Linnell Proof, NGA). It is possibly the result of part burnishing in this area. The engraved lines of God’s dark radiance in this plate show a rather chaotic combination, compared with the neat lines of other plates. The lines combine the radiance from God’s head from top, the radiance of his body from the middle, and some horizontal lines to darken the rays. Whether or not it is Blake’s intention to indicate a false God by a complex pattern, the semicircle and the dense cross-hatching on the top right clouds are flaws or correction of errors on this plate.

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Plate 10 (size 22.1×17.3 cm) Among the whole set of twenty-two engraved copper plates, Plate 10 deserves the closest attention, not only because it contains the largest portion of hammer marks on its verso, but also the many traces of burnished inscriptions on its recto. On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. Quite extraordinarily, on the recto, there are visible traces of burnished letters on the left of the top four lines of inscriptions repeating the first few words. ‘But he’ is repeated on the left of the current inscription ‘But he knoweth the way that I take’, ‘whWhe’ between the arc on the right and the inscription ‘when he hath tried me I shall come forth like gold’, a slightly awry ‘Ha’ in the word ‘Have’ on the right of the left arc and about 0.8 cm to the left of the words ‘Have pity upon me’, a ‘w’ under the burnished ‘Ha’, a longer curved ‘T’ immediately on the left of ‘Though he slay me yet will I trust in him’. All the burnished words are in mirror writing. In addition, there are still some traces of words underneath the five lines which cannot now be deciphered. Sketch lines within the left and top outer frames indicate Blake has slightly enlarged the composition. Another arc line is to the right of the arc on the upper right border as the double lines on the symmetrical opposite side of the border. This looks like a drypoint sketch line, which Blake omitted to cut with the subsequent graver. There are many sketch lines around the owl and eagle and the scrolls in the lower border. Essick observed the extension of the border design further to the left in the sixth state proof (Philip Hofer proof, HARVARD) by the addition of a new outline and short strokes.106 These outlines were not totally burnished away and still leave observable traces on the copper plate. There are large areas of heavy hammer marks on the verso of this plate, and the hammering caused obvious corrugations on the recto. It is perhaps one of the plates which has the most extensive use of repoussage in the series. For the central design, hammer marks are at the places of the whole ground above the bottom horizontal inner frame, the face, right arm, both feet and lower drapery of Job’s wife; Job’s face, both sides of chest, both hands, belly and half of the sackcloth; the foremost friend’s face, left upper arm, drapery, right leg, left knee, half of his left leg and foot, his beard under his left arm; the middle friend’s face and right arm, his left hand, and his back. Hammer marks are also visible at the lower border in the area corresponding to the words ‘invenit & sculp’ on the right corner, and ‘& continueth not And’ at the fourth line of the inscriptions, the right scroll, and the left bottom corner of the plate.

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The different states of proof described by Essick confirm that there were many modifications on this plate, including the enlargement of Job’s arm and body to touch his wife’s finger on the left, the shift of the whole composition to the left, the extension of the lower inner frame and other alterations to accommodate this change (Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings’ pp. 73–4). Therefore, the hammer marks covering the lower part of the central design were to erase the previous frame and add more details to balance the whole composition. Plate 11 (size 21.9 cm × 17.2 cm) There is also a significantly large portion of repoussage on this plate. (Figure 4) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, sketch lines are inside the top and left outer frames, the right bottom of the inner frame, the flames around the inscriptions at the bottom border. Corrugations on the bottom imprint ‘by Willm Blake No 3 Fountain Court Strand’ indicate the change from Linnell’s name and address. For the mending of border design, there are hammer marks on the flame besides the upper right corner of inner frame, the flame at lower left corner of the outer frame, and under the bottom second line of inscription ‘whom I shall see for’ and ‘eyes shall behold &.’ For the central design, hammer marks have mended the lightning bolts in the top left corner, the folds of God’s clothes between his knee and the lightning bolts above, the right edge of the stone tablet, the serpent’s body at both sides of God’s right hand, God’s beard above Job’s head and right hand, Job’s left hand, sackcloth, left leg, and the mat he lies on, the flames in the lower right corner, and the neck and upper arm of the devil in the middle. These hammer marks almost follow all the major outlines of the main figures in the design. Plate 12 (size 22.1 ×17.1 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, sketch lines are around all the figures and clouds in the border. Two light horizontal lines run between the upper inner frames of the central design indicating the shifting of composition. There are some blurred traces of words on the middle top and below the bottom of the inner frame which are not now recognizable. Corrugations on the right half of the bottom imprint show mending, the same as other plates.

Figure 4: Blake’s Job copper plate (BMPD), Plate 11, verso. Photograph taken by Mei-Ying Sung, image reproduction courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

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Hammer marks are at the areas of the words ‘invenit & scuplt’ above the bottom of the outer frame. There are corrections for two flying figures on the right and left sides of the frames, which mending being made to where their hands are touching the frames of the central design. Other marks of repoussage are made at the areas of the figure above the one touching the frame on the right; the space above the words ‘& saith’ in the upper border; the left half of the forearm of the right-most friend, his lap under the forearm, his knee and the split compassshape fingers; the middle friend’s shoulder; Job’s face, left shoulder, both knees, the straw under his left leg and right foot; the left knee and holding hands of Job’s wife, Elihu’s neck, flying hair, right forearm, chest and belly, left knee, and both feet. A long strip of hammer marks on the right vertical outer frame from the end of the upper cloud to the beginning of the straw in the lower border suggests that Blake initially sketched an arc linking the whole composition as a dynamic oval extending beyond the present outer frame. There are at least eleven discrete areas of mending on this plate. Plate 13 (size 22 cm × 17.1 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof.’ On the recto, sketch lines are around border images. There are burnished traces of the whirlwind curve on the top inner frame and in the margin cloud. The burnished lines are confirmed by the second state of Linnell Proof (NGA, no. B–4181), on which the whirlwind extends through the inner frame to the upper part of the border design. The changes here are amongst the clearest and most highly visible changes to the plates in the entire Job set. Sketch lines are around all the flying figures in the upper border. A blurred trace of burnished letters ‘W is(?)’ is on the left upper border preceding the inscriptions ‘Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge,’ and a capital ‘W’ is on the left of the inscription ‘Who maketh the Clouds his Chariot & walketh on the Wings of the Wind’ in the lower border. A long strip of hammer marks at the back of the upper inner frame confirm the burnishing of the whirlwind caused an indentation in the plate which needed to be hammered up in order to add the horizontal frame. This causes obvious corrugations on the recto of the plate. Other hammer marks are at the areas of God’s forehead, the end of the hair on his left, his right shoulder, the beard under his left arm and the end of his beard below his face, the upper part of his legs, both his feet (the second foot was added in a later stage); the whirlwind lines between God and the bowing figures below, as well as beside the bowing figure’s drapery at the lower right corner; the back of the foremost bowing fig-

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ure; the left of Job’s lower back, and his belly. For the border, hammer marks are at the spine of the flying figure on top second from the right; the words ‘invenit & sculp’ on the right bottom, and the imprint ‘by William… Court…’ presumably mended from the Linnell imprint. The repoussage on this plate amounts to seven large areas of repair. On the right margin of the verso, there is a straight line cut into the plate, possibly the result of an earlier decision of the plate size. Plate 14 (size 20.9 cm × 16.65 cm) This is one of the two reused copper plates in the series. On the verso is an engraved illustration with some agricultural machinery, Plate II for Henry Louis Duhamel du Monceau, A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759, 1762).107 The original larger plate was obviously cut smaller. There are two diagonally crossing lines and the word ‘Cleand’ (i.e. ‘Cleaned’) scored deeply onto the old illustration possibly made by the plate-seller with a graver before it was cut into size for reuse. The plate has no bevelled edges unlike the Pontifex ones. It is notably thinner and lighter than the nineteen Pontifex plates. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. The border design on the recto has many light sketch lines, such as the traces of burnished sketch-curve around the sun and moon at the upper right. The uneven surface inside the white cloud band in the upper border suggests a burnishing of words in this area. Hammer marks on the verso of border are at the number ‘14’ on the top right corner; the angel’s wing at the left upper corner; two sections of the left vertical outer frame between the three rings of cloud band; the right side of the serpent’s tail at the lower right corner, and the word ‘invenit’ at the left bottom. For the central design, hammer marks are on the verso of the faces of the top angels, two on the right and one on the far left; the left knee of the angel second from right; the clouds under both of God’s arms and above his right arm, God’s right knee, his drapery on the right of his foot; the middle of the left vertical inner frame where the cloud band above God’s right arm ends; the upper part of the horses extending to the left inner frame; right half of the cloud band under the horses, the cloud band at the lower right corner; the right-most friend’s lap, and Job’s knee. These amount to thirteen discrete areas of repair. It appears Blake used at least two different kinds of tool for the repoussage on this plate. For example, the hammer marks on the verso of the lap of Job’s friend at the lower right corner were made by punching tools with a round end, while the cloud band on this figure’s right was mended by a sharper tool and the marks are thin straight cuts, quite distinct from the other oval marks seen most often on the plates.

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Plate 15 (size 21.9 ×17.15 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. There are traces of what appear to be dried ink left on the surface. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, blurred traces of burnished sketch lines are around the border images. Some changes in the border confirm Essick’s description of evidence from the prints: In the border design, slight scratches indicate that the shell lower left was originally sketched in drypoint in a slightly different position or size. A few longer but extremely light lines show that the figure outside the top right corner of the central design was sketched with his head in a higher position and his right arm differently situated. His companion at the top left corner may have been similarly revised, as a few fragmentary scratches suggest.108

An additional sketch of the letter ‘B’ overlaps but at slightly left of the ‘B’ of ‘Behemoth’ in the lower bottom. This plate contains relatively few hammer marks. There are five areas of repoussage corresponding to the wings of the angel upper right of the central design; Job’s right arm and bosom; Behemoth’s back from the top of its ear to the top of tail, its haunch and nose; the three triangular spines on Leviathan’s body left of its chin, the rim of the foamy wave below its neck, and the words ‘& sculp’ in the lower border. Plate 16 (size 20.3 cm × 16.6 cm) On the verso is an illustration showing agricultural machinery, Plate III for Henry Louis Duhamel du Monceau, A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759, 1762). (Figure 5) As with Plate 14, there are three straight diagonally crossing lines and the word ‘Cleand’ (i.e. ‘Cleaned’) with another ‘C’ cut deeply into the machinery illustration, and the plate was cut smaller to the current size. The plate has no bevelled edges. It is thinner and lighter than the 19 Pontifex plates. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto is a visible burnished trace of the word ‘Proof ’. Light sketch lines are in the border around the clouds, including the burnished cloud lines above the inner frame extending from the central design and existing in the third state (Linnell proof no. B–4190, NGA) and the fourth state (Linnell proof no. B–4192, & White proof no. B–4302, NGA; Riches proof, FMC).109 Blurred traces of two burnished attempts at the letter ‘y’ are visible at the end of the line at the lowest margin repeating the last letter of ‘And God hath chosen…. that are mighty’.

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Hammer marks for the border are on the words ‘shall be cast out’ on the right, the word ‘Almighty’ on the left, ‘Subject’ and ‘Name Jesus’ at the bottom, and along the upper horizontal inner frame, which confirm the removal of the upper part of God’s halo, the child angels, the radiance, and the clouds. On the verso of the central design, hammer marks are at the areas of the child angels above God’s head; the elbow of the left large angel, his drapery at lower back and to the left of his foot; the calves of the right large angel, the area between this angel and the central large flame (early states have more tips of flame here); Satan’s body from his thighs, genital area (earlier states confirm that it has been gradually darkened), chest to head; the lightning bolts left of the central large flame; the white area between Satan’s head and the flame below (early states have strokes here); the neck of Job’s wife; the area left of Job; the left friend’s face; the face and back of the friend at the right corner; two areas of the right inner frame, one on the right of the cloud band and the large angel’s right leg, the other from the angel’s left foot to the middle friend’s head. These amount to at least seventeen different areas of mending. The tense and heavy hammering caused obvious corrugation on the recto. Plate 17 (size 22.2 ×17.2 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, sketch lines are above the top outer frame and the scroll and clouds in the upper and lower borders which define a considerably higher composition than the published print. White burnished curves extend the two large ovals around God’s halo to the upper border and the inner frame. There are two horizontal strips of hammer marks on the verso of the two lines of the upper inner frame. They suggest an extension of the radiance in the central design to the upper border which no proofs as such are extant. Similarly, no proofs are extant for the change made by hammer marks in the lower border along the angel’s wings, breast and left hand distinctly implying an outline of cloud was replaced by the angel. Other hammer marks correspond to the two white strips of ray upper right of the central design and the oval curve above it; God’s right hand, stream of beard, foot, his draperies in the middle and at back; Job’s left side of face, left arm and hand; the upper part of the front-most friend’s thigh; the words ‘my father’ in the lower left border, and the edge of the book above Blake’s signature, and ‘by William Blake N 3’ of the imprint at the bottom. There are in total ten areas of repair.

Figure 5: Blake’s Job copper plate (BMPD), Plate 16, verso. Photograph taken by Mei-Ying Sung, image reproduction courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

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Plate 18 (size 22.1 cm × 17.3 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, sketch lines are visible around the border design suggesting a higher position of clouds on the right, the book at the lower left corner, and the horizontal line below the words ‘And my Servant Job shall pray for you’, a lower level of the step below the wheat at lower right, a further left position of the painting brushes and the scroll on their right. The scratches below the top edge of the step below the wheat on the right border, and the curve lines of a scroll right of the four brushes are shown on the first state (Riches proof, FMC; White proof, no. B–4304, NGA).110 Traces of five descending arrows in the circle of white sunshine below the top inner frame are visible on the copper plate. The arrows appear in the fourth state (Evans proof, no. 1847.3.18.112, BM) and some well-inked published states. (Some of the traces of words are as clear as these arrows on the copper, but do not appear on the prints.) Blurred traces of the burnished letter ‘A’ is on the left side of the published inscription ‘And the Lord…’ half crossing the capital. Another ‘A’ is at far left of the words ‘And my Servant…’ under the step and above the open book. This suggests the inscriptions have been shifted from left to right in order to be placed in the middle. Hammer marks on the verso of the central design are at the areas of Job’s right arm, the burnished left back, his right knee, the drapery below his right foot; the upper edge of the right-most stone under the fire; the left side of the friend beside Job; the left side of the body of the middle friend; the head of the far right friend; the whole figure of Job’s wife except for her hair. At the border, a strip of hammer marks are on the left outer frame from the end of top outline of clouds to the beginning of another outline of clouds below. Hammer marks also show the mending on the word ‘Strand’ at the bottom imprint and the graver in the lower border. Two strips of horizontal hammer marks on the top inner frame show a shift of composition or a removing of the sun rays here, for which no proofs are extant. The lower left of lettering of the open-leafed Bible has a sign of trial or error with light hammer marks. In total, there are twelve areas of repair on this plate. Plate 19 (size 22.1 cm × 17.2 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’.

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On the recto, light sketch lines are around the border design and the inner frame. Blurred trace of a half burnished letter ‘W’ can be seen on the left side of the published inscription ‘Who remembered us in our low estate’ at the lower part. Hammer marks made to the central design are at the places of the lower right drapery of the woman furthest to the right in the group of standing figures; the area right of the standing man’s face, his whole garment; the left side body of the far left woman from her hair, neck, to the lower drapery; Job’s forehead, the right side of his hair, his lower left folds of drapery, his right knee; the right thigh and lower drapery of Job’s wife. At the border, hammer marks are made to the abdomen of the flying figure upper right; the right forearm and leg of the lowest figure at the right margin; the upper left corner of the inner frame; the right shoulder of the lowest figure at the left margin; the drooping palm leaves at both lower sides, and the left foot and the lines above his or her left hand of the flying figure at lower left border. These amount to twelve areas of mending. Plate 20 (size 22.1 cm × 17.2 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, sketch lines around the border design are relatively few. Such lines can be observed in the lower horizontal inner frame, where there is an additional horizontal line and two crossing curves repeating the patterns of the floor in the central design. The alterations suggest at least two shifts of composition from below the present central design in order to move it higher up the plate. Hammer marks on the verso are at the areas of Job’s left arm, right biceps, the narrow strip above his right arm, his right leg and left knee; the drapery on the left daughter’s feet; the middle daughter’s face, left arm,111 left hip, and the drapery on her lower right; the right daughter’s face, shoulder, both legs and drapery below; the hovering figure’s left arm in the lower right wall panel, and the right bottom corner of this panel; the bottom of the lower left semicircular panel; the bottom of the circular upper left panel; the back of Job’s wife in the upper central panel; the area in the lower border between the vines where the words ‘(The)re we(re)’ are; and the bunch of grapes lower right border. The eleven areas of repair are mostly for the central design. The imprint shows corrugations on the recto indicating a change, perhaps from Linnell’s to Blake’s like those on majority of plates.

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Plate 21 (size 22 cm × 17.1 cm) On the verso, there is the mark of the plate maker: R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON. The plate has bevelled edges. At the bottom right corner of the plate’s recto are visible burnished traces of the word ‘Proof ’. On the recto, light sketch lines made by drypoint can be seen around the clouds, the outer frame, the images in the lower border and some inscriptions below. They appear as double-line effect or shadows at the right side of the words, such as, on the right of the altar, the ‘s’ on the right of ‘Generations,’ the ‘b’ of ‘Job’, the ‘i’ and ‘d’ of ‘died’, the ‘g’ of ‘being’, the ‘d’ of ‘old’, the ‘y’ and ‘s’ of ‘days’, and at the left of the altar, the ‘s’ of ‘his’ at the end of the third line. There are likely some blurred traces of burnished letters under the altar, possibly a quotation of a unique pre-published proof in the Beinecke,112 ‘Praise to God is the Exercise of Imaginative Art’. Hammer marks on the verso correspond to two areas of the border design: a strip at the left of the slanting line of the tent beside the cloud upper left, and the right side of the ox at the right bottom corner; and eight out of the total twelve figures in the central design: the whole figure except for his head furthest to the left, the daughter’s chest and thighs on the right of Job’s wife, the central daughter’s head, left chest and both legs, both Job’s forearms, the lower part of the harp he plays, the right arm of the daughter on Job’s left, the thighs of the son third from the right, the middle part of the son second from the right, the left arm of the son furthest to the right.

 There are three final conundrums posited by the Job copper plates. While none of these can be resolved, they are suggestive of the rich quality of empirical evidence the Blake plates afford. The first issue surrounds the status of Plate 1 which is a Harris plate, not certainly bought by Linnell, but for which a precise date of when Blake was observed to be working on it has been recorded. The second problem is the hitherto unsuspected possibility that two of the plates, 14 and 16, employed etching as well as engraving. Finally the evidence of a further set of verso markings, possibly the work of the copper plate makers, will be examined because they suggest the possibility that some of the Job plates were worked on while they were still joined together on a large sheet of copper. (i) The problem with Plates 1, 14, 16 The Job copper plates show conclusively that the eighteen plates which Linnell bought from Pontifex in 1823, recorded in Linnell’s Cash Account Book 1822–36 (Mrs Joan Linnell Burton’s collection) and Yale Account Book (Bei-

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necke),113 are Plates 2–13, 15, 17–21 all of which have this plate maker’s mark on them. These exclude the title page (with Pontifex’s mark, but a slightly different plate from the others), Plate 1 from Harris, and Plates 14 and 16 reusing old plates from the illustrations of Henry Louis Duhamel du Monceau’s A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (1759, 1762). The Pontifex title page could be one of the two plates Linnell purchased in 1825.114 Consequently, there must be one copper plate from Linnell that Blake did not use in the extant plates of Job. One possibility is that the one Pontifex copper plate not included in the current series in the British Museum had been disposed of by Blake because of serious mistakes which he could not, or did not wish to, repair. At least, this conjecture would tally with the documentary record of the purchase of the copper plates by Linnell.115 Alternatively, Linnell’s accounts might be either erroneous, or else Blake kept a ‘spare’ Pontifex copper plate to re-use on some other project. There is a significant matter of historical record which concerns the identity and dating of the Job Plate 1. According to Gilchrist, Samuel Palmer’s first meeting with Blake happened while Blake was engaged in engraving this plate: The acquaintance commenced when Blake was about midway in the task of engraving his Job. ‘At my never-to-be-forgotten first interview’, says Mr Palmer, ‘the copper of the first plate ⎯ “thus did Job continually”⎯ was lying on the table where he had been working at it. How lovely it looked by the lamplight, strained through the tissue paper!’116

It was Saturday 9 October 1824 when Palmer visited Blake with Linnell (as recorded in A. H. Palmer’s The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer (1892), pp. 9–10).117 If this information were correct, the copper plate of Plate 1 could not be any of those obtained from Linnell unless either Linnell’s account statements are incorrect, or, if that is not the case, the current Plate 1 is a substitute redeployed by Blake. According to Linnell’s Cash Account Book: 1822–36 (Mrs. Joan Linnell Burton’s collection, see also Bryant ‘The Job Designs, p. 103) and the Yale Account Book, William Blake and John Linnell signed a contract Memorandum of Agreement on 25 March 1823 for a set of twenty engravings, as a result of which John Linnell bought eighteen copper plates from Mr. Pontifex for Job on 2 May 1823 and two more copper plates in 1825, although we do not know from which coppersmith.118 If Samuel Palmer saw Blake working on Plate 1 in October 1824, this ‘Harris’ plate could not be any of the eighteen ‘Pontifex’ plates provided by Linnell in March 1823. The most likely explanation is that Blake used this very first plate as an experiment or a model before he started formally on the Pontifex plates but finally found it was good enough to be printed. The Harris Plate 1 may have been the first plate Blake showed to Linnell as an example of his project. It would be reasonable to have this plate, as a model, always in sight or even reworked when

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he worked on the others. Alternatively, Blake could have been working on the border design of Plate 1, after the initial engraving of central designs on all plates, when Palmer saw it. This would then explain why he was still working on this first plate in late 1824. Another possibility, however, is that Blake made serious mistakes on a conjectural Pontifex Plate 1, and decided to discard it and start again on a Harris plate, that is, finding another plate from his own collection. A further possibility is that the first plate might have been broken in proofing at the printer’s. This would perhaps explain the relatively small amount of repoussage on the verso of this plate. The breakage of plates during printing is not unknown in Blake’s work. Two of Blake’s commercial plates, the frontispiece engraved after Stothard for the January issue of The Wit’s Magazine, 1 (1784),119 and the plate ‘Miscellany’ for Abraham Rees’s The Cyclopaedia (1820)120 both broke during printing, perhaps because they had been subjected to printing by a professional firm of copper plate printers similar to the firm of Lahee used by Linnell to print Job. The ‘one’ missing Pontifex copper plate from Linnell in 1825 is a mystery. However unlikely, one possibility is that Blake made two versions of Pl. 1, first using a Harris plate, and then a Pontifex plate. There are two sketches and two other detail studies for the Plate 1 in the sketchbook of reduced pencil studies for Linnell (FMC), more than exists for any other plates. This suggests Blake had more than one thought about Plate 1. A final mystery is that in a letter Blake wrote to Linnell prior to a meeting with Mr. Lahee, the copper plate printer, he wrote that he was sending Linnell ‘the Two First Plates of Job’ (c. March 1825, E 773). This odd syntax, ‘the Two First plates’ instead of ‘the first two plates’, suggests the possibility that there might be two versions of Plate 1. After proving the two versions of Plate 1, Blake might have decided to keep the first version, i.e. the Harris one. The possibility that Blake rejected at least one plate, Plate 1, must be entertained. If Blake did dispose of a copper plate because of serious mistakes, the first plate he had worked on would be the most likely one. Blake might have felt particularly sensitive about getting the first plate right as this would have been the ‘entrance’ to the series, the first plate any serious viewer of the Job book would have first encountered, a likelihood increased by the near-folio proportions of the book and its status as a work of illustration rather than of text. The new plate for substitution would not be any of those from Pontifex because Blake already had twenty Pontifex plates, i.e. those extant nineteen plates, Plates 2–13, 15, 17–21, and the one presumably disposed of. Working from Linnell’s accounts, the plate disposed of would then be one of Plates 1, 14 and 16. To draw an inference from these assumptions, Plate 1 could be a substituted new plate purchased from Harris in place of a Pontifex plate.

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(ii) The conjectural use of etching in Plates 14 and 16 Scholars have long taken as authoritative John Linnell’s statement that the Job plates were ‘cut with the graver entirely on copper without the aid of Aqua fortis’.121 However, the background parts on Plates 14 and 16 of Job, when compared with the copper plate of The Beggar’s Opera after Hogarth (Houghton), known to have been both etched and engraved by Blake, show the similar deep, broad grooves sinking below the plate surface as are to be found on the etched background on the recto of the Hogarth plate. If this interpretation is correct, this would mark the depth of the acid ‘bite’ into the copper plate. This apparent ‘bite’ of etching is common to both Plates 14 and 16. Under a magnifying machine (such as the Image Enhancer in the British Library Rare Books Room), the lines of this area on the published print of both Plates 14 and 16 reveal an even thickness and blunt ends, a characteristic common to etched lines. On the copper plate itself, the background area of the Plate 14 copper plate surrounding Job, his wife and friends under the cloud band separating the figures from the angels above, shows a deeper groove than most of the surface of the plate and it is covered with thick even lines. This is also the case with Plate 16. The lower background part outside of the thunder where Job, his wife and friends are shown, like Plate 14, shows a deeper area of groove than other engraved lines suggesting a process of etching had been employed before engraving. The thick and even lines in this area also show the blunt ends characteristics of etching. Despite the authoritative provenance of Linnell, who presumably received his information directly from Blake, the physical evidence of Plates 14 and 16 suggests the possibility that these two plates were in the mixed-method of etching and engraving rather than exemplifying the virtuoso engraving which the Illustrations of the Book of Job has long been assumed to portray.

(iii) The crossing marks on the versos The curious crossing lines on the versos of all plates convey interesting information about the methods of copper plate merchants in preparing large sheets of copper for sale to engravers. These indistinct lines, except for those on Plates 1, 14 and 16 with their crossing lines cut by sharp graver, appear to be marked by an unidentifiable instrument. There seems to be a match of these lines in a recoverable sequence (See diagrams below). These lead to the division of eight groups among the twenty-two copper plates. Group One consists of Plates 2, 3 and 4, Group Two Plates 18, 9 and 21, Group Three Plates 11, 6 and 7, Group Four 10, 5 and 12. Each of these four groups forms a continuing pattern, which looks like it was originally one large piece of copper cut into three, probably by the plate maker Pontifex rather than by Blake. Three groups, each consisting of two

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plates, Plates 19 and 15, 13 and 20, 8 and 17, also form continuing patterns.122 This result singles out the title page, Plates 1, 14 and 16, whose crossing lines on their versos have no match of patterns with any other plates. This corresponds with the assumption that the four odd plates were purchased separately from the other eighteen plates.123 Further evidence of Blake working on one copper plate before it was cut is found in Essick’s William Blake, Printmaker. For the woodcuts of Virgil, ‘Blake had cut the designs four to a block– a common practice for small works on wood as well as copper … After Blake pulled a few carelessly printed proofs (Essick 1980, Fig. 205, now in BMPD), the publishers had the designs separated, cut down, and printed on paper too coarse to register the finer lines in the wood’.124 Essick’s footnote under this page says, ‘a copy in my collection of Charles Allen’s A New and Improved Roman History (1798) in original boards contains the four intaglio etching-engravings by Blake after Fuseli bound on conjugate leaves at the front of the volume. The continuous plate-mark running across the top and bottom of each leaf indicates that all four designs were executed on the same copper plate. This is the only other work for which we have direct evidence that Blake engraved more than one design on the same side of a single plate or block, but the savings in inking and printing time make this procedure likely for many of his other small book illustrations’.125 The plate-mark mentioned by Essick is probably the indentation on the prints on boards caused by the edges of copper plates. This is important evidence to support the possibility that crossing lines on the versos of Job copper plates were made by plate makers before the engraving took place, and that the Job plates were originally a few large copper plates before they had been cut into small units. While the evidence cannot prove whether these practices were followed by Blake or represent the operation of the plate makers, the availability of the markings recovers something of the contemporary methods of those engaged in the engraving trade. Linnell’s Yale Account Book refers to the purchase of the eighteen copper plates in 1823 as six at £1; six at £1.2; and six at £1.3.7.126 There is no explanation for the different prices of the three groups, each consisting of six copper plates. The crossing lines on the versos of the copper plates, however, offer a possible answer for this: that each group of six plates was cut from one large piece of copper, and the cheaper one was possibly the remains of others. In consequence, Groups One, Two, Three and Four, each with three plates, were possibly cut from the two large coppers costing £1.3.7 and £1.2. Group Five, Six and Seven, each with two plates, might be remains of large copper plates prepared for other customers. These six plates, therefore, would cost less at the price of £1. The crossing lines on Plates 1, 14 and 16 are made by different instruments from the others. They were cut into the plates by sharp chisels or a graver. And

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the lines certainly are individual on each plate without any continuing pattern with other plates. The title page has similar crossing lines as the six groups described above, and obviously connects with at least one other plate. Linnell’s Yale Account Book records the further purchase of two copper plates for Job in 1825 costing £0.6.0.127 These two new plates are more expensive than the others purchased two years before. One of them is presumably the title page, which has the least mending and was designed and engraved last, the ‘afterthought’ according to Linnell.128 The other new copper plate would be the missing one in the current series, because neither Plates 1, 14 or 16 are likely to be this one. Why Linnell bought further two plates near the end of all engraving is not known. But the preparatory plate for a possibly mistaken one suggests serious problems Blake might have encountered during the engraving.

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Diagrams of the crossing marks on the versos of Blake’s Job Copper plates Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

P1. 2

P1. 18

P1. 11(upside down)

P1. 10

P1. 3

P1. 9

P1. 6

P1. 5

P1. 4

P1. 21 (upside down)

P1. 7

P1. 12

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Group 5

P1. 19

P1. 15

P1. 13

P1. 20

P1. 17 (upside down)

P1. 8

Group 6

Group 7

Conclusion The trace of mending on the fronts and backs of the Job plates show not only mistakes in individual areas but also shifts of whole compositions. In addition, the Job plates caution that theories of Blake’s fluency in mirror writing for the purposes of etching cannot be transposed to his skills in engraved mirror writing. Plates 10, 17, and 18 show the clearest examples that the composition of image as well as text kept shifting before the final states. For example, Plate 10 has the largest proportion of repoussage in the whole series. The prepublication proofs and the deep repoussage on the verso of the copper plate show that the central design has been moved slightly to the left. The enlargement of Job’s figure and the extension of the lower inner frame show that an important change had been made, or rather that a most serious mistake had been modified by Blake. The traces of sketch lines on the recto of the copper plate tell a similar story. In view of Blake’s alleged skill in mirror-writing in etching the illumi-

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nated books, the engraving of the parts of the text accompanying the Job designs tells a different story where Blake is less skilled and deft in positioning text. The words in the upper border of Plate 10 show clearly that Blake had started writing the text from the edge of the arch line, and then moved them to the centre of the composition in the final state. The trace of the words ‘whWhe’ preceding the current wording ‘when he hath.…’ indicates that Blake had changed the composition at least twice. The composition of Plate 17 has also been moved from a higher to a 2 mm lower position. The sketch lines of the marginal clouds, in both upper and lower borders, show the clear outline of the higher clouds. On the verso of the copper plate, there are two horizontal strips of hammer marks corresponding to the space above the double inner frames, which confirm that the originally intended positions of the frames were slightly above the present ones. Similarly, Plate 18 has on its recto sketch outlines slightly above the present border design, and two strips of horizontal hammer marks on the verso corresponding to the places above the current inner double frames. This evidence tells of the shift of the composition from a higher position to a lower. Changes of composition can be further observed from the proofs and hammer marks at the areas of inner frames. Plates 5, 13, 16, 17, and 18 show that the inner frames were burnished after the completion of the composition for the central design. It is as if Blake was executing with a shifting idea of composition. Although he had a presupposed border or frame to set a predetermined design, he still allowed himself to make trials and alterations. This is why we find so much evidence of mending on the copper plates. In his argument against the transfer theory as applied to relief etching, Viscomi has assumed that Blake worked ‘without models’ in a ‘composing/execution process’,129 ‘a composing process that enabled Blake to put his thoughts down on copper immediately’.130 The examination of the copper plates now enables us to confirm that this is not the case with respect to Blake’s technique of engraving. The copper plates show that there could be more than one method that Blake used. For the marginal designs, Blake probably did write and draw directly on copper plates without transferred models. However, models for the central design of the Job series do exist confirming that composition did not take place at the point of execution. The watercolours for Butts (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York) and Linnell (Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University) and the reduced pencil sketches for Linnell (FMC) prove that Blake returned to the central scenes of Job at least three times, each time altering and modifying the composition. The Job engravings are therefore not a totally new creation but a recreation through reorganization. In other words, the creation of the Job engravings, unlike the illuminated books, was not ‘automatic’ or ‘unpremeditated’.131 Traces of alteration on the copper plates for the biblical inscriptions around the borders of Job design also confirm that Blake continued experimenting with the composition. It tells us that Blake’s working methods were a process of trialand-error episodes rather than spontaneous, fluent, automatic writing. Whatever

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the process of writing used in Blake’s illuminated books, the engraving of text in Illustrations of The Book of Job is far from fluent or uninterrupted in its execution. For example, Plate 9 recto shows a sketch trace of the word ‘God’ at the upper left corner. The trace stands just above the word ‘God’ on the final print. This means Blake had put the text in the wrong position, and mended it to fit the correct composition later. Plate 10, with the most repoussage on its verso of all the plates in the series, also has the most traces of incorrectly positioned wording on the recto. As stated above, the wording was shifted by Blake from the edge to the centre of the composition at least three times. In the same way, on the top border of Plate 13, the traces of ‘W…is’ precede the current words ‘Who is this that…’, and at the lower border, the ‘W’ sits besides ‘Who maketh the Clouds his Chariot…’; at the lower border of Plate 18, the trace of letter ‘A’ is at the far left of the text ‘And my Servant Job…’; at the bottom of Plate 19, the half ‘W’ is seen at the left of ‘Who remembered us in our low estate’. Although it is logical enough that Blake worked on the central images before moving to the borders and the inscriptions, all this evidence concurs to provide firm proof that Blake composed these images before setting the texts, and that the position of the text was shifted to accommodate the image. The shifting of the text on the copper plates tends to prove that Blake could do mirror writing. Since constant mistakes of wording and sketch lines of the images can be seen on the copper plates, it shows that transfer techniques had not been used for the border designs. Although this supports Viscomi’s argument that Blake wrote in mirror writing (contrary to Todd’s view),132 it is not necessarily the same case for the central designs. As the evidence shown above indicates, there could be different techniques applied for the same series. This leads us to reconsider the limits of Viscomi’s concept about Blake’s techniques being original creation rather than secondary reproduction.133 If the Job engravings, which were done in Blake’s late years, were a mixture of experiments and trial-and-error, his early etched illuminated books would probably have been even more experimental and full of mistakes and modifications. The evidence of the Job plates (although it pertains to engraving rather than etching) makes it seem less likely that the illuminated books would have been automatically created. The production of Job engravings through the successive reorganization of image and text does not imply it is a secondary reproduction, but rather, its long-term modification and organization make it an original and unique work of art. Whatever interpretation scholars choose to put on the hundreds of hammer marks on the versos of the Job copper plates, there can be no doubt that these are an authentic materialization of one of Blake’s most personal and potent images: the Job copper plates exhibit ‘the Hammer of Los’ (E 100).

4 COPPER PLATE MAKERS IN BLAKE’S TIME

One of the most important sources for studying printing copper plates can be derived from the names and addresses of the copper plate makers stamped on the versos of the plates. As suppliers of tools and materials for engravers, copper plate makers provided the most basic material foundation for their work and played a crucial role in book trade and printmaking circles in the era of hand made reproduction. However, they have rarely been seen as significant to scholarly study and little research can be found. This chapter gathers information from the evidence shown on the extant printing plates in some major collections as well as from trade directories, and introduces the main copper plate makers working in London during Blake’s life time. It shows that, far from being an isolated visionary artist, he was very much a part of a changing economy of opportunity and capital comprising the central London book and print trade at this time. Copper plates do not always bear the plate maker’s marks. This is because copper plates were made in large sheets, and subsequently cut into small pieces according to the needs of engravers. This results in some plates bearing no plate maker’s mark or only a fragment of one. On the other hand, some large copper plates bear more than one plate mark stamped on by the plate maker. Blake’s large copper plate for The Beggar’s Opera (457×585 mm) at the Houghton Library bears three marks on its verso, showing JONES NO 4[7] | SHOE LANE LONDON on the upper right, centre and lower left of the copper, aligned diagonally. These marks stamped on the verso of the copper plates are often fragmentary due to the way in which the copper plate has been cut and sometimes unclear due to the uneven impact of stamping. However, they contain significant information about the plate makers, and most importantly different wording and styles are useful for identifying the period when the plate was made. The names of Blake’s copper plate makers are known from the stamping on the versos of the surviving copper plates and also from prints where he reused copper plate versos and where residues of the plate maker’s marks have shown through. They are G. Harris, 31 Shoe Lane (Book of Job Pl. 1); Jones, 47 & 48 Shoe Lane (The Beggar’s Opera, Frontispiece to the Songs of Experience,1 four Gough plates: Queen Philippa, Edward III, Richard II, Queen Anne); Jones and – 119 –

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Pontifex, 47 Shoe Lane (Europe: A Prophecy Pls. 1, 2, 4–18); 2 William Pontifex and Son, 46, 47 Shoe Lane; William and Russell Pontifex, 46, 47 and 48 Shoe Lane (Christ Trampling on Satan); R. Pontifex, 22 Lisle Street, Soho (Book of Job title-page, Plates 2–13, 15, 17–21, seven Dante plates); Whittow and Son, 43, 44 Shoe Lane (Jerusalem Plate 71);3 Whittow and Harris, 31 Shoe Lane (Jerusalem Plates 33, 72, 100).4

Pontifex Among Blake’s copper plate makers, the firm of Pontifex was a major supplier. The family firm of copper plate makers was founded by William Pontifex (1766–1851) in 1789 and passed through four generations before being sold in 1887 to Haslem and Co. of Derby, who retained the name of Pontifex. The firm still exists as a copper manufacturer today and operates as H. Pontifex & Sons, Pepper Road in Leeds, but the company has no records earlier than the twentieth century.5 However, during the nineteenth century the Pontifex business expanded to cover the whole country, including the Scottish market. The Northumberland artist Prideaux John Selby (1788–1867), expert in natural history and ornithology, and the Edinburgh engraver printer William Home Lizars (1788–1859), who also experimented in relief-etching, both bought copper plates from Pontifex for etching and engraving.6 During the late eighteenth century, the British copper industry was the largest in the world of which making printing plates was only a minor operation.7 English copper plate makers were not only supplying local and national needs but also some international markets. For example, the French collector and printmaker Ignace Joseph de Claussin (1766–1804) used a copper plate, now in the print room of Rijksprentenkabinet in Amsterdam, with the mark of ‘LONDON’ which was used for Six’s bridge after Rembrandt8. This means that London copper plate makers had reached the French market and possibly other European countries too. One nineteenth century English copper plate maker, John Sellers of Sheffield, even extended his enterprise to America. Sellers was a manufacturer of cutlery and made steel and copper plates for engravers from his base in Sheffield but the firm also had an office in New York to supply the American market. The plate maker’s mark ‘JOHNSELLERS | SHEFFIELD’ with a symbol of a dagger running through a letter ‘S’ (perhaps the initial of JS), appears on both English and American plates, such as the steel plates for Albert Smith’s The Pottleton Legacy (published in London, 1849; Houghton) engraved by Phiz (Hablot Knight Browne), and The Battle of Bunker’s Hill (Huntington) by the American engraver George Perine (1837–1885) after John Trumbull. However, amongst the copper plate makers of the early and mid-nineteenth century, the Pontifex firm remained one of the biggest in Britain.

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The Pontifexs were a family from Buckinghamshire. According to London trade directories of the time and their family history,9 the original William Pontifex took over the firm of Richard Jones through a marriage connection. Richard Jones was a copper plate maker based at 47 and 48 Shoe Lane, Fleet Street from 1772 to 1788.10 The mark of JONES NO 48 | SOHO LONDON appears on four plates attributed to Blake for Gough’s Sepulchral Monuments (1786) (Queen Philippa, Edward III, Richard II, Queen Anne) probably executed when Blake was an apprentice to James Basire. His copper plate for The Beggar’s Opera after Hogarth (etched in 1788, published in 1790) bears three marks of JONES NO 4[7] | SHOE LANE LONDON. The copper plate Blake used for Songs of Innocence (1789) pl. 2 (the frontispiece) on the recto, and Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) pl. 28 (frontispiece to Songs of Experience) on the verso, also appears to have this plate maker’s mark.11 Another copper used by the engraver John Hall for the Portrait of Issac Barre (1787) after C. G. Stuart at the V & A also bear three stamped marks of JONES NO 4[8] | SHOE LANE LONDON on its verso. Something of the intense industry surrounding these makers and the problems of disentangling their histories can be judged by the fact that another copper plate maker also called Jones, at the nearby Gray’s Inn Lane, at the same period was probably a different firm from that of Richard Jones’s. The mark of JONES NO 19 | GRAYS INN LANE | HOLBORN is stamped on the plate of Rubens’s Wife (1782), engraved by Richard Earlom (1743–1822) after Peter Paul Rubens (V&A).12 William Pontifex (1746–1824) married Hannah Loughton of London, whose sister Elizabeth married Robert Jones, a silversmith in London. Robert’s brother Richard was the copper plate maker of 47 and 48 Shoe Lane. With this connection, the two sons of William Pontifex, William and Daniel, were sent to learn the business of coppersmith and silversmith respectively.13 William Pontifex (1766–1851) was sent to Richard Jones to start his apprenticeship in 1780. Richard Jones died in 1788, shortly before the end of William’s seven year apprenticeship, and the business in Shoe Lane passed on to his widow Mary. When William finished his apprenticeship, he contracted with Mary Jones to take over the business on condition of paying her annuities. The name of the firm became Jones and Pontifex until 1793 when Mary Jones died. Therefore, copper plates with the name of ‘Jones and Pontifex’ can be firmly dated to 1788–1793. Blake’s Europe (etched 1794 on the versos of plates for America) (I) pls. 1–2, 4–18 show the mark of JONES AND | PONTIFEX No 47 | SHOE LANE LONDON, which was stamped on the versos of plates for America (etched 1793).14 Trade cards in the family’s own records for this period show both the names of ‘Jones’ and ‘Jones and Pontifex’. One contains particularly interesting information about the making of plates, which describes ‘A new Invented Machine for polishing copper plates for callico printers, engravers, which makes

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them exceeding smooth and level by Jones, Copper plate maker, No. 47 and 48 Shoe Lane, London’.15 This confirms that the copper plate making process for engraving and printing had indeed improved since the late eighteenth century and much more during the nineteenth century due to the invention of new machines in the wider context of the Industrial Revolution. After Mary Jones’s death in 1793, the firm changed its name to William Pontifex. The stipple plates of François Bartolozzi’s (1728–1813) Portrait of A. N. Caracci (1796) and the Head of an old man after Annibale Carracci at the V & A, with the plate maker’s mark of PONTIFEX | 46 SHOE LANE | LONDON on their versos, were likely to have been made during this period of time. The business developed quickly and was obviously profitable. In 1804, William employed twenty-five men at 46, 47 and 48 Shoe Lane, and seventeen men at 139 High Holborn. The records of the Armourers’ and Brasiers’ Company show that William Pontifex had thirty-three apprentices between 1793 and 1824. The London Directories of 1799 and 1800 show that William Pontifex was in business at 47 Shoe Lane as Coppersmith and Brasier, and in 1805 William Pontifex and Co. were Coppersmiths at 98 Houndsditch and 46, 47 Shoe Lane. In 1806, William formed a partnership with his younger brother Russell Pontifex (1775– 1857). In 1811, William made his son Edmund (1791–1870) a partner. A year later, the partnership with Russell ended, possibly because of disruptions caused by the entry of Edmund into the firm. According to this reconstruction of the firm’s history, the plate maker’s mark of WILLM & RUSSL | PONTIFEX & COMPY | NOS 46, 47 & 48 | SHOE LANE, LONDON on the versos of J. M. W. Turner’s plate for Liber Studiorum 73: Glaucus and Scylla (MFA, Boston), and Blake’s Urizen Trampling on Satan (Pierpont Morgan Library, New York), can be firmly dated to 1804–1812. The firm under William and Russell Pontifex with another partner E. Goldwin had very large premises. An aquatint drawn and published by Pyne & Nattes, and aquatinted by I. Hill in the John Johnson Collection of Bodleian Library, Oxford, shows the ‘Interior of the Copper & Brass Works belonging to Wm. & Russell Pontifex, & E. Goldwin’.16 The image shows a large warehouse and workshop with many workers, machines and copper products. The publisher Pyne & Nattes produced many etchings at the beginning of the nineteenth century which documented contemporary trades and this print gives a valuable demonstration of the scale and particular significance of the Pontifex firm in the copper trade at the time. Russell Pontifex started another firm at Lisle Street, and the London Directory for 1820 shows him at 23 Lisle Street, Leicester Square, as a coppersmith, brasier and copper plate maker, and in 1822 at 22 Lisle Street. His son Russell (1811–95) continued the business in St. Martin’s Lane, and grandson Russell Frederick (1837–1914) carried on to run the business. The plate maker’s mark of

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R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON is shown on the versos of Blake’s plates for the Book of Job title-page, pls. 2–13, 15, 17–21 (1826; BMPD) and the seven Dante plates (1827; NGA Washington DC). Three cancelled etching plates by Andrew Geddes, Mr. & Mrs. Terry, Cavalier, Richmond Park (?) (1808–44; BMPD), also bear the same plate-maker’s mark. At the same time, William Pontifex Sr. and his son Edmund were still at 46–8 Shoe Lane, taking William’s second son William Jr. (1793–1870) and his first apprentice James Wood as partners. In 1820, William Sr retired leaving the firm to his two sons Edmund and William. The London Directory of 1820 records ‘William Pontifex, Sons and Co. 46, 47, 48 Shoe Lane, Coppersmiths’; ‘William Pontifex, Son and Wood, 48 and 49 Shoe Lane, engine and pump makers’. In 1823, they were combined under the name of ‘E. and W. Pontifex and James Wood’. The mark of WILLM PONTIFEX. SON & CO | NO 46 | SHOE LANE LONDON on the verso of George Cruikshank’s plate of Mathews as the old Scotch Woman for the frontispiece of the first collection of The Theatrical Olio (1820; Houghton), and a similar mark of WILLIAM PONTIFEX SON & C | NO 46 | SHOE LANE LONDON on the verso of the plate, Susan Countess of Gilford, engraved by William Raddon (fl. 1816–62) after Richard Cosway (1840) in my personal collection, are most likely from the period of 1813–1823 of the firm. The brothers Edmund and William Pontifex expanded the business to machinery in copper and iron, and brass and lead material for several different industries. The premises were tripled in size and the profit increased. In 1843, Edmund and William set up another factory in the South of Clyde Wharf, the Millwall Lead Works at 308 Westferry Road, with a wide range of metal business.17 The Work was taken over in 1888 by Locke, Lancaster, and a few years later by W. W. Johnson & Sons Ltd. Edmund Pontifex (1791–1870) retired in 1853, his young son Edmund Alfred Pontifex (1828–1909) succeeded. In the 1880s, the firm suffered from financial mismanagement, and was sold to Haslem and Co. of Derby. The firm took the name of Pontifex and Wood in addition to its own. Later the name of Haslem and Co. was sold, and the firm retained the name of Pontifex. The mortgagees also bought the Henry Pontifex and Son of Kings Cross, and their name was adopted. There are, however, no Pontifexe’s descendants in it. It was also called Pontifex and Woods, and the Farringdon Works. A map in the Sales Catalogue of Houses, Estates, etc. 1890–1892 in the British Library shows the Plan of … Pontifex & Woods Engineering Works, situate in Shoe Lane, in the City of London. For sale … 1890. The engraving gives the front view of Pontifex & Wood’s Engineering Works, with the words, ‘PONTIFEX & WOOD LIMITED ENGINEERS | FARRINGDON WORKS’, ‘All those important Freehold & leasehold properties consisting of the well-known Works of Messrs. Pontifex & Woods, Limited, Engineers & coppersmiths, situated in

Figure 6: Plate maker’s mark on the title page of Blake’s Job copper plate (BMPD). Photograph taken by Mei-Ying Sung, image reproduction courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

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Shoe Lane, City of London, possessing the important frontage of about 147 feet to Shoe Lane, with a return frontage of about 106 feet to Plumtree Court, and occupying the very large area of something like 23,700 square feet’. This is the scale of the firm at the end of the Pontifex family’s management. In 1911, the premises on Shoe Lane were completely destroyed by fire, and a new Pontifex factory built in Birmingham. New office accommodation was built on the old site of Shoe Lane, called ‘Pontifex House’. The brewery side of the business used the name H. Pontifex and Co. at Manchester Square in London in the 1940s.18 The novelist Henry Green (1905–1973), real name Henry Vincent Yorke, worked in the family firm of H. Pontifex & Sons in Birmingham during early twentieth century and World War II, and was a former chairman of the British Chemical Plant Manufacturers Association. The current firm director Matthew Yorke of the H. Pontifex & Sons at Pepper Road in Leeds, which moved from Birmingham some years ago, is obviously Henry Yorke’s descendant. The house opposite St. Andrew’s church in the Shoe Lane where Pontifex Sons & Wood and later Farringdon Works occupied in the nineteenth century was a large historical house. The house was an ancient building, and was called ‘Holborn’ or ‘Oldbourne Hall’.19 It was the old Manor House of the Manor of Holborn, descending from Strange and Stanleys, Earls of Derby. At the end of the sixteenth century it was known as Derby House. An engraving, engraved and designed by Banks and published by R. Wilkinson 1st January 1823 in volume 2 of the Londina Illustrata. (volume 1 in 1819 edition), shows the front view of the house and an elaborate ceiling inside. The caption reads, ‘View of Oldbourn-Hall and Ceiling. Situated in the East side of Shoe Lane in the Parish of St. Andrew Holborn / in the occupation of Messrs. Pontifex sons and Wood Copper and Brass Founders’. The front view of the house has three triangular roofs and two square terraces on each side, all with four floors. The ceiling referred to here is an elaborate Jacobean ceiling in the principal room of the house and is illustrated in the book. It has royal arms, medallions and the date of ‘1617’. There were speculations that the house was one of the palaces of James I, but there is no evidence that it was ever occupied by him.20 Unfortunately, the house was demolished after Pontifex’s residence there, and nothing was left for the present day. However, the scale and the style of the house Pontifex owned demonstrate the prosperity of the family and firm in the nineteenth century. In other words, the narrative history of the Pontifex family and their successive enterprises, almost entirely derived from the original copper business – although their brewery indicates their propensity for industry and lateral thinking, marks them out as a significant set of family-based industrialists. If William Blake’s use of their copper plates is difficult to reconstruct now, it remains significant that their existence manifested itself as more than simply a supplier of artists’ materi-

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als. The Pontifexes, like Blake, were part of a recognizable contemporary culture of industry, application and some measure of innovation. As well as being suppliers to important artists, they were in some senses part of their recognizable contemporary social and religious milieu. The Pontifex family had a strong religious background. According to David Hughson’s London (1805–9), Oldbourne Hall in Holborn was used for a dissenting meeting house in 1807 before becoming a coal shed and broker’s shop, prior to its being passed to Pontifex.21 The nearby Scottish Hospital on Cranecourt near the south end of Fetter-lane had an adjoining chapel, which was also used for a congregation of dissenters during 1820s and 30s.22 This tells us that not only the Pontifex’s house had a history of dissenters’ use, but the nearby area also had a dissenters’ community at this period of time. In the third edition of John Skepp’s Divine Energy (1815), a ‘Russell Pontifex’ was mentioned as a Deacon of the Baptist Church, Church Street, Blackfriars Road, Surrey.23 Due to the rarity of the family name, this is likely to be the same Russell Pontifex (1775–1857) of the ‘William & Russell Pontifex’ firm on Shoe Lane. At the time, Russell had left the copper plate firm on the Shoe Lane where he worked in partnership with his brother William Pontifex (1766–1851), and possibly already established the other firm at the Lisle Street.24 Curiously, John Skepp’s Divine Energy was edited, revised and published by James Upton, whose portrait was engraved by Blake and John Linnell (1818– 9).25 James Upton (1760–1834) was the Pastor of the Baptist Church at the Blackfriars Road, only across the river Thames to the south from Shoe Lane where the Pontifex’s family firm was situated. The portrait of James Upton was engraved by Blake and John Linnell after Linnell’s design. The engraving itself, even disregarding its remarkable associations, provides a reminder of how different states of prints denote the several stages engravers worked through with the copper plate in order to finish the engraving ready for the press. The Upton portrait engraving has three states, the first with no words engraved, the second with the inscription: ‘PAINTED AND ENGRAVED BY JNO. LINNELL ⏐ JAMES UPTON ⏐ Pastor of the Baptist Church Meeting in Church Street Blackfriars Road’ together with the incomplete imprint: ‘London Published June 1st 1819 by’. The third state has the full imprint: ‘London Published July 1st 1819 by R Pontifex Lisle Street’.26 Although Blake’s name is not mentioned on the print, it is certain he executed some parts of the engraving and the circumstances are well documented. Linnell wrote in his journal that he had gone ‘to Mr Blake (Evening) delivered to Mr Blake the picture of Mr Upton & the Copper Plate– to begin the engraving’.27 It was Blake’s first job from Linnell’s commission after they had become acquainted with each other. Linnell’s manuscript Autobiography (in the possession of John S. Linnell) described: ‘At Rathbone place 1818 … here I first became acquainted with William Blake … We soon became intimate

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& I employed him to help me with an engraving of my portrait of Mr Upton a Baptist preacher which he was glad to do having scarcely enough employment to live by at the prices he could obtain’.28 John Linnell’s Leger for 1816–48, an account book in a private collection (Ivimy MSS),29 records in June 1816 a payment from ‘Mr Pontifex for Mr Upton’s Church’ ‘to a Painting of Mr Upton Pastor of the church Meeting at Black Friars—as pr[ivate] agr[eement]. Plate Engraved Do from the above—’ 30 Linnell’s journal, also in the Ivimy MSS, has an entry on Tuesday 23 June 1818, noting ‘recd a Copper Plate from Mr Pontifex for to Engrave Mr Uptons Portrait on–’.31 The ‘Mr Pontifex’ referred to is very likely Russell Pontifex, who was the Deacon of the Baptist Church on Blackfriars Road as well as a copper plate maker on Lisle Street. Linnell wrote in his journal: Sat 12 [September] 32… Mr Blake Brought a proof of Mr Upton’s ⏐ Plate ⏐ left the Plate & named 15£ as the ⏐ Price of what was already done by him – ⏐…⏐ Mr Farr – Came from Mr Pontifex & Paid me 10£ – on acct. ⏐ of Mr Upton’s Picture – Sat 19 [September] Begun upon Mr Upton’s Plate ⏐ Engraved all day on it…33

According to this journal, Linnell worked on ‘Plate of Mr Upton’ from 19 September 1818 to March 1819, and proofs were pulled in March and May 1819. On 20 March 1819 Linnell went to ‘Mr Pontifex with Mr Upton’s Plate– ⏐left it for the writing engraver’. Writing engravers specialized in engraving letters instead of images, usually receiving the copper plate from the engraver when it was in an advanced state and adding titles, names of designer, engraver and publisher as well as the place and date of publication. On 15 May 1819 he went to the copperplate-printer James Lahee, ‘for Proofs of Mr Upton… to Mr Sawyer [possibly another printer] for Proof of Upton Plate–’. On the 21st of May he went ‘to Mr Pontifex with two proofs of Mr Upton == approved —’. James Lahee (fl. c.1810–c.1852) in Castle Street (off Oxford Street),34 was a professional copper plate printer, someone whose trade was to expertly print from copper plates which had been brought to him by publishers and print dealers as well as engravers. On occasion, as with the example of the visionary anti-Swedenborgian copper plate printer William Bryan, they can sometimes be identified as sharing similar religious or cultural aspirations to Blake.35 On 28 May 1819, Linnell went ‘to Mr Pontifex– agreed to endeavour to give more of flesh color to the face of Mr Upton’s Plate – & then it should be considered finished –’. 36 Linnell had the commission from Russell Pontifex for both painting and engraving a portrait of Upton. The request for more ‘flesh color’ probably refers to adding engraved lines to make the print more finished, rather than adding colour to the painting. The following record in Linnell’s journal proves that the Mr Pontifex who commissioned Linnell for Upton’s portrait and engraving is indeed Russell Pon-

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tifex the copper plate maker at the Lisle Street. Linnell wrote that on 17 June 1819 he went ‘to Mr Pontifex deld Proof of Mr Upton’, and on 30 June 1819 he ‘Sent by A[?]. Varley, The Copper Plate of Mr Uptons Portrait to Mr Pontifex’, with the imprint of ‘London Published July 1st 1819 by R Pontifex Lisle Street’.37 On 17 July 1819, Linnell settled with Pontifex for the Upton plate, and on 26 August he received £40 from Pontifex. 38 The multiple roles Russell Pontifex played in producing the ‘James Upton’ painting and engraving were because he acted as Linnell’s patron for the commission of Upton portrait, Deacon of the Baptist Church, publisher, printseller and copper plate supplier. By contrast, Blake’s role in the ‘James Upton’ engraving could best be described as assistant to Linnell. A few years later, in a move which suggests a manifold change in their relationship as they became more familiar with one another, Blake undertook the entire job of designing and engraving The Book of Job at Linnell’s commission. On May 2 1823, Linnell bought eighteen copper plates from Russell Pontifex for Blake to engrave The Illustrations of the Book of Job. And in 1825 he bought two more copper plates for Job without recording the plate maker’s name.39 These later two copper plates are also most likely to have been sourced from R. Pontifex, because nineteen of the twenty-two copper plates for the Job illustrations in BMPD have the mark of ‘R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON’ on them: the title page, Plates 2–13, 15, 17–21. The same plate maker’s mark is also shown on the seven Dante plates engraved by Blake for Linnell in 1826, now in NGA Washington DC. John Linnell’s religious views may also have linked him to Pontifex. He was brought up as a member of the Episcopal Church, but became a Baptist at 19.40 Through the introduction of his tutor John Varley’s brother Cornelius Varley, Linnell came to know John Martin, pastor of the Baptist Church, Keppel Street, Bloomsbury. Linnell was so pleased with the eloquent preacher that he converted to Baptist. He painted a portrait of John Martin and joined the Baptist community in 1812.41 However, Linnell held his own views to the doctrines and belief of Christianity.42 He read systematically. While he held with the Baptists, he did so only because they seemed to be closest to the truth of the New Testament. He thought that in their view and practice of baptism they were the only sect who had the sanction of the Gospel. He was very firm in this doctrine of the Baptists. Another view he held was that the Anglican sacramental ceremony was a mere alteration of the Roman Catholic Mass, and not an original institution. In other words, Linnell’s religious views were just as doctrinally distinctive as Blake’s, although very different. Remarkably, such was his distinctive opposition to all forms of priesthood, Linnell travelled to Scotland for his wedding in 1817 because he decided to marry Mary Palmer using Scottish civil rites rather than a church ceremony which would have been

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insisted upon in England.43 In accordance with these beliefs, after 1827, he ceased to attend the Baptist Church in Keppel Street, preferring to remain at home to worship God in his own way.44 Like Blake, Linnell held strongly dissenting views and it may have been at points of shared values or beliefs that both men found it possible to have a beneficial association with Baptists of Pontifex’s chapel. The acquaintanceship between Russell Pontifex and John Linnell, as well as Pontifex’s commission to Linnell for James Upton’s portrait, probably emerged through his movements in the Baptist communities at Keppel Street and Blackfriars Street, both of which were in the near vicinity. It also seems likely that Blake too would have been aware of these specific Baptist groups, even if he didn’t share their religious views. Linnell’s painting of the Bloomsbury Baptist pastor John Martin’s portrait in 1812 could have also spread his name in the community, thus inspired Russell Pontifex to commission the portrait of James Upton in 1819. Something of the solidity of this particular belief community can be judged from the fact that Russell Pontifex not only remained a firm Baptist throughout his life but his beliefs were also passed down to his descendants. In their later family history, Russell’s second son Russell Pontifex (1811–1895) was also appointed Deacon in 1854 at Gorsley Baptist Church in Herefordshire, and another William Pontifex (1839–1921) in the line of the Russell family served as Baptist Minister at Ledbury, Herefordshire, for some time.

Copper theft The Pontifex’s are also particularly interesting to historians of printing surfaces because the scale of their enterprises has meant that the firm occasionally surfaced into public interest on account of their activities within their trade. For example, the name of Pontifex sometimes entered into public records because of the theft of copper. This tells us something not only about the actual market price of copper at various times, but also throws light on some of the movements, personnel and structures involved in the Pontifex business. Not least, G.E. Bentley Jr’s recent (sometimes admittedly hypothetical,45 extrapolation of the cost of Blake’s expenditure on copper46 can now be given a firmer grounding, although not for the crucial 1790s when Blake was developing his methods of relief etching and colour printing from copper. On 21 of February 1810, a man called Martin Costello stood trial at the Old Bailey for the theft of copper from William and Russell Pontifex’s premises at Shoe Lane weighing 18 lbs and valued (either by the court or Pontifex) at £1l/4S. John Wood, then a foreman to William and Russell Pontifex, was one of the witnesses who testified the copper was the property of the Pontifex firm. The prisoner, who had

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been caught by a watch patrol, was convicted and sentenced to be transported for seven years.47 Another trial on the 5 of December 1810 was of a twenty-three-year-old man named Joseph Gater, also for the theft of copper. He was a journeyman to William Pontifex and was alleged to have stolen twenty copper rivets, value thirty shillings, from the factory. William Pontifex’s son, Edmund, stood as a witness to identify the prisoner. Two apprentices of Pontifex, along with a police officer, acted as witnesses to the theft. The prisoner was also found guilty and sentenced to be transported for seven years.48 In another trial of two men for stealing copper plates, Russell Pontifex of Lisle Street served as a witness rather than as a victim of crime. The trial was on 22 May 1822 of two men, James Edwards and James Flawn, indicted for stealing eighteen copper plates, value £100, from the copper plate engraver Joseph Matthews of Hunt’s court, Leicester field. This case is important because it implies a value, for each copper plate, of around £5. 10s. 6d although the size and weight of the individual plates cannot be determined. Another man in this case, William Hammerton, was on trial for receiving the copper plates, knowing them to have been stolen. Russell Pontifex gave a statement to the court that he was ‘a manufacturer of copper plates for engravers, and live[s] in Lisle-street, Soho’, and stated that some time ago Hammerton had asked him what price he would give for old copper plates. Russell Pontifex told him what he expected to pay but Hammerton never brought him any copper. The verdict for Edwards was death, but Flawn was found not guilty because he was not in the house and did not carry the copper. Hammerton, the receiver of the stolen goods, was transported for fourteen years.49 These examples tell us much about copper plates and related products, whether new or old, and that they were considered both valuable and desirable at the time. The copper industry was a significant business in London, and the scale of Pontifex’s firm at Shoe Lane was large enough for it to have become a target for thieves. In the third court case, Russell Pontifex’s role as a witness who valued the copper demonstrates his role as an expert witness called on by the Old Bailey to provide detailed and definitive information.

Benjamin Whittow and George Harris Blake’s other important copper plate maker and supplier was the firm of Benjamin Whittow and G. Harris. According to Bentley,50 the rectos of plates 33,51 72,52 10053 for Jerusalem (1804–20) show the mark of WHITTOW & HARRIS ⏐ NO. 31 SHOE LANE ⏐ LONDON, revealing that Blake used the backs of copper plates for etching. Pl. 71 of Jerusalem shows part of the mark of [WHITT]OW & SON ⏐ [SH]OE LANE ⏐ LONDON.54 Pl. 1 of

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The Book of Job55and the plate for Canterbury Pilgrims (1820; Yale University Art Gallery) also show G HARRIS ⏐ NO. 31 SHOE LANE ⏐ LONDON on their versos. The firm was originally under the partnership of Whittow and Large.56 Thomas Large was a copper plate printer at 1 Bango’s Court, Shoe Lane in 1772 before he entered into partnership with Whittow. In contemporary London trade directories,57 Whittow and Large are recorded as copper plate makers with premises at 48 Shoe Lane during 1776–80. Benjamin Whittow worked alone in the business at 43 Shoe Lane during 1785–89.58 The name of the firm also appears as ‘Whittow & Son’ at 43 Shoe Lane during 1789–97, before moving to 31 Shoe Lane, where they stayed during 1798–1805. Benjamin Whittow’s firm obviously occupied both Nos. 43 and 44 Shoe Lane. Two copper plates in the Lewis Walpole Library have his marks, one at 43 and the other at 44 Shoe Lane. The mark of ‘B WHITTOW | NO. 44 SHOE LANE | LONDON’ was stamped on the verso of the copper plate for Nap in Town and Nap in the Country (1785), engraved by Thomas Rowlandson; and ‘B WHITTOW N. 43 | SHOE LANE | HOLBORN ⋅ LONDON’, surmounted with a crown symbol, is on the verso of the plate for the portrait of Horace Walpole (1796), engraved by John Barlow after Reynolds. According to Bentley, Blake’s Jerusalem (1804) pl.71, probably etched on the verso of Jerusalem pl. 77, has the mark of WHITTOW & SON | SHOE LANE | LONDON (Bentley 2000, 236; 2007, 756). The stamp of B WHITTOW & SON | NO. 43 SHOE LANE | HOLBORN LONDON with a crown symbol is also found on the versos of Andrew Geddes’s cancelled plate Portrait of Alex Nasmyth (1800–20; BMPD), and William Russell Birch’s A View from Mr Cosway’s Breakfast-room, Pall Mall, with the Portrait of Mrs. Cosway (1789; private collection) after William Hodges and Richard Cosway.59 Whittow took his son-in-law60 George Harris as partner in the 31 Shoe Lane business during 1805–07. In trade directories, George Harris appeared alone at 31 Shoe Lane during 1808–33, but he was in partnership with Whittow during 1816-22, and with William Eastwood in 1826. Eastwood took over the business at 31 Shoe Lane from 1833 to 1840 before moving to 4 Harp Alley, Shoe Lane.61 The mark of WHITTOW & HARRIS | NO 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON is found on Blake’s Jerusalem (1804), Plates 33, 72 and 100 (possibly etched on the back of Jerusalem pls. 73, 10, 16),62 Schiavonetti’s four plates for The Grave after Blake: Death of the Strong Wicked Man, The Soul exploring the recesses of the grave, Death of the Good Old Man, The Reunion of the Soul & the Body (1808; NGA Washington DC), and Thomas Rowlandson’ The Willing Fair, or Any Way to Please (1795–1815; BMPD). G HARRIS | No 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON is also stamped on the versos of Blake’s Book of Job pl. 1 (1826; BMPD)

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and Canterbury Pilgrims (1820; Yale University Art Gallery), J. M. W. Turner’s Liber Studiorum 79: Ploughing, Eton second plate (MFA Boston), R. Cooper’s Mrs Anne Damer after Angelica Kauffman (1810; Lewis Walpole Library) as well as on Thomas Rowlandson’s seven etched plates with erotic subjects, Rural Felicity, or Love in a Chaise, New Feats of Horsemanship, The Country Squire new mounted, The Wanton Frolic, The Hairy Prospect, or the Devil in a Fright, The Sanctified Sinner, The Curious Wanton (1795–1815; BMPD). The mark of WM EASTWOOD | 4-HARP-ALLEY | SHOE LANE LONDON is on the copper for Portrait of John O’Neill, aged 64, possibly engraved by Cruikshank (1842; Houghton). Benjamin Whittow’s ex-partner Thomas Large had a separate firm at nearby 15 Giltspur Street during 1784–92, and later appeared to move to the Little New Street, Shoe Lane. The mark of T. LARGE-JUNR | LITTLE-NEW-ST | SHOE LANE | LONDON is shown on the verso of J. M. W. Turner’s plate for Liber Studiorum 79: Ploughing Eton (the rejected first plate) (1806–19; MFA Boston). A copper plate engraved by George Thomas Doo (1800–86) after Henry Wyatt, pupil of Thomas Lawrence, named Portrait of a Girl or The Fair Forester (1835; V&A), has the mark of J. LARGE & CO. | 16 LITTLE NEW ST. | SHOE LANE LONDON on its back. Another plate engraved by Doo, the Portrait of Culvier (1841; V&A) after Pickersgill has the mark with only one word LARGE on its back.

Other copper plate makers Other plate makers’ marks frequently found on copper and steel plates in major collections are nineteenth century firms based in London, most importantly W. Hiam, Hughes & Kimber, A. Swanson, and B. Winkles. Many of the copper plates engraved by George Cruikshank in the Houghton Library, Harvard University, were made by W. Hiam, Hughes & Kimer, and B. Winkles. HUGHES & KIMBER | MANUFACTURERS | LONDON-E.C, in particular, appears on the majority of Cruikshank’s plates in that collection. Some of these examples are the frontispieces, title-pages, or illustrations of The Metropolis of England Displayed (1812), Fairburn’s Authentic Account of the Assassination of Spencer Perceval (1812), Fairburn (Senior) Dashing Song Book for 1813 (1813), The Annals of Gallantry (1814), Guy Mannering (1816), The Wits Magazine and Attic Miscellany (1818), Kenilworth: or the Golden Days of Queen Bess, Part I. (1823), Othello and Desdémona (1823), and Memoirs of Harriette Wilson (1825). Hughes and Kimber also manufactured printing presses in the nineteenth century, one of which is in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia.63 In the 1880s, Hughes and Kimber was referred to as a supplier of printers’ tools and machines at West Harding Street, Fetter Lane.64

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W HIAM | 9 RATCLIFF ROW | BATH ST CITY RD | LONDON is on Cruikshank’s plate for Henry Mayhew’s The Good Genius (1847; Houghton) and also the four plates for John James Audubon’s Birds of America (1828–36; private owner, plus ‘White-Headed Pigeon’ at Huntington) engraved by W. H. Lizars & Robert Havell. Hiam’s mark seems to have changed to a simpler format later, as the mark of W HIAM | LONDON on Cruikshank’s The Backslider for the frontispiece of The Temperance Offering, ed. by James Silk Buckingham (1852; Houghton), and the frontispiece of E. W. Cox’s Twilight Tales (1855; Houghton). Another plate maker with the name of ‘Hughes’ were in business at 14 Lombard S., Fleet Street and later at Peterborough Court, Fleet Street. It is not known whether this Hughes was the one who later joined with Kimber. The mark of HUGHES | 14 LOMBARD S- | FLEET ST is on Cruikshank’s plate of A Trump after Crawguill’s design (1825?; Houghton), and HUGHES | PETERBOH CT | FLEET ST | LONDON on Cruikshank’s plate for the frontispiece & illustration p. 42 in J. Sheridan Knowles’s The Wife, or Woman as They are: A Domestic Drama (1835; Houghton). B. Winkles at the Northampton Street, Islington, was a later plate supplier for Cruikshank in the 1830s and 40s. The mark of B WINKLES | NORTHAMPTON ST | ISLINGTON | LONDON is on the versos of Cruikshank’s plates for The Secret for Bentley’s Miscellany (1837), The Autobiography of a Joke for Bentley’s Miscellany (1837), Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi by Charles Dickens (1838), The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman by Charles Dickens (1839), The Two Interviews for Bentley’s Miscellany (1842), Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (1848) (all in Houghton). The same mark also appears on some plates engraved by the illustrator of the Punch magazine, John Leech (1817–64), for example, The Month by Albert Smith (1851), Dashes of American Humour (Yankee Stories) by Henry Howard Paul (1852), The Great Highway: A story of the world’s struggles by S. W. Fullom (1854) (all in Houghton). A. Swanson of London was another late nineteenth century copper plate supplier, and the mark of A. SWANSON | LONDON is stamped on the famous illustrator Phiz’s (Hablot Knight Browne, 1815–82) steel plates for The Pottleton Legacy (1849; Houghton) and David Copperfield (1850; Pierpont Morgan). H. K. Browne also used plates made by John Sellers of Sheffield, and the mark of JOHN SELLERS | SHEFFIELD is found on some plates he engraved for The Pottleton Legacy (1849; Houghton), and a mark with different wording JOHNSELLERS ⏐ 151 ARUNDEL STREET⏐ SHEFFIELD on a later plate by F. Holl, Portrait of a clergyman (1884; V&A). The diversity of the copper plate manufacturers referred to above, together with the intricacy of the manifestations of their businesses, tells us much about the scale and economic alliances of these industries supplying London’s engrav-

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ing trade. For example, Hughes and Kimber’s business in making printing plates was combined with manufacturing printers’ tools and presses; Pontifex extended their market from a printing plate supplier to other metal and industry suppliers as well as machine makers; while John Sellers’s international firm crossed the boundary of the print trade and moved into the cutlery making business. The change in moving from supplying light artisan craft needs to those of something approaching heavy industrial demand demonstrated a changing era for these firms. The change of their names and addresses, as well as their partners, often narrates a dynamic shift within the trade and its cultural dimensions. Pontifex was a particularly interesting example of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century copper plate maker, whose relationship with artists, engravers, printers, booksellers, printsellers and publishers formed a distinctive network within the London book and print trade. The story between Russell Pontifex, John Linnell and Blake with their shared religious and artistic interests tells us how a seemingly pure commercial manufacturer could be involved with and influence the development of art and ideas. Copper plate makers played a crucial role in the book and print trades before the twentieth century when hand engraving was the main method of reproduction. In the late eighteenth century and nineteenth century, the London book trade centred in the Paternoster Row area to the north of St. Paul’s cathedral. But the Strand and Fleet Street environs had even more members in the book trade.65 In Blake’s time, most of the plate makers set up their business on the north side of River Thames from Holborn area down to Fleet Street, and especially in Shoe Lane. It became a thriving area for all sorts of profession related to book trade, such as booksellers, printsellers, engravers, printers, press makers, bookbinders, and stationers.66 Blake lived in the nearby Soho, South Molton Street to the west, Lambeth across the river, and particularly Fountain Court at Strand in his later life. As Worrall points out in his essay, ‘Blake in Theatreland: Fountain Court and its Environs’,67 here just off the Strand, Blake was among the fusion of printmaking circles near densely populated location associated with actors, singers, writers, artists, engravers, printers, and theatre goers. Copper plate makers in the nearby Shoe Lane were all part of this dynamic culture, perhaps even the most fundamental part, who supplied the basic materials for this vibrant print culture. The scale and their reach of national and international levels of the Pontifex firm and its competitors reflect a dynamic economy and vibrant market in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. It also demonstrates the last period of a thriving trade in book and print making before the machine took over the handmade reproduction era. The rise and fall of the copper plate makers echo the history of engraving before photography took its place as a means of reproduction as well as creativity. Their fate was tied with and reflected Blake’s career as a reproductive and original engraver in the last period of the art.

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Tables of Copper Plate Makers and their Marks Jones & Pontifex (Richard) Jones Jones Jones & Pontifex William Pontifex (Sr.) (17661851) William Pontifex William Pontifex & Co. William & Russell Pontifex

47 Shoe Lane, Fleet Street 47, 48 Shoe Lane 47 Shoe Lane 46–7 Shoe Lane 47 Shoe Lane 98 Houndsditch, 46, 47, 48 Shoe Lane 46–8 Shoe Lane

W. Pontifex Son & Co. William Pontifex, Sons & James Wood

46 Shoe Lane 48, 49 Shoe Lane

William Pontifex, Sons & Co. William Pontifex, Son and Wood E. & W. Pontifex and James Wood

46, 47, 48 Shoe Lane 48, 49 Shoe Lane

William Pontifex ( Jr.)

47 Shoe Lane

Russell Pontifex (1775-1857) Russell Pontifex (1811-1895) Russell Frederick Pontifex (1837-1914)

23 Lisle Street, Leicester Square 22 Lisle Street St. Martin’s Lane

46-49 Shoe Lane

1772–88 1789–93 1794–1805 1799–1800 1805 1804–12 1810 1811 + Edmund Pontifex (1791–1870) 1812 – Russell Pontifex left 1813 1818 James Wood + William Jr. (1793–1870): Holborn → Shoe Lane 1820 – William Sr. retired 1823 1830 – James Wood retired, son James Jr. succeeded 1853 – Edmund Pontifex retired, son Edmund Alfred Pontifex succeeded 1887 – Firm sold to Haslem and Co. of Derby 1841 (+James Wood Jr. -c1880) 1820 1823, 1825–1854

JONES NO 48 | SOHO LONDON William Blake, four Gough plates (Queen Philippa, Edward III, Richard II, Queen Anne) (before c.1779) JONES NO 47 (8) | SHOE LANE LONDON Hall, John (1739–97), Portrait of Issac Barre (1726-1802) (soldier & member of Parliament) after C. G. Stuart (1787) (V&A) William Blake, The Beggar’s Opera after Hogarth (1788, 90) (Houghton) Blake, Songs of Experience (1794) frontispiece JONES AND | PONTIFEX NO 47 | SHOE LANE LONDON

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Blake, Europe: A Prophecy (1794) Plates 1–2, 4–18. (etched on the versos of plates for America) PONTIFEX | 46 SHOE LANE | LONDON Bartolozzi, F. (1728–1813), Portrait of A. N. Caracci, stipple engraving crayon manner (1796) (V&A) Bartolozzi, F., Head of an old man after A. Carracci, stipple copper in crayon manner (1796) (V&A) WILLM & RUSSL | PONTIFEX & COMPY | NOS 46, 47 & 48 | SHOE LANE, LONDON Turner, JMW, Liber Studiorum 73: Glaucus and Scylla (MFA, Boston) Blake & Butts Jr, Urizen Trampling on Satan (Pierpont Morgan Library, NY) R PONTIFEX & C | 22 LISLE STREET | SOHO LONDON William Blake, Book of Job title page, Plates 2–13, 15, 17–21 (1826) (BMPD) William Blake, seven Dante plates (1827) (NGA Washington DC) Andrew Geddes, three cancelled plates: Mr. & Mrs. Terry, Cavalier, Richmond Park (1808–44) (BMPD) WILLM PONTIFEX. SON & CO | NO 46 | SHOE LANE LONDON George Cruikshank, Mathews as the old Scotch Woman, the frontispiece of the first collection of The Theatrical Olio (1820) (Houghton) Edward Calvert, The Sheep of his pasture (1827–30), The Bride (1828) (BMPD) WILLIAM PONTIFEX SON & C | NO 46 | SHOE LANE LONDON William Raddon, Susan Countess of Gilford after Richard Cosway (1840) (Mei-Ying Sung collection) Wittow & G. Harris Thomas Large Whittow & Large Benjamin Whittow Whittow & Son Whittow & Son Whittow & Harris G. Harris Harris & Eastwood William Eastwood

1 Bango’s Court, Shoe Lane 48 Shoe Lane 43 Shoe Lane 43 Shoe Lane 31 Shoe Lane 31 Shoe Lane 31 Shoe Lane 31 Shoe Lane 31 Shoe Lane 4 Harp Alley, Shoe Lane

1772 1776–80 1785– c. 1789? 1789–97 1798–1805 1805–7, 1816–22 1808–33 1826 1833–40

B WHITTOW | NO. 44 SHOE LANE | LONDON Rowlandson, Nap in Town and Nap in the Country (1785) (Lewis Walpole Library) B WHITTOW N. 43 | SHOE LANE | HOLBORN ⋅ LONDON (with a crown symbol on top)

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John Barlow, Horace Walpole after Reynolds (1796) (Lewis Walpole Library) B WHITTOW & SON | NO. 43 SHOE LANE | HOLBORN LONDON (with a crown symbol on top) Andrew Geddes, cancelled plate: Portrait of Alex Nasmyth (1800–20) (BMPD) W Birch after W Hodges and R Cosway of A View from Mr Cosway’s Breakfast-room, Pall Mall, with the Portrait of Mrs. Cosway (1789) (Stephen Lloyd collection) WHITTOW & SON | SHOE LANE | LONDON Blake, Jerusalem (1804) Plate c. 71 – verso of Europe: A Prophecy (c. 1794) WHITTOW & HARRIS | NO 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON Blake, Jerusalem (1804), Plates 33, 72, 100 Schiavonetti, Blair’s The Grave (1808) (NGA Washington DC) Thomas Rowlandson, etched plate with erotic subject: The Willing Fair, or Any Way to Please (1795-1815) (BMPD) G HARRIS | NO 31 SHOE LANE | LONDON William Blake, Book of Job pl. 1 (1826) (BMPD) William Blake, Canterbury Pilgrims (1820) (Yale University Art Gallery) Turner, JMW, Liber Studiorum 79, Ploughing, Eton second plate (MFA, Boston) R. Cooper, Mrs Anne Damer after Angelica Kauffman (1810) (Lewis Walpole Library) Thomas Rowlandson, seven etched plates with erotic subjects: Rural Felicity, or Love in a Chaise, New Feats of Horsemanship, The Country Squire new mounted, The Wanton Frolic, The Hairy Prospect, or the Devil in a Fright, The Sanctified Sinner, The Curious Wanton (1795–1815) (BMPD) WM EASTWOOD | 4-HARP-ALLEY | SHOE LANE LONDON Cruikshank (?), Portrait of John O’Neill, aged 64 (1842) (Houghton) T. LARGE-JUNR | LITTLE-NEW-ST | SHOE LANE | LONDON Turner, JMW, Liber Studiorum 79 – rejected plate (1806–19) (MFA, Boston) J. LARGE & CO. | 16 LITTLE NEW ST. | SHOE LANE LONDON Doo, G. T. (George Thomas, 1800–86), Portrait of a girl (1835) after Henry Wyatt (V&A) LARGE Doo, G. T., Portrait of Culvier (1841) after Pickersgill (V&A) Other Plate Makers W HIAM | 9 RATCLIFF ROW | BATH ST CITY RD | LONDON

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George Cruikshank, page 1 of Henry Mayhew, The Good Genius (1847) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, Duke of Wellington? (Houghton) John James Audubon, 4 plates for Birds of America (1828–36) engraved by W. H. Lizars & Robert Havell (private owner; 1 ‘White-Headed Pigeon’ at Huntington) W HIAM | LONDON George Cruikshank, the frontispiece The Backslider of The Temperance Offering, ed. by James Silk Buckingham, President of the League, London: published for the Committee of the London Temperance League by W. Tweedie, 337 Strand (1852) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, frontispiece of E. W. Cox, Twilight Tales, London: Dean and Son (1855) (Houghton) HUGHES | PETERBOH CT | FLEET ST | LONDON George Cruikshank, frontispiece & illustration p. 42 in J. Sheridan Knowles, The Wife, or Woman as They are: A Domestic Drama, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green and Longman, Paternoster Row (1835) (Houghton) HUGHES | 14 LOMBARD S- | FLEET ST George Cruikshank, A Trump (?) after Crawguill (1825?) (Houghton) HUGHES & KIMBER | MANUFACTURERS | LONDON-E.C George Cruikshank, frontispiece of The Metropolis of England Displayed (1812) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, frontispiece of Fairburn’s Authentic Account of the Assassination of the Right Hon. Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister of the Realm, who was shot, in the lobby of the House of Commons, on Monday, May 11, 1812., London: John Fairburn (1812) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, frontispiece & title-page of Fairburn (Senior) Dashing Song Book for 1813 (1813) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, frontispiece (or a full-page illustration facing p. 320) of Part 5 The Annals of Gallantry (1814) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, title-page of Guy Mannering, the astrologer, or, The prophecy of Meg Merrilies, the gipsey (1816) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, The Wits Magazine and Attic Miscellany, London: Thomas Tegg (1818) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, frontispiece of Kenilworth: or the Golden Days of Queen Bess, Part I. (1823) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, frontispiece of Jealousy: Exemplified in the Awful, Tragical, and Bloody History of the Lives and Untimely Deaths of Othello and Desdémona (1823) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, Plates Illustrative of the Memoirs of Harriette Wilson: including whole length portraits, sketched and coloured from the life, of the Prince

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Esterhazy, Dukes of Devonshire, Argyle, and Wellington, Marquesses Hertford and Worcester, Lord Nugent, Honorables Arthur Upton, and George Lamb, and Thomas Raikes, esq. London : Printed and published by J.J. Stockdale, 24, Opera colonnade (1825) (Houghton) F. W. Pailthorpe (fl. c. 1899), etching of a man as a beggar in a double frame; inscriptions: l. c. below the frame: ‘~Etched by F. W. Pailthorpe from an exceedingly scarce print by / George Cruikshank’ (Houghton) JOHN SELLERS | SHEFFIELD ( John Sellers, cutlery & copper & steel plates manufacturer, 151 Arundel Street, Sheffield, and New York) Browne, Hablot Knight, The Pottleton Legacy (1849) (Houghton) Perine, George after John Trumbull, The Battle of Bunker’s Hill (Huntington) JOHNSELLERS ⏐ 151 ARUNDEL STREET⏐ SHEFFIELD Holl, F., Portrait of a clergyman (1884) (V&A) JONES NO 19 | GRAYS INN LANE | HOLBORN Earlom, Richard (1743-1822), Rubens’s Wife after P. P. Rubens (1782) (V&A) A. SWANSON | LONDON Browne, Hablot Knight, The Pottleton Legacy (1849) (Houghton) Browne, Hablot Knight, David Copperfield (1850) (Pierpont Morgan, NY) B WINKLES | NORTHAMPTON ST | ISLINGTON/ LONDON George Cruikshank, The Secret for Bentley’s Miscellany (1837) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, The Autobiography of a Joke for Bentley’s Miscellany (1837) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi by Charles Dickens (1838) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman by Charles Dickens (1839) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, The Two Interviews for Bentley’s Miscellany (1842) (Houghton) George Cruikshank, Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens (1848) (Houghton) John Leech, The Month by Albert Smith (1851) (Houghton) John Leech, Henry Howard Paul, Dashes of American Humour (Yankee Stories) (1852) (Houghton) John Leech, The Great Highway: A story of the world’s struggles by S. W. Fullom (1854) (Houghton)

5 BLAKE’S VIRGIL WOODCUTS AND THE EARLIEST RE-ENGRAVERS

Although Blake’s reputation as a printmaker has largely been rested on his work in etching and engraving, paradoxically, his influence in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has often stemmed from his single set of woodcuts made in later life, illustrating Robert Thornton’s edition of Virgil. It has been widely recognized that the admirers and followers of Blake known as ‘the Ancients’, who all knew Blake during his lifetime, including members such as John Linnell, Samuel Palmer, George Richmond, and Edward Calvert, achieved their art of spiritual landscapes and figures with inspiration from Blake’s Virgil.1 On Samuel Palmer, they exerted a profound and lasting effect: ‘I sat down with Mr Blake’s Thornton’s Virgil woodcuts before me, thinking to give to their merits my feeble testimony. I happened first to think of their sentiment. They are visions of little dells, and nooks, and corners of Paradise; models of the exquisitest pitch of intense poetry. I thought of their light and shade, … Intense depth, solemnity, and vivid brilliancy only coldly and partially describe them. There is in all such a mystic and dreamy glimmer as penetrates and kindles the inmost soul, and gives complete and unreserved delight, unlike the gaudy daylight of this world’.2 Among the Ancients, Palmer and Calvert followed most closely Blake’s Virgil in their compositions and style. But even Blake’s admirers and followers had mixed and contradictory views when talking about his techniques. For the Ancients, the ‘immortal spirits’3 which ‘move[d] simple souls to tears’ was the creation of Blake’s ‘careless and incorrect’ technique.4 Although Blake’s Virgil has been widely discussed,5 how Blake’s works were viewed in his time has not often been addressed in Blake studies. This chapter examines for the first time an early re-engraved woodblock which can be associated with the early reception of this series located in the Huntington Library. The woodblock is a clear adaptation of one or more Blake’s images from his set for Thornton’s Pastorals of Virgil, appears to be an anonymous re-engraving possibly dating from Blake’s own lifetime and it provides a good indication of contemporary conflicting views surrounding the Virgil woodcuts. – 141 –

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Although mentioned in passing by Robert Essick in his 1991 essay in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 25:3 about his discovery of Blake’s unique relief etched printing of Virgil (now in Essick’s collection), this image has not been shown before (Figure 7). It forms part of an important collection of largely uncatalogued woodblocks held at the Huntington Library.6 The importance of this woodblock can be easily stated. Not only can it be dated at the latest to 1843, long before Blake’s reputation was enhanced by Gilchrist’s biography, there is even some possibility that whoever made it may have had access to Blake’s original drawings for Thornton’s Virgil. In other words, this unidentified early adaptor of Blake’s Virgil can be dated within a date range of c.1821 to 1843. During the summer of 2006 I volunteered at the Huntington to catalogue their woodblock collection which comprises some 3,000–4,000 items. This woodblock is a part a collection of woodblocks Henry E. Huntington bought in 1917 from James Tarbotton Armstrong. Armstrong was an English electrician, inventor, and collector who had moved to the USA. An article, ‘The Romance of the Woodblock’, by Hugh Thompson published in The Bookman (1914), introduces Armstrong’s woodblock collection and claims it to be the largest collection of such items in the world. Thompson claimed that the collection consists of works by a number of famous artists including Thomas Bewick, George Cruikshank, William Morris, George Baxter, and so on. However, my own initial examination of this collection has proved that the claim needs to be treated with caution. As far as the Virgil woodblock after Blake is concerned, the only cataloguing information available consists of what appears to be Armstrong’s original catalogue sold to Huntington with the collection and which Armstrong had evidently made for his own purposes. A number of the woodblocks in the collection, but by no means all, appear to be have been printed by Armstrong to accompany and illustrate his rudimentary two volume catalogue of the collection and must have been put together around the time of the sale to the Huntington in 1917. Some accession letters from him located at the Huntington in the context of the Armstrong collection appear to offer his services to produce a more comprehensive catalogue but this never happened. Unfortunately, Armstrong’s catalogue is full of glaring mistakes. On the first page, for example, he attributed no less than seven woodblocks to ‘William Blake, mystic artist’. However, apart from the No. 2 shown here, none of the others can be associated with Blake’s designs. Despite its anonymous and undated status, the woodblock appears to be an early imitation of Blake’s design and therefore an important example for Blake studies of someone adapting Blake’s most influential images. With the helpful cooperation of the Huntington Library trustee and eminent Blake scholar, Professor Robert N. Essick, we prompted an enquiry to Alan Jutzi, Curator of Rare Books, and after the cleaning away of French chalk powder from the printing

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surface by Huntington conservators, with permission we carried out trial printing from the block at Professor Essick’s house in Altadena, Los Angeles. This Huntington woodblock (30.5×77.5×23 mm) is less in height but slightly greater in width than Blake’s original Virgil No. 2 in BMPD (38×73×23 mm),7 with the same left and right image as Blake’s print, i.e. in reverse when printed on paper. The design is after the second plate of Blake’s original Virgil series, Thenot remonstrates with Colinet, where the two shepherds Colinet and Thenot are conversing in a pastoral background of sheep, a dog and the half rising sun at the back of the distant mountain. The image has been slightly altered from Blake’s design, showing the sun disappearing behind the mountain in the distance, leaving only radiant rays of light. The dog crawling on the left figure’s feet on Blake’s image is shown jumping on this woodblock. It was probably borrowed from the image of a running dog shown on Blake’s Virgil No. 4. The principal difference between the two engravings is that the Huntington block employs a much more conventional or commercial technique of wood cutting than Blake used. A mechanical type number ‘1539’ is stamped onto the bottom edge of the block, although this wouldn’t have been done by Blake, perhaps made by the woodblock manufacturer. On the back of the wood block there is pasted a hand-written note, possibly by J. T. Armstrong, which reads: ‘(somewhat altered) of the original woodcut illustration designed and cut by Wm Blake for Philips’ PASTORAL. NO 2’. To trace the background and possible date of this woodblock, we need to go back to Blake’s original woodcuts for Thornton’s Virgil. Blake made seventeen woodblocks illustrations for Dr. Thornton’s The Pastorals of Virgil in 1821. The original woodblocks are now in the British Museum Prints and Drawings Room. According to Gilchrist,8 these are the only wood engravings Blake ever made. Thornton’s Virgil was first published in 1812 with text only, and with illustrations (not by Blake) published separately in 1814.9 A second edition was published in 1819 with both text and illustrations, and a third edition in 1821 with extra illustrations added. Blake’s illustrations are for this third edition. It was very likely John Linnell who introduced Blake to Robert John Thornton, his family physician, and suggested that Thornton commissioned Blake to contribute to his Virgil project.10 Although practicing as a medical doctor, Thornton was interested in publishing botanical works and other subjects, including a Virgil intended for school children. The book was fully titled: The Pastorals of Virgil, with a Course of English Reading, Adapted for Schools: in which all The Proper Facilities are given, enabling youth to acquire The Latin Language in the Shortest Period of Time. Illustrated by 230 Engravings and printed by J. M’Gowan, and published by F. C. & J. Rivingtons. Thornton’s edition of The Pastorals of Virgil included Virgil’s Latin poems as well as imitations of Virgil’s verses, among which is the Eclogue in imitation of Virgil, by Ambrose Philips, illustrated by

Figure 7: Anonymous woodcut after Blake’s design for Thornton’s Virgil No. 2, from the Armstrong woodblock Collection at the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA. Printed by Robert N. Essick from the original woodblock. Image reproduction courtesy of the Huntingdon Library.

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Blake’s woodcuts. Apart from the seventeen woodcuts, Blake also made six copper plate engravings for this book showing portraits of Theocritus, Virgil, Augustus Caesar, Agrippa, Julius Caesar, and Epicurus. In addition, a wood engraving by Byfield, ‘The Giant Polypheme’ after Nicolas Poussin’s painting, in Thornton’s book has the words ‘Blake del’. This seems to indicate that Blake made a drawing after Poussin’s painting, which was then engraved by Byfield.11 The seventeen woodcuts are printed on five pages to face pages 13, 14, 15, 16 and 18. Between Blake’s woodcuts, and facing page 17, are three illustrations entitled ‘First [Second, and Third] Comparison’.12 The set of ‘Comparisons’ were an extraordinary exercise intended to contrast, even within the body of the text of Thornton’s Virgil, the more conventional styles of engraved illustrations with the style being evolved by William Blake. They were clearly engraved by a commercial wood engraver after Blake’s drawings. The thin regular black lines show a good enough, yet mechanical, commercial skill. It has none of the spirit and dynamism of designs by Blake. The crooked river flowing in the middle ground in the Third Comparison resembles Blake’s design for Virgil No. 8: Sabrina’s silvery flood. However, the ‘Third Comparison’ has completely lost the interesting elements conveyed by the flowing lines and freedom in Blake’s No. 8. The three comparisons are ordinary designs, which do not stand out in the book or attract attention. It demonstrates that Blake’s design (‘conception’, ‘invention’) indeed is embodied by his technique (‘execution’). This is perhaps what Blake really means by ‘Invention depends Altogether upon Execution or Organization’.13 Blake’s unconventional engravings on wood are dark and rough in their appearance, as if he were using an intaglio copper engraving or white-line etching instead of relief wood engraving. Thornton was obviously not sure about Blake’s new and rather shocking technique. Gilchrist in The Life of William Blake tells the story of how the publishers declared ‘this man must do no more’ when they saw Blake’s seventeen woodcuts, and were having all he had done re-cut by one of their regular engravers.14 Thornton was disposed to take his publishers’ view, but changed his mind when he heard the admiration of Blake’s art from eminent artists such as Lawrence, James Ward, and Linnell. However, under Blake’s first woodcut, the frontispiece ‘Thenot and Colinet’, Thornton inserted an apology: The Illustrations of this English Pastoral are by the famous BLAKE, the illustrator of Young’s Night Thoughts, and Blair’s Grave; who designed and engraved them himself. This is mentioned, as they display less of art than genius, and are much admired by some eminent painters.

Even one of Blake’s followers, Edward Calvert, said years later that they ‘are done as if by a child; several of them careless and incorrect, yet there is a spirit in them, humble enough and of force enough to move simple souls to tears’.15

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The three comparisons engraved by another engraver after Blake’s drawings are apparently for the purpose of showing Blake’s ‘conception’ rather than his ‘execution’. That is to say, if the readers are not happy with Blake’s wood engraving technique as shown by the seventeen illustrations, they can appreciate his designs interpreted in more conventional techniques. If we compare the ‘Comparison’ engravings, all based on Blake’s designs, with the Huntington woodblock, it is not difficult to recognize their similar use of contemporary commercial techniques with regular parallel lines, rigid fine lines contrast with larger white areas which would be gouged out on the woodblock. There is a good degree of correlation between the Huntington anonymous woodblock and another wood engraving after Blake’s Virgil No. 3, published in The Athenaeum 21 January 1843 where there is a clear resemblance in style. The print appears in an anonymous review article of the illustrations for R.A. Van Voorst’s The Vicar of Wakefield.16 (Figure 8) In criticizing the wood engravings designed by William Mulready and engraved by John Thompson, and arguing that modern woodcuts were not authentic because they were not engraved by the designers themselves, Athenaeum author praises Blake’s woodcuts for Thornton’s Virgil, writing that: Our belief is … that nearly all the early wood-engravings, which exhibit fine expression, were cut by their designers. There is an authentic manifestation of feeling in an author’s own work… Still more strongly is the author’s meaning marked in the few wood-engravings which that wonderful man Blake cut himself, for an edition of Thornton’s Pastorals of Virgil.

The article goes on to say that the author borrowed the original woodblock from Linnell and printed it side by side with another re-engraving of Blake’s design made for comparison. In token of our faith in the principle here announced, we have obtained the loan of one of Blake’s original blocks, from Mr. Linnell, who possesses the whole series, to print, as an illustration of our argument, that, amid all drawbacks there exists a power in the work of the man of genius, which no one but himself can utter fully. Side by side we have printed a copy of an engraver’s improved version of the same subject. When Blake had produced his cuts, which were, however, printed with an apology a shout of derision was raised by the wood-engravers. ‘This will never do,’ said they; ‘we will show what it ought to be’ – that is, what the public taste would like – and they produced the above amendment!17

The phrase, ‘printed with an apology’, refers to Thornton’s comment that Blake’s Virgil woodblock prints ‘display less of art than genius’. Gilchrist in his Life of William Blake also mentions this re-engraving of Blake’s design: ‘One of the designs engraved by Blake was re-cut among the engravers, who scrupled not, by way of showing what it ought to have been, to smooth down and conventionalize

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the design itself; reducing a poetic, typical composition to mere commonplace, ‘“to meet the public taste”’.18 This re-engraving in the Athenaeum, though not adopted by Thornton in his book and condemned as ‘smooth, tame mechanism’ by the Athenaeum author and Gilchrist, must have been executed either around the same time as the publication of Thornton’s Virgil 1821 or between 1821 and 1843. According to G. E. Bentley,19 the Athenaeum author is identifiable as Henry Cole,20 one of the main contributors in 1843 to The Athenaeum. A letter in Linnell’s family archive shows that Henry Cole and Charles Wentworth Dilke, the editor of the Athenaeum (as well as a Blake collector),21 visited Linnell, probably to see Blake’s woodblocks for Thornton’s Virgil and to borrow one of them to print for the article.22 The re-engraving of Blake’s Virgil No. 3 in the Athenaeum is a reversed print which also somewhat alters Blake’s image. For example, Thenot (the old man) raises one arm instead of both arms; the foliage of the tree reaching over him appears to be more realistic than in Blake’s design; and so are Colinet’s (the young shepherd’s) gestures, clothes and hair. Comparing the two re-engravings of Blake’s Virgil, the No. 3 published in the Athenaeum and the No. 2 from the woodblock at the Huntington, one can easily see the similarities. Firstly, their sizes are almost the same, although the Athenaeum print is slightly smaller perhaps due to paper shrinkage. Secondly, they have similar double frames and their line patterns resemble each other. Thirdly, Thenot is shown in both re-engravings to have bald heads rather than long hair. Robert Essick has suggested that these two woodcuts were probably cut by the same hand.23 If this is not the case, then they were probably executed at the same time (that is, shortly after Blake’s originals of 1821), or else they were cut for the same purpose as the ‘Comparison’ set, that is, to show styles of woodcuts more ‘suitable’ to the contemporary taste. To further demonstrate the early state of this woodblock, it is evident that it includes details which are found on Blake’s original design before his woodblocks were cut down to fit Thornton’s publication and thereafter omitted. Therefore, it is conceivable it was engraved even earlier than the publication date of 1821. After Blake first finished the engraving, the seventeen woodcuts were cut down in size because they were too large for Thornton’s book. There are proofs taken from the woodblocks before they were cut down in the British Museum, Fitzwilliam Museum and some private collections.24 Among them, Nos. 2 & 3 both had their edges beyond the trees trimmed. The woodcut after Blake’s No. 3 in the Athenaeum is closer to the cut down version, that is, half of the tree and the landscape beyond it by the side of Colinet (the young shepherd) were cut off to fit Thornton’s book. For comparison, the woodblock after Blake’s Virgil No. 2 in the Huntington Library has retained the compositional details of the whole tree, and even the landscape stretching beyond the tree, in the proof before cut-

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ting. This means that the Huntington woodblock was probably engraved earlier than the Athenaeum woodcut after No. 3 of 1843, and was based on the prepublication proof (no later than 1821) or, quite possibly, the drawings or the relief-etching made before the publication of Thornton’s edition. Blake produced drawings for the Virgil woodcuts in a sketchbook which was later broken up and the sheets eventually dispersed into separate collections.25 These drawings, however, were not Blake’s first conception for the Virgil design. In 1990, a newly discovered proof of Blake’s Virgil made in relief-etching came into the collection of Professor Robert N. Essick, and was announced by him in his 1991/92 essay in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly. The print from relief-etched copper has many significant differences from the woodcuts. The most obvious one concerns the clothes worn by Colinet (the young shepherd) in the relief-etching which were represented like transparent body stockings rather than the knee length gown-like garment shown in the woodcuts. The relief-etching is much more different from the published woodcuts than the drawings are to Thornton images. It might be the case that Blake made the drawings as a specimen to show to Thornton who may have concluded that the tight and transparent clothes were not suitable for school children. The sequence of Blake’s designs for Virgil, therefore, is as follows. First he made the relief-etching, then he changed the designs at the drawing stage, and finally he cut the woodblocks. The woodblock was subsequently trimmed to fit the published version. This appears to support the general thesis of Essick and Viscomi that Blake composed when he did relief etching, or at least, in this particular case, he was prepared to amend his relief etched design with further drawings prior to woodcutting. The woodblock after Blake’s Virgil No. 2 seems to sit between the last two stages. The detail of the whole tree shown on this block resembles the one in the relief-etching, the drawing and the woodcut before trimming. The landscape and sheep beyond the tree on the Huntington woodblock can be found on the relief-etching and the untrimmed woodcut. In short, this woodblock follows a very early version of Blake’s design, before the Thornton cut-down blocks and after the drawing. A conceivable circumstances for its production might be that the Athenaeum author Henry Cole, and the editor Charles Wentworth Dilke, commissioned a commercial engraver to re-engrave both Blake’s Virgil No. 2 and 3 in 1843 in order to show the difference between Blake’s and commercial engraver’s techniques, but finally chose only to publish No. 3 in The Athenaeum, not the No. 2. Or (if perhaps less likely), there might have been two engravers doing the job at the same time for the same purpose, but the engraver after No. 2 had access to early proofs in Linnell’s collection. However, a more probable explanation is that both the Athenaeum woodcut after No. 3, and the Huntington woodblock after No. 2, were engraved around 1821, slightly before or after the publication of Thornton’s The Pastorals of Virgil. Just as Cole related in the

Figure 8: Two woodcut illustrations, Blake’s Virgil No. 3 (left) and an anonymous cut after its design (right), for ‘Fine Arts. The Vicar of Wakefield. With thirty-two Illustrations by W. Mulready, R. A. Van Voorst’, revew article of the illustrations for R. A. Van Voorst’s The Vicar of Wakefield, Athenaeum (21 January 1843), p. 65

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Athenaeum, these versions represent the trade engravers’ intention of showing the public taste of the time. It could have been Thornton’s commission to reengrave the two blocks, like the three comparisons engraved by another hand after Blake’s drawings facing page 17. Thornton may still have wanted to include Blake’s woodcuts because of his growing fame in the latter phase of his life and therefore abandoned the two re-engravings by other hands. Whatever the reason for the engraving, and whoever engraved it, the Huntington anonymous woodblock tells an important story about contemporary attitudes towards Blake’s engraving technique and his design – that is, he can ‘conceive’ but he cannot ‘execute’26 – the criticism Blake had fought all his life.

 To place Blake’s technique in the context of woodcut and wood engraving, we need to examine its history in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The status of woodcut in the eighteenth century Britain was low. Horace Walpole in the later version of A Catalogue of Engravers in the Anecdotes of Painting in England (1782) states, I have said, and for two reasons, shall say little of wooden cuts; that art never was executed in any perfection in England: engraving on metal was a signal improvement of the art, and supplied the defects of cuttings in wood. The ancient wooden cuts were certainly carried to a great height, but that was the merit of the masters, not of the method.27

Wood engraving in the eighteenth century England was regarded as an inferior art, and was practiced by very few fine artists. Alexander Jamieson in his Universal Science, or the Cabinet of Nature and Art (1821) has a small section on wood engraving, ‘This art is of considerable difficulty, there are very few who practice it, and still fewer who attained excellence’.28 Most contemporary woodcuts appeared in publications such as chapbooks, broadsides and ballads, with crude techniques. Some broadsides and ballads with woodcut illustrations were used for decoration on country taverns’ or houses’ walls. A manuscript by Morris Martin, The Case of the Missing Woodcuts (1986),29 in the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, has a very interesting research on this topic. Martin’s research was initiated by a statement by Thomas Bewick in his memoir (A Memoir of Thomas Bewick, written by himself, ed. Iain Bain, 1975), written in old age, which mentions popular woodcuts he often saw in his youth (i.e. 1750’s) but regrets that they had disappeared during his life time.30 These are large woodcuts for framing or simply pasting onto walls for decorative or instructive purposes. Apparently, this fashion was adopted by people of lower income in rural areas. However, they had gradually gone out of fashion during the latter half of the eighteenth century, and had finally largely disappeared by the time Bewick was an old man.

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Among them were scenes of famous battles, portraits of Admirals, ‘the sailor’s farewell and his happy return, youthful sports, the feats of manhood, the bold Archers shooting at a mark, the four Seasons, etc’.31 Other Bewick contemporaries, such as the playwright Thomas Holcroft, the writer Oliver Goldsmith, George Smith and Dorothy Wordsworth, also mention woodcuts on the walls of country taverns, inns, alehouses and schools.32 These include ‘Death and the Lady’, ‘Margaret’s Ghost’, ‘Fair Rosamund’, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Chevy Chase’, ‘George and Dragon’, ‘The Royal Game of Goose’, ‘Godiva’, ‘Canterbury Tales’, ‘Duke Willy’, and the frequently mentioned ‘King Charles’ Twelve Golden Rules’.33 As Bewick’s contemporary, Blake would have also seen many of these woodcuts during his youth or when he went out of town or at Felpham. Among Blake’s works, there are similar subjects to these woodcuts, such as Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, The Fall of Rosamond, Robin Hood & Clorinda, and perhaps also ‘King Charles’ Twelve Golden Rules’. In his first prospectus for the Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, Blake says he engraved in the ‘Line manner of Engraving, similar to those original Copper Plates of Albert Durer, Lucas [van Leyden], Hisben [i.e. Hans Sebald Beham], Aldegrave [i.e. Heinrich Aldegrever] and the old original Engravers, who were great Masters in Painting and Designing, whose method, alone, can delineate Character as it is in this Picture, where all the Lineaments are distinct’.34 Essick points out that Blake is not concerned to claim a direct relationship between the graphic style of his plate and the old masters he names, but rather to place his own work within the context of the work of the original artists and not as the copy engraver he was trained to be.35 In spite of this, and the fact that Blake refers to the old masters of copper engraving, he must also have seen the woodcuts of Albert Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Sebal Beham, which are not less masterpieces than their copper engravings. Blake’s stipple and line engraving, The Fall of Rosamond after Thomas Stothard (1783),36 and its likely companion piece ‘Robin Hood & Clorinda’ after J. Meheux (1783),37 were also popular woodcut subjects. Although with a straightforward source from Stothard and J. Meheux, Blake is likely to have seen many other woodcuts of the same subject. Stothard’s design for the subject of Rosamond was also used for another book illustration, ‘Henry II or the Fall of Rosamond’, engraved by [ James] Fittler for Henry the Second; or, the fall of Rosamond. A tragedy, by Thomas Hull. As performed at the Theatre-Royal, Covent-Garden (1774).38 The book illustration has only the two main figures, Queen Eleanor and Rosamond, with slight differences in gesture from Blake’s engraving. The subject of Robin Hood in woodcut can also be seen in Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads (1795), II: p.1. Blake also engraved nine plates after Stothard for Ritson’s A Select Collection of English Songs (1783)39 and would have been familiar with Ritson’s other

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editions and in many eighteenth-century editions of the ballad pamphlet, Robin Hood’s garland (1775, 1779, 1780, c. 1790, 1794, etc.). Among eighteenth century woodcuts, ‘King Charles’ Twelve Good Rules’ was a particularly popular one and was often mentioned by contemporary authors and frequently depicted in prints.40 Blake is very likely to have seen or even copied the subject. George Cumberland noted in his pocketbook frequently between 1803 and 1808 that Blake had a plate of ‘the 12 good Rules’.41 But this plate is untraced.42 It is not clear whether this was a woodcut or a copper engraving, or even when it was executed. Bentley in his A Blake Bibliography (1964), says this plate is possibly related to the Twelve Good Rules of King Charles mentioned by Goldsmith in The Deserted Village and by Bewick in his Memoir (ch23). Bentley suggests that, If Blake had wanted to deal with a popular subject, particularly when he was living in the country, in Felpham (1800-1803), he might have engraved King Charles’ ‘Twelve Good Rules’ for sale among his rural neighbors. To save money and trouble he may have engraved them on pewter, a process which he described in his Notebook (Keynes 1957: 440) and recommended to his friends (in his notebook for April 12th 1813 [BM Add. MSS 36,520C, f.155] Cumberland said he ‘Saw Blake who recommended Pewter to Scratch on with the Print’). It is just possible that the ‘Twelve Good Rules’ can be connected with the ‘Illustrations by W. Blake – pewter-types 13’ which were sold at Christie’s with the collection of Mrs. Steele on February 7th 1893. 43

Whatever Blake’s ‘12 good rules’ are, he would almost certainly be aware of the popular prints of ‘King Charles’ Twelve Good Rules’ and taken reference from them. The ‘12 good rules’ represents one of the ways in which Blake may have been using woodcuts before Thornton’s Virgil and represents Blake’s adaptation of a pre-existing set of popular designs but whose possible influence on Blake has since been, with the notable exception of Bentley’s commentary, largely neglected. Blake seems to have possessed, possibly even made, a copy of a version of one of these woodcut prints. In his youth he may have seen a number versions of the Twelve Rules, but more likely one of the later versions of the ‘King Charles’s Twelve Good Rules’. An example of a‘12 good rules’ woodcut broadside,44 dated to 1754, is in the British Library, including an illustration showing the execution of Charles I placed in the top centre between the lines of the title.45 A similar broadside dated 1759, with the same words but with an illustration of Charles I praying, hand-drawn by the American Richard Rogers and presumably copied from a British produced print, was reproduced and discussed in Ray Nash’s article, ‘An American Colonial Calligraphic Sheet of King Charles’s Twelve Good Rules at Dartmouth College Library’, in The Library fifth series, 7:2 (1952).46 Morris Martin47 traced another copy with the same image and words showing

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that a broadside with a woodcut illustration, originally hung in the Servants’ Hall in Windsor Castle. An earlier version of the ‘Twelve Good Rules’, found in the Society of Antiquaries, London, shows a similar content but in a very different context concerning rules of conduct at the dinner table (‘Pick no Quarrels … Maintaine no Opinions … Touch no State-matters’). Nine of the rules are identical with King Charles’ Twelve Rules, but three have been substituted. The spelling of this broadside and the border decoration indicate a date as early as the first half of the seventeenth century; whereas the British Library and the Windsor Castle copies of King Charles’s Twelve Good Rules show an eighteenth century spelling and style. Therefore, it is possible that these early twelve ‘Table-Observations’ were transformed into ‘King Charles’s Twelve Good Rules’, perhaps by Charles the First for his servants, and became popular in country cottages and taverns in the 1750s.48 A late version of the Twelve Good Rules is in the supplement to A Companion to the Magical Cards or le Secret Impenetrable (1821). They are presented in text (rather than the form of a broadside) ‘with appropriate notes and observations’ by the editor T. Molineux, Manchester. The text of the rules is the same as the 1754 version except for it reading ‘Seek no Quarrels’ instead of ‘Pick no Quarrels’. Although woodcuts of the eighteenth century England are mostly technically crude, the woodcutters gradually developed methods which led to a revival of wood engraving in the nineteenth century. It was Thomas Bewick (1753–1828) who played the biggest role in the revival, particularly on account of his use of fine end grain woodblocks and white-line engraving techniques.49 However, white-line technique was not invented by Bewick. Earlier woodcuts in chapbooks and broadsides had developed the combination of black-line and white-line engraving skills but in a manner far less sophisticated than that developed by Bewick.50 To take the example of the woodcut printed from No. 2 in the Armstrong collection at the Huntington to explain the combination of black and white line techniques, we can see how the left sides of the two figures with light were executed with black lines, while their right sides in the shadows were made with white lines. Although executed in the early nineteenth century, this woodcut clearly inherits the skills of the early woodcuts. In short, the conventional blackline is the imitation of drawing against a white background, whereas white-line is against a black background hence creating an overall dark effect. In terms of technique, black-line is used to cut the large areas of wood and leave the lines in relief, whereas white-line is used to cut the lines like intaglio copper engraving leaving the background in relief. In other words, on wood, white-line technique is more likely to create fine lines than black-line technique.

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By the time the Huntington block was made, the technique of combining black lines with white lines had already been influentially demonstrated in the work of Thomas Bewick.51 Raymond Lister in his Infernal Methods comments on the differences between Blake and Bewick’s white-line techniques. He says, ‘Bewick composed in terms of white lines, paying little attention to chiaroscuro. Blake composed in white lines, too, but he never ignored or forgot the black background of his block. It was as if he were enticing from the wooden surface something that was hidden there, presenting as visions whatever he found’.52 Lister’s interpretation seems to say that Blake’s white-line woodcut is like ‘chiaroscuro’, that is, allowing space for both light and dark. He used white lines to form a kind of ‘colour’ to contrast with the black background. This is the method Blake adopted for white-line etching on copper. Despite the absence of evidence that Blake had any direct knowledge of Bewick’s woodcuts, many older and contemporary woodcuts must have been familiar to Blake and, indeed, he adapted the white-line technique himself in several of his works on copper. The method of white-line etching is an extension of relief-etching by applying varnish on the copper plate and, when it dries, cutting through the varnish to create lines before pouring acid on top to bite the lines. Blake was trained as a copper engraver, and as far as we know, the Virgil woodcuts are the only engravings on wood he had ever made. However, the relief method of wood engraving may have influenced Blake’s etching and engraving technique on copper far more than previously thought. His white-line etching is very close to the cutting method on wood and might have been inspired by it, which is to cut away the white part and leave the black area in relief. The difference is that woodcut cuts the wood with a graver, whereas white-line etching cuts the varnish on copper with an etching needle.53 In his late life during the 1820s, Blake quite often used wood as a support for his work. The Ghost of a Flea54 and possibly a lost painting Frieze: Oley Bridge55 are temperas on panel. Winter56 and Evening57 are temperas on pine. The Virgin and Child58, The Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve59 and Satan smiting Job with Sore Boils60 are temperas on mahogany. There is also a drawing, The Prophet Isaiah Foretelling the Destruction of Jerusalem,61 made directly onto a woodblock and presumably intended to be engraved at some stage.62 This changing interest in using wood for painting, drawing and engraving is perhaps all part of Blake’s continuing experiments with new materials which, at the same time, also have traceable links back to woodcut as a printmaking technique. However, Blake’s earlier experiments with relief etching also show various engraving techniques similar to those used in wood engraving. Before discussing the influence of wood engraving techniques on Blake’s copper etching, an issue about the terminology needs to be clarified first. Bewick achieved his fine white-line technique on wood not only because he adopted

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his initial training in copper engraving, but he also chose to use the end-grain (cut horizontally from the tree and across the grain) of box wood, which was much more dense and stable than the plank (cut vertically from the tree trunk) to permit cutting easily in all directions.63 After Bewick’s death in 1828, wood engravers followed in his footsteps and made wood engraving a golden era in the nineteenth century. With these differences of engraving on wood occurring before and after Bewick, modern bibliographers distinguish the terms of ‘woodcut’ from ‘wood engraving’ – ‘woodcut’ for a block which has been cut with a knife on the plank side, and ‘wood engraving’ for a block which is engraved across the grain.64 However, this is a modern distinction, not an eighteenth or early nineteenth century one. John Linnell and Samuel Palmer called Blake’s Virgil ‘wood-cuts’, with the latter describing how he was moved by ‘Mr. Blake’s Thornton’s Virgil woodcuts’.65 Linnell reported in his Journal that in 1828 ‘Monday 8th [September]… Mr Calvert came & brought impressions of Blakes wood Cuts’ for Virgil.66 Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (1863) uses both the terms ‘woodcut’ (vol. 1, p. 270) and ‘wood-engraving’ (vol. 1, p. 273) to describe Blake’s Virgil. Walter Crane’s Of the Decorative Illustration of Books Old and New (1905, p. 139) calls them ‘woodcuts’, and so does Laurence Binyon’s The Followers of William Blake (1925, 18). Geoffrey Keynes’s Blake Studies also calls them intermittently ‘wood-engravings’ and ‘woodcuts’.67 A question which has not been raised by Blake scholars is that whether Blake engraved Thornton’s Virgil on the end grain or on the plank part of wood. The same question is also applied to the unengraved drawing made on a woodblock, Isaiah Foretelling the Destruction of Jerusalem (c. 1821),68 produced around the same time as the Virgil woodcuts and now in the BMPD. A close examination at the BMPD reveals that the woodblocks Blake used were cut vertically through planks rather than horizontally across the grain. The blocks show end-grain patterns on the sides of the blocks rather than the engraved surface (recto) or the verso, that is, Blake did not use the end-grain sides for engraving, or, rather, the blocks were not manufactured to be engraved across the grain. The end-grain patterns appear on the bottom sides of No. 2 and 12, the right side of No. 9, and the top side of No. 13. The block with the drawing Isaiah Foretelling the Destruction of Jerusalem, however, was drawn across the grain, and we can see the patterns underneath showing through the drawing. Based on this fact, Blake’s Virgil illustrations should be called ‘woodcuts’ rather than ‘wood engravings’ in modern terminology. It also tells us that the early nineteenth century block makers were not always aware of the better quality of end-grain surface for engraving. Blake’s training in copper engraving would have also limited his knowledge of woodblocks. Again, as with the evidence of the Illustrations of the Book of Job copper plates, upon examination of the material evidence, in this case the wood-

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blocks in their existing physical states, a more complex set of conclusions needs to be drawn between Blake, his use of woodblocks and his interest in adapting techniques developed by wood engravers. Using woodblock as a material for printmaking poses as much complexity as using copper plates. Again, Blake’s knowledge of the material and the techniques employed imply that he was not a skillful mechanical craftsman in a conventional way but an innovator brave enough to experiment several different ways. Blake mentions the term ‘woodcut’ in his Notebook, referring to the relief technique used for wood engraving as opposed to the term ‘engrave’, which he refers to the intaglio engraving technique. Memoranda from the Notebook (E694) Memorandum ‘To Engrave on Pewter’ To Engrave on Pewter. Let there be first a drawing made correctly with black lead pencil, let nothing be to seek, then rub it off on the plate coverd with white wax. or perhaps pass it thro press. this will produce certain & determind forms on the plate & time will not be wasted in seeking them afterwards Memorandum ‘To Woodcut on Pewter’ To Woodcut on Pewter. lay a ground on the Plate & smoke it as for Etching, then trace your outline<s>[& draw, them with a needle]. and beginning with the spots of light on each object with an oval pointed needle scrape off the ground. [& instead of etching the shadowy strokes] as a direction for your graver then proceed to graving with the ground on the plate being as careful as possible not to hurt the ground because it being black will shew perfectly what is wanted [towards] Memorandum ‘To Woodcut on Copper’ To Woodcut on Copper Lay a ground as for Etching. trace & instead of Etching the blacks Etch the whites & bite it in

Judging from this description, Blake’s terms of ‘woodcut on pewter’ and ‘woodcut on copper’ actually mean the white-line etching technique – the way of laying ground (varnish or wax) on metal, and then cutting through the ground as ‘woodcut’ (cutting the white lines and leaving the black lines in relief ) before pouring the etching acid to bite the white lines.69 In the following section, I would like to argue that Blake’s copper plate etching and engraving were influenced by wood engraving technique more than previously thought, and that his copper etching and engraving techniques, in turn, influenced his woodcuts for Thornton’s Virgil. Black-line is the standard form for engraving on copper printed with intaglio method, and white-line technique is hardly ever used in engraving on copper. A rare example of creating white-lines on copper plate, however, can be seen on the original copper plate of William Hogarth’s self-portrait, Hogarth painting the Comic Muse (1764) now in the collection of the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.70 The plate was designed and engraved by Hogarth himself. The

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figure of the Comic Muse on the easel is printed in white-lines against the grey background. Instead of engraving the outline, Hogarth engraved the background with light and even cross-hatching instead. The effect is a woodcut-like surface, with the unengraved outline standing out in relief, but it prints as white-line with the intaglio printing method.71 There is also evidence to suggest that Blake’s method of relief etching, and its similarity with wood engraving, was disseminated during Blake’s lifetime. The Scottish engraver, William Home Lizars (1788–1859), experimented with new techniques and, in 1821, used a method of etching away the background of a copper plate to produce a relief surface similar to that in a wood engraving. According to Keri Davies’s research paper, ‘‘O Nancy’s hair is yellow as gowd’: William Blake, Border ballads, and the reinvention of relief etching’,72 Lizars might have gained his knowledge of Blake’s relief-etching method through his acquaintance with John Flaxman and John Linnell, rather than by making an independent, parallel, invention distinctive from Blake’s innovation of relief etching.73 Possibly the only extant example of the Lizars relief etched method is the portrait of ‘Peter Morris M.D’. forming the frontispiece to John Gibson Lockhart’s pseudonymous Peter’s Letters to His Kinsfolk (1819), ‘Third Edition’ (actually the second). Like Blake, Lizars trained as a copper plate line engraver but probably had little extensive experience of wood engraving. His experiment in relief etching for ‘Peter Morris M.D’. appears rough in its technique.74 The face and hands were executed in black line but the rest of the picture in white line. The two styles do not blend or fuse as well as they do in wood engravings by Bewick, or in relief-etched work by Blake, nor are they used with equal skill. Elizabeth M. Harris, in ‘Experimental graphic processes in England 1800–1859. Part iii’ (1969), points out that the portrait of ‘Peter Morris M.D’. combines weak and scratchy white-line work, characteristic of a first effort at wood engraving, with patches, for example in the face and hands, which show surprising assurance and sophistication. Harris continues to say that, ‘It is this combination of work obviously by an inexperienced relief engraver with work like that on the face which, if it was engraved on wood, could only have been done by a well skilled engraver which gives away Lizars’s alto relievo process. Taking the different parts in isolation there is nothing to show that they are not engraved on wood’.75 Harris’s observation proves that Lizars’s print from relief etching on copper resembles the effect of wood engraving. Both Blake and Lizars must have had the woodcut effect in mind when they experimented with relief etching, although Davies also demonstrates that a transmission route for Lizars’s knowledge of Blake’s work is as much a possibility as his independent discovery of the process. Apart from relief-etching, Blake also used a large amount of white-line etching in the Illuminated Books, especially when he made large images within text (e.g.

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Jerusalem pl. 4), or full-page illustrations (e.g. Jerusalem frontispiece). White-line etching on copper is a skill even closer to wood engraving than relief etching. In terms of technique, for relief-etching the etcher uses a brush dipped in acid-proof liquid or stopping-out varnish to write or paint on the copper, whereas white-line etching is the next stage of relief-etching – after applying a relatively large area of varnish (or wax) on copper (as for relief-etching), cutting through the varnish when it is dry. Blake often combined both techniques on one plate before pouring acid to bite the copper. In other words, relief-etching is a ‘writing’ or ‘painting’ technique, and white-line etching is a ‘cutting’ technique. Blake’s use of white-line etching is surprisingly early and extensive. The technique can be seen in the following works: 76 1) Songs of Innocence (1789): title-page, frontispiece, Introduction, The Ecchoing Green, The Little Black Boy (two plates), The Blossom, The Chimney Sweeper, The School Boy, Nurse’s Song, The Little Boy Lost, The Little Boy Found, Night (two plates), Holy Thursday, A Dream, A Cradle Song (two plates), Infant Joy, The Voice of the Ancient Bard, Spring (two plates), The Shepherd, The Divine Image, The Little Girl Found (two plates). The white-line etching shows up particularly well on copy U at the Houghton Library, a monochrome version without colouring. For example, on the title-page of Songs of Innocence, white-line technique was used for the lower background, the little girl’s dress and the chair the woman sits on. The tree and the flaming word of ‘SONGS’ on the top are combinations of black and white lines, e. g. the outlines are drawn with varnish, and the shading lines inside of the flames are cut through the varnish. Among the other plates, the contrast of mostly white lines on the top and mainly black lines at the lower part of The Echoing Green (first plate) is particularly striking for the way the different lines can be compared in order to study this technique. The electrotype77 of this copper at the V & A shows the top half has an overall relief surface and the bottom half a much lower section (being gouged deeper possibly by Gilchrist’s publisher to make more prints). On a total of twenty-six out of thirty-one plates, Blake used the white-line technique. 2) The Approach of Doom (c. 1792;) The Approach of Doom is probably Blake’s earliest extant work made almost exclusively by the white-line etching process.78 The design was based on Robert Blake’s drawing, and the only known impression is in the British Museum. The figures were drawn in varnish to create black lines, and the rest of the background covered with varnish, then cut trough to create white lines. The combination of black and white lines can also be seen on the figures.

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3) America (1793): frontispiece, pls. 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15 The frontispiece of America is a very mature and sophisticated combination of different techniques. The figures were drawn in varnish and cut lines within the outline to form shades. The background is partly drawn and partly cut, but largely with white line technique. Blake was able to use the both techniques more freely in this work. The cutting of white lines can also be seen on the sky around the clouds on pl. 6,79 the sleeping child at the bottom of pl. 7,80 the shade within the upper clouds on pl. 8,81 the beautiful whirls and plants on the left and bottom border on pl. 9,82 the fine lines within the bottom flames on pl. 10,83 the shade of the swan’s lower part on pl. 11,84 the sky, the sea and the eagle on the top and the water at the bottom on pl. 13,85 the flame from the monster’s mouth at the bottom of pl. 14,86 the flame at the bottom of pl. 15,87 and the crouching woman’s long hair on the top right border on pl. 16.88 4) Visions of the Daughter of Albion (1793): frontispiece, title-page On the frontispiece of the Visions of the Daughter of Albion, the outline of the three figures and the clouds in the sky was drawn in varnish and cut to refine the lines with a needle. On the title-page, white-line etching is seen clearly on the right side of the plate beyond the clouds as rain pouring down from the clouds. 5) All Religions are One (c. 1795): pl. 4 Pl. 4 Principle 1st of All Religions are One has an image of Urizen spreading both arms among the white-line etched clouds. 6) Europe (1794): frontispiece, title-page, Preludium, pls. 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 12, 15 The black and white version of copy H in the Houghton Library shows particularly well the white-line etching technique on the Europe plates. The hatching and cross-hatching of white lines are shown on the clouds and sun rays on the frontispiece, the space around the clouds on pls 2,89 3,90 4,91 8,92 the shading lines for the figures and smoke on pl. 6,93 7,94 the swirling lines on pl. 9,95the flames on pl. 15.96 The title-page, the Preludium, and pl. 12,97 also have some rudimentary white-line technique. 7) Little Tom the Sailor (1800; Essick 1981, Fig. 152) When he was in Felpham, Blake designed and etched in relief William Hayley’s ballad Little Tom the Sailor, published as a broadside in October 1800. The whole image was executed with white lines including the boy inside the cottage, the woman with a pitcher at the door, the landscape, and Blake’s signature on the right bottom corner. In contrast, the texts were relief etched.

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8) Deaths Door (1805; Essick 1983, XIII) The only known impression of Deaths Door is now in the Essick collection. It was made for the illustrations for a new edition of Robert Blair’s The Grave eventually published in 1808 and for which the publisher Robert Cromek had commissioned Blake to design and etch the illustrations. However, Cromek was so shocked by the boldness and unconventional technique of this print that he decided to give the entire engraving job to Luigi Schiavonetti (1765–1810). Blake used exclusively white-line technique for this print. He applied the whole copper plate with varnish, and then cut through the varnish with an etching needle in the same way as wood engraving, i.e. cutting the white part and leaving the black part in relief. The plate was then printed in relief as with woodcuts. 9) Milton (c. 1811): pls. 1, 13, 38, 41 Among the ten full-page illustrations of Milton: a Poem, four of them were executed exclusively by the white-line technique. This set includes the title page98 which shows a naked figure standing in clouds amongst the title text of the book. The white-line technique shows up especially well on copy A in the BMPD. The resurrected figure on pl. 1399 and the couple lying on a rock by the sea on pl. 38100 are also Blake’s attempt to create white-line effect on the whole plate. Pl. 41101 uses particularly simple white lines that resemble the lines on the Virgil woodcuts. 10) Jerusalem (c. 1804–20): pls. 1, 2, 3, 4, 11, 18, 26, 28, 35, 37, 39, 45, 46, 50, 51, 53, 76, 100 The full page designs of pls. 1 (frontispiece), 2 (title-page), 26, 51, 76, 100102 use white-line etching. Pls. 4, 18, 11, 28, 35, 37, 39, 46, 50, 53 with their large images among texts can also be seen to have white lines, even pls. 3 and 45 (bottom inscription) where there are smaller images within texts have small parts of white lines. 11) Experimental Relief Plates (c. 1805–1822; Essick 1983, XIV) Two prints from the same copper plate in the Rosenwald Collection, NGA Washington DC, apparently for the purpose of experimentation, offer an interesting direct opportunity for comparing different ways of printing. The plate consists of two parts with two half torsos resembling the lower part of the youth in the Deaths Door and two heads on each torso’s side.103 The plate was relief etched with whiteline cutting. Using the same plate, one print was printed in relief104 and the other in intaglio105. The relief printed plate shows black outlines for the figures, while the intaglio printed plate shows white outlines and black for the rest.

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12) The Man Sweeping the Interpreter’s Parlour (c. 1822; Essick 1983, XX) Blake’s pure white-line cut on metal, The Man Sweeping the Interpreter’s Parlour, (from Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress) is a fine example resembling Bewick’s whiteline wood engraving technique. The work Blake did on the Virgil woodcuts of 1821 seem to have influenced this work, hence it appears to have a more woodcut-like effect than any of Blake’s other white-line etchings. As The Man Sweeping the Interpreter’s Parlour and some plates mentioned above (for example, Deaths Door, Milton pls. 1, 13, 38, 41), are pure white-line technique with possibly no relief-etching, i.e. the plate was cut in the same way as intaglio plate with incised lines, but printed in relief (so as to have the lines in white). The difference between these plates and an intaglio plate is that the way of cutting reverses the traditional method of copper engraving, and resembles the cutting of wood engraving which leaves black lines in relief. Essick thinks that ‘one method of revision [of the relief-etching process] very likely gave birth to Blake’s special technique of white-line etching and engraving’106 This refers to making corrections with an etching needle to remove excess ground (i.e. varnish) before biting in acid. Essick’s assumption is reasonable, but regarding the cutting skills applied in white-line etching, it is more likely this is inspired by the woodcut technique. Some of Blake’s prints made with whiteline etching do, indeed, look like woodcuts, for example, copy U of the Songs of Innocence (1789) (Houghton Library) in particular. The similarities in style, effect and cutting technique shared between whiteline etching and woodcut lead to the conclusion that Blake must have always pondered upon the techniques of intaglio copper engraving and relief wood engraving, and the latter had possibly inspired his invention of relief etching. As a craftsman, the opposing ways of thinking and creating black and white lines were constantly in his mind. In his later life, when he did eventually work on woodcutting, he used the cutting technique for white-line etching, which created an overall dark effect and an unconventional style. Despite Thornton’s dissatisfaction and its deviation from contemporary taste, Blake’s followers, the Ancients, admired the design and the white-line technique of his Virgil woodcuts. While Raymond Lister comments on the differences between Blake and Bewick’s white-line techniques, he attributes to Blake’s woodcuts the character of vision: Bewick composed in terms of white lines, paying little attention to chiaroscuro. Blake composed in white lines, too, but he never ignored or forgot the black background of his block. It was as if he were enticing from the wooden surface something that was hidden there, presenting as visions whatever he found. Or, as Laurence Binyon once expressed it, ‘Blake’s conceptions in these illustrations did not take their final form in the drawings; they were only fully realized on the block itself. Hence they have the

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William Blake and the Art of Engraving character of visions called up as if by moonlight out of the darkened surface of the wood, and seen to have no existence apart from it.’107

It is this quality of vision formed by the white lines with black background which serves like colour and substance that Blake’s Virgil woodcuts attracted his followers. The dark night scenes of Edward Calvert’s and Samuel Palmer’s engravings and paintings deliberately imitated Blake’s Virgil woodcuts. For example, the dark landscape of far away mountains or hills with a crooked river running through the middle of the foreground on Blake’s Virgil No. 8 (Sabrina’s Silvery Flood) and 11 (Colinet Rests by a Stream at Night) is repeated in Edward Calvert’s copper engravings The Bride (1828), The Sheep of his Pasture (1828), and his wood engraving The Brook (1829). Samuel Palmer’s painting Moonlight, a Landscape with Sheep (c. 1831–3)108 and design for the Evening (engraved by Welby Sherman, 1834)109 resemble the motifs in Blake’s Virgil No. 6 (The Blighted Corn) and 11 (Colinet Rests by a Stream at Night); while his etching The Weary Ploughman (1858)110 resembles Blake’s Virgil No. 16 (‘And Unyok’d Heifers, Loitering Homeward, Low’). The same motifs of the dark night landscape, shepherd, sheep, moon, travelers, and so on as in Blake’s Virgil woodcuts constantly appear in the Ancients’ works. In terms of technique, Palmer’s etching The Weary Ploughman (1858), Calvert’s wood engravings The Return Home (1830) and The Chamber Idyll (1831?) were almost entirely executed with white-line technique. Other works by the Ancients also aim to achieve a similar effect. William James Linton, the engraver who made wood engravings after Blake for Gilchrist’s Life of Blake, praises the white-line technique in his Wood-Engraving: A manual of instruction (1884) ‘Black line,’ which is called fac-simile (supposed to be the identical lines of the drawing preserved in the cutting), is mechanical work, though it may be better done by an artist than by the mechanic. ‘White line,’ which is drawing with the graver (the counterpart of the black line of the copper-plate engraver or etcher) –‘white line’ alone is art. 111

Walter Crane in An Artist’s Reminiscences (1907)112 praises Linton as the last master of white line since Bewick. Viscomi observes that Linton’s invention of kerography for reproduction, used in Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake, freed wood engraving to be the medium of artists and not copyists 113 Walter Crane, who was an apprentice of Linton’s from 1859 to 1862, describes the technique and how a copper plate is given ‘an ordinary black etching ground’, and coated with a layer of white wax, onto which the tracing is transferred. The design is then cut through the wax with an etching needle, ‘bitten in by acid in the same way as an etching, and then a cast taken from it, which would give the lines in

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relief, and this cast would be produced in hard metal, and probably electrotyped to print from in the ordinary way’114 The way of cutting through wax is similar to Blake’s way of producing white-line etching on copper plate. In conclusion, Blake during his life time had bravely experimented and developed very innovative methods in his printmaking career. The invention of relief etching was one of the most notable of his achievement. This chapter has suggested the possibility that relief etching was inspired by the relief effect of woodcuts popular in eighteenth century cheap prints, chapbooks and broadsides. Alongside relief etching, Blake’s technique of white-line etching by cutting through the varnish, rather than writing and drawing with a brush dipping in the varnish, was even closer to the technique of wood engraving. When he eventually came to engrave woodblocks for Thornton’s Virgil book, Blake in turn used his white-line etching technique on the woodblocks, therefore created a very dark setting and an entirely different style from the conventional black-line woodcuts. Blake’s admirers and followers, the Ancients, followed this style not only in wood engraving and etching, but also in their drawings and paintings. The white-line effect, at this stage, was transferred from a technique to a visionary style with the dark settings and white gleaming through dark backgrounds. Rapid changes and experimentation in printmaking in the nineteenth century completely altered the methods and status of engraving and printing. Engraving and etching as a reproductive means had come to an end, and artistic innovation replaced the whole purpose of printmaking. Blake’s Virgil woodcuts represent the transition in an era during which attitudes to innovation were changing from hostility towards embracing new techniques. The woodblock in the Armstrong Collection of the Huntington Library after Blake’s Virgil No. 2 was a conventional example deliberately chosen to oppose Blake’s innovative woodblock technique. Despite using a similar white-line technique, the Huntington woodblock has a rigid regularity, while Blake’s white lines are more freehand and fluent in spirit. Thornton’s apologetic statement on the frontispiece, and the three comparisons facing page 17 executed in black lines, are demonstrations of the extent of prevailing hostility towards such innovations. Meanwhile the Ancients’ imitation and development of Blake’s style reveals how genuine creativity can continue to change art as a whole through experimental technique.

CONCLUSION

It was the aim of this book to bring out the importance of Blake’s overlooked original copper plates and woodblocks. Close examination of these materials has been the core of its argument, a study of Blake’s working practice as an engraver and the raw material of the printing surfaces. My examination in 2000 of the BMPD copper plates of the Illustrations of the Book of Job, especially the marks of repoussage on their versos, was the origin of my analysis tracing the history of these artefacts. Corresponding proof prints prove that most of these marks are indeed the technique of repoussage, a practice engravers used to correct mistakes on the recto of the copper plate. From studying Blake’s twenty-two Job copper plates, together with his other surviving plates (mainly in the USA), my examination has come to the conclusion that Blake used the technique of repoussage extensively when he engraved copper plates. While the recent scholars Essick, Phillips and Viscomi, with their exhaustively reconstructed, practice-based, hypotheses about relief etching, have provided compelling accounts of the relief etching process used for the illuminated books, engraving – both on copper and wood – has been relatively neglected. Although repoussage was a standard technique for Blake’s engraver contemporaries, this does not mean there is no need for close examination. My investigations of eighteenth and nineteenth century copper plates by other engravers in major collections such as BMPD, Houghton, NGA, V&A, indicates that Blake’s use of repoussage was unusual in its characteristics. Comparison shows the difference between other engravers’ (and etchers’) careful execution and Blake’s more daring hand, as someone not afraid of correcting or revising his work. The significance of these examinations is to emphasize the scholarly role of material studies at a time when, at least as far as Blake’s illuminated books are concerned, there has been increasing consideration given to our understanding of relief etching processes where a heightened form of bibliographical inquiry has effectively re-written much of the dating and provenance of these unique works. However, the neglect of Blake’s engraved copper plates shows a lack of serious attention to an important set of original materials which appear not have – 165 –

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been of interest to scholars who are, otherwise, principally engaged in literary studies. The examination of his copper plates and woodblocks raises the question of how Blake’s execution compares with his peers, and how true is his claim about the unity of invention and execution. It became clear that Blake scholars have been influenced to a great extent by Blake’s wishes to emphasize his claim that his writing and printmaking were ‘without Premeditation’ (E729). In so far as Blake’s statement has been taken to include the creation of both poetry and design in the important literary canonical illuminated books, there is much at stake if we were to apply this concept to every aspect of Blake’s technical and creative processes. Clearly, ‘without Premeditation’ does not apply to the engraved copper plates, where Blake made thousands of corrections and revisions instead of working from immediate dictation or with fluent accuracy. In so far as references to Blake’s practices in the unique relief etching techniques of the illuminated books has tended to subsume the altogether different technique of engraving, our evaluation of Blake’s claims may need to be revised. William Blake and the Art of Engraving has also been concerned to narrate the development of competing theories of Blake’s printmaking processes during the first half of the twentieth-century, particularly where those investigations were connected to collecting and reconstructive printmaking practices. The story I found was that earlier scholars and practitioners such as Ruthven Todd and W. E. Moss played a central role in providing the groundwork for the discoveries of Essick and Viscomi. Moss’s role, although it is still under-researched, appears to have been particularly crucial not only because he was a considerable collector of Blake’s prints, but also because was the owner of the only surviving relief etched copper plate, the fragment of America cancelled plate a. Moss was in a position to pass on much of his own interest and information to Todd who, inspired by his example, went on to carry out important experiments in printing from this unique fragment of relief etched plate. The full influence of Todd’s experiments has yet to be recognized. Similarly, Todd’s cooperation in experiments with William Hayter and Joan Miró has hardly been considered significant by modern scholars of Blake’s materials yet, paradoxically, the Surrealist veneration of automatic modes of writing – and which played such a big role in Todd’s life during the 1930s – appears to have been absorbed or equated with acceptance, at face value, of Blake’s claim to have etched his plates ‘without Premeditation’. This legacy, historically traceable back through Todd’s experimentation with Moss’s America plate fragment, seems to have been passed on as an uncritical celebration of Blake’s affirmation of the unity of invention and execution, the background theory for the recent one-pull and two-pull debate. If these theories are true about Blake’s working method related to composing relief etched poetry, the hard evidence of the engraved copper plates drastically

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narrows such a proposition, confining it to the illuminated books alone and not making it transferable to his productions as an engraver, and particularly not to Illustrations of the Book of Job, a late Blake work celebrated as a premier expression of the engraver’s art. The utterly different technical and creative processes Blake employed in the illuminated books and in Illustrations of the Book of Job needs to be recognized if we are to come to some overall assessment of how Blake made books. In the case of the former, scholars can only work by extrapolating evidence from the America fragment and form minute inspection of the prints. In the case of the latter, in addition to the prints, there exists the abundant physical evidence of the recto and versos of the Job copper plates, which are complete and extant in their entirety, constituting the actual printing surfaces last touched by Blake at the moment he considered he had brought them to the nearest point of perfection he could achieve. Ironically, what happens to Blake’s engravings after they left his hands has also been illustrated by the strange case of the early nineteenth-century Huntington Virgil-pastiche woodblock. It is clear that Blake’s engravings for Robert Thornton’s Virgil (1821) immediately entered an area of aesthetic contention very clearly based upon reactions to Blake’s unusual and unfashionable technique for woodcuts. Again, a complete set of Blake’s original printing surfaces remains extant yet largely unstudied. Tantalizingly, in this case Blake’s Virgil woodblocks can be compared with a woodblock made by one of their earliest printmaker critics, someone who didn’t share Blake’s aesthetic yet who adopted his medium and plagiarized his designs. The story narrated in William Blake and the Art of Engraving is a highly technical one, yet it lies at the heart of the problem about how we understand Blake’s craft and artistic achievement.

NOTES

Abbreviations BIQ: Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly

Introduction 1.

2. 3.

4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

R. N. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980); William Blake and the Language of Adam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); M. Phillips, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (London: British Library, 2000); J. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993). Last accessed 30 September 2008. Butlin says, ‘I support Phillips’s idea that color-printing involved two printings although Viscomi, supported by Robert N. Essick, believes that it was all done in one process’, ‘Word as Image in William Blake’, in T. Fulford (ed.), Romanticism and Millenarianism (London: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 207–17, p. 215 n. 9. According to the attendance figures by the Art Newspaper, the Blake Exhibition at the Tate Britain was on the top-eight list of London art exhibitions in 2001. (http://www. forbes.com/collecting/2002/02/06/0206hot.html last accessed 30 September 2008) R. N. Essick and J. Viscomi, ‘An Inquiry into William Blake’s Method of Color Printing’, BIQ 35:3 (2002), p. 74. Essick and Viscomi, ‘ An Inquiry into William Blake’s Method of Color Printing’, p. 74 Phillips displayed three stages of relief etching in the 2000 exhibition, recorded in the catalogue No. 111 a) plate with text and design in stopping-out liquid ready for relief etching, b) plate with text relief etched following first bite, c) plate with text and design relief etched following second bite. Hamlyn and Phillips, William Blake, exhibition catalogue (London: Tate Publishing, 2000), p. 112. Registration is the process of placing the same plate or different plates in the exact position during multiple printing. There are several methods of registration, including using pinholes to secure the plates and paper. See A. Griffiths Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the History and Techniques (London: British Museum, 1980), pp. 117, 152, Lambert, Prints, Art and Techniques (London: V&A Publishing, 2001), p. 93. W. Savage, Practical Hints on Decorative Printing: with Illustrations Engraved on Wood, and Printed in Colours at the Type Press (1822, i.e. 1823), Houghton Library, Harvard University, copy with manuscript annotations of William M. Ivins, Jr. – 169 –

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Notes to pages 1–8

10. http://www.rochester.edu/college/eng/blake/ (last accessed 1 October 2008). 11. Bentley’s checklist of publications and discoveries in 2007 (see ‘William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2007’, BIQ, 42:1 (Summer 2008), pp. 7–8) mentions the most recent essays on Blake’s copper plates, including his own article ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal: The History, Weight, Uses, Cost, and Makers of His Copper Plates’, (University of Toronto Quarterly, 76:2 (Spring 2007), pp. 714–70) and Viscomi’s ‘Blake’s ‘Annus Mirabilis’: The Productions of 1795’ (BIQ, 41:2 (Fall 2007), pp. 52–83, online version: http://www.rochester.edu/college/eng/blake/1795/1795/index.html (last accessed 2 October 2008)). The latter reconstructs The Song of Los, and suggests that plates 3–4 and 6–7 are each etched on one piece of copper. However, Bentley comments that ‘Viscomi’s use of “probably” and “therefore” sometimes leads him to state his conclusions with a great deal more confidence than seems to me appropriate’, and his own essay ‘is even more dense with hypotheses than Viscomi’s “Annus Mirabilis”, and ‘much of the evidence itself is hypothetical, for no copperplate from Blake’s published works in illuminated printing survives, and the chief survivors are the copperplates for Job (1826) and Dante (1826–7)’. 12. Also, Rebecca Donnan, Senior Conservator at the Dorset County Record Office, formerly Andrew W. Mellon Fellow in Advanced Paper Conservation at the National Galley of Art, Washington DC, had carried out close examinations on Blake’s printing techniques. She presented her discovery at the Tate conference ‘William Blake at Work’ (April 2004), and a forthcoming essay is expected, ‘An Investigation of William Blake’s Separate Colour Prints: Examples in the National Gallery of Art, Washington DC’, Conservation Research Studies in the History of Art, (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, possibly forthcoming), see M. Phillips, ‘The Printing of Blake’s America a Prophecy’, Print Quarterly, 21:1 (March 2004), pp. 18–38, p. 36 n. 42. However, I have not been able to trace any such publication up to 2008. 13. Donated by Gertrude Dennis in 2002 to the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. See Morgan Library catalogue online. 14. Another copy of Newton is at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. 15. See G. E. Bentley Jr, Blake Books (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 355. 16. G. E. Bentley, ‘Ruthven Todd’s Blake Papers at Leeds’, BIQ, 16: 2 (Fall 1982), pp. 72–81, p. 80. 17. R. N. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. 134. 18. Ibid., p. 155. 19. Ibid., p. 215 20. Ibid., p. 106, n. 2. 21. Ibid., pp. 201–2. 22. Huntington Manuscript, WR 644, Ruthven Todd to Wakeford Graham Robertson, 14 January 1945, Huntington Library, San Marino, California. 23. Michael Phillips’s three items exhibited in the Tate are: A Political and Satirical History of the Years 1756 and 1757 (1757) (cat. 105), Historia del Testamento Vecchio Dipinta in Roma Nel Vaticano da Raffaelle Di Urbino … Al Sig Annibale Carracci, 1603 (1773) (cat. 142), and Milton’s Paradise Lost: A New Edition by Richard Bentley (1732) (cat. 143). 24. See M. Phillips ‘William Blake and the Sophocles Manuscript Notebook’, BIQ, 31:2 (1997), pp. 44–64; G. E. Bentley, ‘William Blake and His Circle’; J. Snart, ‘Blake’s Milton: Did Blake own and annotate the 1732 Bentley edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost?’ European Romantic Review 16:1 (2005), pp. 79–91.

Notes to pages 8–11

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25. See C. Fox, ‘The Engravers’ Battle for Professional Recognition in Early Nineteenth Century London’, London Journal, 2 (1976), pp. 3–31, J. Gage, ‘An Early Exhibition and the Politics of British Printmaking’, Print Quarterly, 6 (1989), pp. 123–39, D. W. Dörrbecker, ‘Innovative Reproduction: Painters and Engravers at the Royal Academy of Arts’, in S. Clark and D. Worrall (eds), Historicizing Blake (London: Macmillan Press, 1994), pp. 125–46. 26. See Barasch, Theories of Art, 3 vols (New York and London: Routledge, 2000), vol. 2, p. 139 27. Two notable contemporaries wrote (very valuable) accounts of their knowledge of Blake during his work on the Job engravings. Samuel Palmer first met Blake on 9 October 1824 (see A. H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer (London: Seeley and Co., 1892), pp. 9–10) when Blake was engraving Job Plate 1. ‘At my never-to-be-forgotten first interview’, says Palmer, ‘the copper of the first plate – “thus did Job continually” – was lying on the table where he had been working at it. How lovely it looked by the lamplight, strained through the tissue paper!’ (see A. Gilchrist The Life of William Blake (London: Macmillan, 1863), vol. 1, p. 297). An astrological chart of Blake’s birth time, perhaps drawn by John Varley, in Urania: or, The Astrologer’s Chronicle, and Mystical Magazine ( June 1825), notes Blake’s conversations and meetings with the astrological group and that ‘Mr. Blake, the subject thereof, is well known amongst scientific characters, as having a most peculiar and extraordinary turn of genius and vivid imagination. His illustrations of the Book of Job have met with much and deserved praise; indeed, in the line which this artist has adopted, he is perhaps equalled by none of the present day’ (p. 71). 28. John Ruskin, ‘The Book of Job … is of the highest rank in certain characters of imagination and expression…’ Elements of Drawing, in Three Letters to Beginners (London, 1857). In Cook and Wedderburn (eds), The Works of John Ruskin, 39 vols (London: George Allen, 1903–12), vol. 15, p. 223. Cited by B. Bryant ‘The Job Designs: A Documentary and Bibliographical Record’, in D. Bindman (ed.), William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job (London: William Blake Trust, 1987), pp. 139–40. 29. See S. W. Hayter, New Ways of Gravure (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949; London: Oxford University Press, 1966), chapters 14, 15; B. D. Rix Pictures for the Parlour: The English Reproductive Print from 1775 to 1900, exhibition catalogue (Toronto, ON: Art Gallery of Ontario, 1983), pp. 7, 11. 30. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, p. 371. 31. This plate was printed for The Original Works of William Hogarth (London: John and Josiah Boydell, 1790), and The Original and Genuine Works of William Hogarth (London: Boydell and Company, c. 1795). Essick suggests that the fifth state be attributed to the reworking of Ratcliff (Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations: A Catalogue and Study of the Plates Engraved by Blake after Designs by Other Artists (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), pp. 43–4). 32. R. N. Essick William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 43. 33. A. W. Tuer, Bartolozzi and his Works (London: Field and Tuer, c. 1882), p. 59. 34. G. Keynes, Blake Studies (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949; 2nd edn, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), pp. 122–9). 35. See Bentley, ‘Blake’s Job Copperplates’, The Library, fifth series, vol. 26 (1971), pp. 234– 41. 36. Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job: An essay on their graphic form with a catalogue of their states and printings’, in D. Bindman (ed.), William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job (London: William Blake Trust, 1987), p. 49.

172 37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53. 54.

55.

Notes to pages 11–20 Essick, William Blake and the Language of Adam, p. 162. Ibid., p. 167. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, p. 4. Ibid., pp. 30–1. Essick and Viscomi’s argument is based on Blake’s words: ‘Painting is Drawing on Canvas & Engraving is Drawing on Copper & nothing Else [;] Drawing is Execution & nothing Else & he who Draws best must be the best Artist’ (E 582). Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 235. G. Keynes, ‘On Editing Blake’, English Studies Today, 3rd series (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1964), pp. 137–54, p. 150. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, p. 424, n.16. M. Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy, p. 233. G. E. Bentley, ‘The First Printed Reference to the Publication of Job: Disraeli (?) in The Star Chamber (1826)’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 12: 1 (Summer 1978) pp. 69–70. The Star Chamber, 4 (1826), p. 73. W. R. Rix, ‘Bibles of Hell: William Blake and the Discourses of Radicalism’ (PhD dissertation, University of Copenhagen, 2001), pp. 109–14. See G. Keynes, Blake: Complete Writings with variant readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 400, and D. V. Erdman (ed.) The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake (New York: Doubleday, 1988), p. 624. Rix, ‘Bibles of Hell’, figure 2. Ibid., figure 3. G. E. Bentley (ed.), William Blake’s Writings, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978), vol. 1, p. 1430. G. Smith, Thomas Girtin: The Art of Watercolour, exhibition catalogue (London: Tate Publishing, 2002). See M. Phillips, William Blake: The Creation of the Songs from Manuscript to Illuminated Printing (London: British Library, 2000), pp. 99–101. More recent conservation on Blake’s works is published in H. J. Townsend (ed.), William Blake the Painter at Work (London: Tate Publishing, 2003). Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, pp. 259–260), Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book.

1 The History of the Theory of Conception and Execution 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6.

The Infernal Methods: A Study of William Blake’s Art Techniques (London, Bell: 1975) by Raymond Lister is probably the earliest book dedicated entirely to Blake’s artistic techniques. However, the proportions of Lister’s book on engraving and relief etching are equal, perhaps even slightly more on the former subject, whereas Essick emphasizes relief etching much more than engraving. Blake in his Public Address says, ‘My Conception & Invention are on all hands allowd to be Superior, My Execution will be found so too’. (E 582). Essick tends to use the term ‘conception’ whereas Viscomi uses ‘invention’. They seem to use them in an interchangeable way. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, pp. 29–30. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, pp. 4. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 145. Ibid.

Notes to pages 20–5 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

173

Ibid. Ibid., p. 152. Ibid. Essick, William Blake and the Voice of Adam italics in original, p. 161. Ibid., p. 162. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, p. 30. A relief print from a relief-etched copper plate is reproduced in Todd’s ‘The Techniques of William Blake’s Illuminated Printing’, Print Collector’s Quarterly, 29 (1948), p. 33. The experiment imitating William Blake’s illuminated printing by Ruthven Todd (poetry), Joan Miró (image) and William Hayter (printing) in 1947. See P. Hacker (ed.), The Renaissance of Gravure: The Art of S. W. Hayter (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 90; Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, pp. 6–7. Tatham’s account of Blake’s colour-printing method is recorded by Gilchrist: ‘Blake, when he wanted to make his prints in oil [sic], … 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-painted his outline on the millboard when he wanted to take another print’. (Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake (London: MacMillan, 1863), vol. 1, p. 376) Robertson added a chapter ‘The Colour Prints’ of his own to oppose Tatham’s opinion when he edited Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake in 1907, saying, ‘Tatham’s information is correct as far as it goes – but it goes no further than the first printing. … The drawing being made upon thick millboard, the main lines were traced over in a paint thus mixed…, and an impression from this was stamped upon paper while the paint was still wet. Thus a delicate outline of the whole composition was obtained. Then, still with the same medium, the shadows and dark masses were filled in on the millboard and transferred to the paper, the result having much the appearance of an uncoloured page of one of the Prophetic Books. This impression was allowed to dry thoroughly. Then came the stamping of the local colours’. (G. Robertson (ed.), Gilchrist’s Life of William Blake (London: John Lane, 1907), p. 405). Before 1942, Todd had an article on ‘A short letter on William Blake and the Gilchrists’ (Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 1941, p. 172) and, with Geoffrey Keynes, published the sixteen designs of Songs of Innocence and of Experience printed from the electrotypes (London: Chiswick Press, 1941). These were supposed to be part of the process of Todd’s editing of Gilchrist. R. Todd (ed.), Alexander Gilchrist: Life of William Blake (London: Everyman’s Library, 1942; p. viii. Ibid. Todd Letters, MS. 470, Brotherton Library, Special Material. Bentley, ‘Ruthven Todd’s Blake Papers at Leeds’, p. 75. Todd, Gilchrist: Life of Blake, p. viii. R. Todd ‘An Accidental Scholar’, London Magazine, New Series, 7 ( January 1969), p. 47. Butlin says, ‘New preparations for a complete catalogue of Blake’s works was begun by Ruthven Todd and Geoffrey Keynes shortly before and during the Second World War.

174

25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50.

51.

Notes to pages 25–9 Two successive typescript drafts, kindly made available to the present compiler, have supplied much of the basic information about the whereabouts and history of most of the works recorded here. This information has however been checked against the original sources, greatly amplified, and, of course, brought up to date. Sir Geoffrey Keynes has continued to give me ever help during the preparation of this catalogue, as did Ruthven Todd until his death in 1978’, M. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1981), p. ix. J. Symons, ‘Ruthven Todd: some details for a portrait’, (1979) in J. Symons, Critical Observations (London: Faber & Faber, 1981), p. 187. His writing is mentioned in Todd’s note to p. 369 of The Planet in my Hand. Twelve Poems (London: Chiswick Press, 1944; London: Grey Walls Press, 1946). Blake’s watercolour ‘The King of the Jews’ or Christ Crowned with Thorns (c. 1805) (Butlin The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, cat. 493, pl. 597), was bought by Robertson in April 1906 through Carfax (Ibid., p. 359). But the one imitated by Robertson is probably another watercolour by Blake, Christ Nailed to the Cross: The Third Hour (c. 1800–3) (Ibid., cat. 496, pl. 599), which Robertson bought in 1904 (Ibid., p. 360). Robertson’s method is described by Todd in Gilchrist: Life of Blake (1942), pp. 395–6. K. Preston, Letters from Graham Robertson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953), p. 469 K. Preston, Letters from Graham Robertson (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1953). Todd, Gilchrist: Life of Blake, p. 372. Ibid., p. viii. Moss MS. 67–74. R. N. Essick The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), p. xxvii. Bentley, Blake’s Books, p. 106. Todd, Gilchrist: Life of Blake, p. 376. Ibid., p. 368. Ibid., p. 370. Ibid., p. 373. ‘Chapter XII. P. 86, l. 18. As issued in 1793, this work was entitled For Children: The Gates of Paradise, …Lt.-Col. W. E. Moss, the former owner of No. 52A, suggested that the remains of an erased imprint might have read: Published by J. Newbery; he now tells me that this is more likely to have been The Juvenile Library as the erased words clearly end with …ary, not …ery; …’, Todd, Gilchrist: Life of Blake, p. 374. Ibid., p. 377. Ibid., p. 377. Ibid., p. 381. Ibid., p. 386. Ibid., p. 368. Ibid., p. 375. Essick, William Blake’s Commerical Book Illustrations, p. 91. Ibid. Todd, Gilchrist: Life of Blake, p. 372. Catalogue of the Very Well-Known and Valuable Library: The Property of Lt.-Col. Moss of the Manor House, Sonning-on-Thames, Berks., Sotheby’s sales catalogue 2 March 1937. One copy is in the National Art Library at V&A. His obituary appears in the Freemason publication Ars Quatuor Coronatorum: Being the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, vol. 66 (London, 1954), p. 129:

Notes to pages 29–32

52.

53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

60. 61.

62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67.

175

‘Moss, Lt.-Col. William Edward, of Sonning, Berks., on 25th February, 1953. Bro. Moss was a great collector of books and an authority on English Bindings of the sixteenth century. He was a member of Apollo University Lodge No. 357, and a Life Member of our Correspondence Circle, which he joined as long ago as March, 1899. He was the author of a number of articles in our Transactions’. In the year 1938, Todd was living in Hampstead, London. At this time, Todd probably did not know, or at least was not familiar with, Moss although their houses were not too far away from each other by commuter train. Todd’s correspondence with Moss, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, and a photocopy in the Brotherton Library, Leeds University, show the dates between 1941 and 1945, mostly when Todd was living in Edinburgh. W. E. Moss Freemasonry in France in 1725–1735, from the Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge (n.p., 1938). Bentley, Blake Books, p. 426. Moss, Freemasonry in France, final page. Revealingly, even in Todd’s description about Blake’s method, ‘engraving’ is used as a term to cover ‘etching’ (Todd, Gilchrist: Life of Blake, p. 372). Ibid., p. 376. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 437 Todd, ‘The Techniques of William Blake’s Illuminated Printing’, p.27. In his revised version of this article, published in The Visionary Hand, edited by Essick, Todd changes his mind and says, ‘Further experiments which I have been carrying out have now (May, 1972) persuaded me that this is a misstatement, and that, indeed, as in the ‘Newton’, Blake possibly used several printings’ (see R. N. Essick, The Visionary Hand (Los Angeles, CA: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1973), p. 39, n. 20). However, none of the present day scholars who debate about whether Blake used ‘one-pull’ or ‘two-pull’ method takes Todd’s experiments and opinions into account. Hayter New Ways of Gravure (1966), pp. 116–18. Essick and Viscomi, however, think the inking of relief-etched plates requires the use of a linen dabber or ball containing ink to apply on copper by hand as for intaglio plates (Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 102; Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, p. 101). Opposing Essick and Viscomi’s implication of an easy and quick process, Phillips recently argues that Blake’s inking and printing the illuminated plates was a difficult and slow process (see Phillips, ‘The Printing of Blake’s America a Prophecy’). Todd’s earlier experiments on Blake’s plate-inking, curiously dismissed by Essick, Viscomi and Phillips, precedes the ongoing speculation and debate. For Todd’s life, see Julian Symons, ‘Ruthven Todd: some details for a portrait’, London Magazine, n.s., 19 (April/May 1979), pp. 62–80; reprinted in J. Symons, Critical Observations, pp. 181–97; R. Todd, ‘Memoirs’, ed. by R. Latona, The Malahat Review, 62 (1982), pp. 8–60; Todd, ‘An Accidental Scholar’. ,’ London Magazine, New Series, VII ( January 1969), pp. 42–51. Reproduced in the exhibition catalogue Surrealism: Desire Unbound, ed. Jennifer Mundy (London: Tate Publishing, 2001), Fig. 6, anonymous photograph. Symons, ‘Ruthven Todd’, p. 181. Todd, ‘Memoirs’. Todd, ‘An Accidental Scholar’, p. 42. Herbert Read was a First World War poet. He supported many new movements of art, including Imagism, Vorticism, Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, Constructivism,

176

68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81.

82. 83. 84. 85.

Notes to pages 32–5 Abstraction, Abstract Expressionism, Action painting and so on. His writings of art criticism and his friendship with many artists had a big influence on British contemporary art. He was also the founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), formerly the Museum of Modern Art in London, which was opened in 1950; see King, The Last Modern: A Life of Herbert Read (London: Weidenfield and Nicholson, 1990). R. Todd, ‘Miro in New York’, Malahat Review, 1 (1967), p. 77. P. Soupault, Chants d’innocence et d’expérience (Paris: n.p., 1927); William Blake, a critical work in French and trans. J. Lewis May (London: John Lane, 1928). D. Gascoyne, A Short Survey of Surrealism (London: Cobden-Saunderson, 1935), p. 82. Ibid., p. 132. Herbert Read had an interest in William Blake which is shown in his early poems King, The Last Modern, p. 22. The International Surrealist Exhibition, 11 June– July 1936, p. 13. M. Rowell (ed.), Joan Miró: Selected Writings and Interviews (London: Thames and Hudson, 1986), p. 190. Illustration to George Bataille, ‘Les Mangeurs d’étoiles’, in J. L. Barrault, et. al. (Rouen, 1940; Marseille: André Dimanche, 1993), p. 25. D. Lomas, The Haunted Self: Surrealism, Psychoanalysis, Subjectivity (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 191–2. A. Breton Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. R. Seaver and H. R. Lane (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1974), p. 26. Ibid., pp. 22–3. For example, in a letter to Hayley, 23 October 1804, Blake says, ‘Dear Sir, excuse my enthusiasm or rather madness, for I am really drunk with intellectual vision whenever I take a pencil or graver into my hand’ (E 757). In a letter to Butts, 25 April 1803, Blake says, ‘I have written this Poem from immediate Dictation twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even against my Will. The Time it has taken in writing was thus renderd Non Existent. & an immense Poem Exists which seems to be the Labour of a long Life all producd without Labour or Study’ (E728–9). A. Breton, Limits not Frontiers of Surrealism, in H. Read (ed.) (London: Faber & Faber, 1936), pp. 109–12. Breton, Limits not Frontiers, p. 111. Also in 1785 Walpole printed (at Strawberry Hill) his Hieroglyphic Tales, which he explained, were ‘written extempore and without any plan’ (in his notes for Tale 1, from Walpole’s manuscript in his copy of the first edition in the British Museum; p. 81 in 1926 edition), in Surrealist words: automatically; see A. Brotchie (compiled and presented by), Surrealist Games, ed. M. Gooding (London: Redstone Press, 1991), p. 141. The first Muse Clio. G. Baldwin (trans.), Cesare Avena de Valdiere’s La Prima Musa Clio (1802), pp. 15–16. Ibid., p. 18. Blake in his Notebook writes: ‘Cosway, Frazer & Baldwin of Egypts Lake Fear to associate with Blake This Life is a Warfare against Evils They heal the sick he casts out Devils…’ (E505) For Blake’s connection with and criticism of the magneticism, see Rix ‘Bibles of Hell’, pp. 218–20.

Notes to pages 36–42

177

86. Symons, ‘Ruthven Todd’; reprinted in J. Symons, Critical Observations, p. 183. 87. From William Wordsworth’s Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood (1803–6). Todd also alludes to Wordsworth’s words, ‘The Child is father of the man’ (in ‘My Heart Leaps Up’). 88. Symons, ‘Ruthven Todd’, in 1981 edn, p. 164. 89. Todd, ‘An Accidental Scholar’, p. 46. 90. Preston (ed.), Letters from Graham Robertson, pp. 468, 469, 475, 478, 500. 91. ‘…Blake had no doubts, his old fingers curled Around dear Kate’s frail and transparent hand; Death merely meant a changing of his world, A widening of experience, for him it marked no end’. Extract from Various Ends, first published in Horizon, 1: 5 (London, May 1940); then The Planet in my Hand (1946), pp. 50–1. 92. R. Todd (ed.), William Blake: Poems. The poem was published in R. Todd Acreage of the heart (Glasgow: William Maclellan,1944), p. 26, Planet in my Hand, p. 57, R. Todd Garland for the Winter Solstice (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1961), p. 26. See C. Todd, Ruthven Todd (1914–1978): A Preliminary Finding-List (unpublished manuscript 2001), p. 58. 93. K. Reddy, interview in 1981, printed in Krishna Reddy: A Retrospective (New York: Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1981). Cited in Hacker (ed.) The Renaissance of Gravure, p. 117. 94. J. Buckland-Wright, Etching and Engraving: techniques and the Modern Trend (London: Studio Ltd 1953), p. 31. 95. Hacker (ed.), The Renaissance of Gravure, pp. 2–3. 96. See G. Reynolds, ‘Hayter: The Years of Surrealism’, in Hacker (ed.) The Renaissance of Gravure. 97. Hacker (ed.), The Renaissance of Gravure, p. 4. 98. Ibid., The Renaissance of Gravure, pp. 10–11.Graham Reynolds, ‘Hayter: The Years of Surrealism’, in Hacker, The Renaissance of Gravure. 99. S. W. Hayter, New Ways of Gravure (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949), p. 132. 100. Hacker (ed.), The Renaissance of Gravure, p. 116. Hacker quotes from Pat Gilmour, For Stanley William Hayter on His 80th birthday (Oxford Gallery, 1981). 101. S. W. Hayter, New Ways of Gravure (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), p. 19. 102. R. N. Essick and J. Viscomi, ‘Blake’s Method of Color Printing: Some Responses and Further Observations’, BIQ, 36:2 (Fall 2002), p. 60. 103. Todd, ‘Miro in New York’, pp. 82–3. 104. R. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates, reprint from Book Collecting & Library Monthly (London, October, 1968). 105. Todd, ‘An Accidental Scholar’, p. 42. 106. MS. 470, Brotherton Library, Leeds University. 107. Exhibition catalogue by Carfax & Co., nos. 56–61. See Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, p. 590, no. 816. I consulted a copy of the exhibition catalogue at the Tate Archive (now the Tate Research Centre). 108. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, cat. 816, Pl. 1060. 109. Preston The Blake Collection, p. 10. 110. See also R. N. Essick (ed.), The Visionary Hand: Essays for the study of William Blake’s art and aesthetics (Los Angeles, CA: Hennessey & Ingalls, 1973).

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Notes to pages 44–7

2 The Evidence of Copper Plates 1.

2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

Bentley’s ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 744, lists eight temperas on copper by Blake. These include the untraced Christ with the Doctors in the Temple (1799–1800; Butlin 1981 cat. 414) and The Expulsion of the Rebel Angels (Butlin 1981 cat. 845). The Agony in the Garden (1799–1800, Tate; Butlin 1981 cat. 425) is actually on ‘tinned iron’ rather than copper (Bentley 2007, 739). The Nativity, however, is not listed in Bentley. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 746. Infra-red based techniques could be used to establish whether any of Blake’s paintings on copper re-used discarded engravings. The exhibition catalogue, Copper as Canvas (ed. Komanecky, 1999), examines paintings on copper plates rather than printing copper plates. This book is probably by far the best and detailed examination on copper plates. T. Clayton, The English Print 1688–1802 (The Paul Mellon Centre, New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1997), p. 11. The Beggar’s Opera, Act III (1788–90), engraved by William Blake after William Hogarth. Harvard University library catalogue (HOLLIS): TypZ 705.88.217 PF (horz). Copper Plate No. 4 for Description des batailles de la Chine (Paris : C.N. Cochin, 1769– 1774). Harvard University library catalogue (HOLLIS): Typ 715.69.280 P. The original plate of William Hogarth’s The Sleeping Congregation has the inscriptions at bottom ‘Invented Engraved & Published October 26: 1736 by Wm. Hogarth Puisuant to an Act of Parliament’, and in left-hand margin: ‘Retouched & Improved April 21 1762 by the Author’. The copper plate was bought at the Quaritch sale by the Freemason Quatuor Coronati Lodge of London; sold by Quaritch to a private collector in 1965, and again in 1967. See Ronald Paulson, Hogarth’s Graphic Works (1989), no. 140, 98–9. One of the collectors’ mark is inscribed on the verso of the plate: ‘Brian Merton Gould, Bedford Park, W. 4’. A bookplate pasted on the back reads: ‘From Pickering and Chatto / 967–9–1–1 / £90’. Hogarth painting the Comic Muse was engraved by William Hogarth after his own painting now in the National Portrait Gallery in London, and published in 1764. A label on the verso of the copper plate reads: ‘Received from: Pickering and Chatto, Sept. 1967. £150. 967–9–1–1’. The copper plate has two separate images, Nap in the Country on the top, and Nap in Town at the bottom, both designed and engraved by Rowlandson, and published in 1785 by S. Alken No. 3 Dufours Place, Broad Street Soho, London. The Portrait of Horace Walpole was engraved by J. Barlow after Joshua Reynolds’ design, and published by J. Barlow in 1796 and W. Clark in 1797. The copper plate was donated by Randal Keynes to the Lewis Walpole Library on July 23 1999. Mrs. Damer was engraved by R. Cooper after Angelica Kauffman’s painting, and published in 1810 by J. Bell. Anne Seymour Damer (Mrs. Damer) (1748–1823 (28?)) was an artist, sculptress, and friend of Horace Walpole. Walpole bequeathed Strawberry Hill to Mrs. Anne Damer, who eventually resigned the property to the Dowager Duchess of Waldegrave. The copper plate was probably from John Johnson in 1936. The MFA has Rembrandt’s copper plates for Jacob Caressing Benjamin (c. 1645; 1993.91 PDP) and The Raising of Lazarus (1642; 1993.92 PDP), and Edgar Degas’s steel-faced copper plates for Dancers in the Wings (?; 1985.71 PDP) and Study for a Program for an Artistic Evening (1884; 1985.72 PDP). The Rembrandt’s plates appear very thin and light, while Degas’s plates are much thicker and heavier.

Notes to page 48

179

14. The four copper plates are unpublished plates: Glausus pursuing Sylla (Liber Studiorum 73), etched by J.M.W. Turner and engraved by William Say; Sheepwashing, Windsor or Windsor Castle from Salt Hill (Liber Studiorum 74; M23239 PDP), etched by J.M.W. Turner and engraved by Charles Turner; and two plates for Ploughing Eton (Liber Studiorum 79; M23240, M23241 PDP), first plate etched by J. M. W. Turner, and the second plate etched attributed to Thomas Lupton and J.M.W. Turner, and engraved by Thomas Lupton. For information of these plates, see G. Forrester, Turner’s ‘Drawing Book’, the Liber Studiorum (London: Tate 1996), pp. 135–7, 143. 15. The accession numbers for these plates are ‘Witch on a Swing (verso); Warlock on a Swing among Demons (recto)’ (1824–8): 1970.608 PDP, ‘Maja (verso); Maja against a background of Demons (recto)’ (1824–8): 1970.609 PDP, ‘Andalusian Smuggler with Bull (verso); Andalusian Smuggler (failed plate) (recto)’ (1824–8): 1970.610 PDP. 16. I thank Frances Rankine, Curator of Prints and the Book at Word & Image Departent, V&A, for this information in the email to me on 19 October 2006. 17. For references to printmaking technique, see the following list (in chronological order): John Evelyn, Sculptura; or The History, and Art of Chalcography & Engraving in Copper (London: G. Beedle & T. Collins, 1662); Alexander Browne, Ars Pictoria: or an Academy treating of drawing, limning, painting, etching, to which are added xxxi copper plates, expressing the choicest, nearest grounds and rules of symmetry (London: Arthur Tooker and William Battersby, 1669, 1675); William Salmon, Polygraphice: or, the Arts of Drawing, Engraving … Varnishing … Dying … (London: Richard Jones, 1672); William Faithorne, The Art of Graving and Etching (London: A. Roper, 1702) (reissue of the edition of 1662 with supplement); Abraham Bosse, De la maniere de graver à l’eau forte et au burin (Paris: Charles-Antoine Jombert, 1745); Laurentius Natter, A Treatise on the Ancient Method of Engraving on Precious Stones, Compared with the Modern. (London: Natter, 1754); Robert Dossie, The Handmaid to the Arts, 2 vols. (1758), second edn. (London: J. Nourse, 1764); Anon., Sculptura Historico-Technica, or the History and art of engraving (London: J. Marks, 1766, 1770); Carington Bowles, The artist’s assistant in drawings, perspective, etching (London: T. Kitchin, c. 1768); William Gilpin, An Essay upon Prints (London: J. Robson, 1768); Denis Diderot and Jean le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, par une société de gens de lettres (Geneva, 1772); J. Chelsum, The History of the Art of Engraving in Mezzotinto (Winchester, 1786); William Henry Hall, The New Royal Encyclopedia: or, Complete Modern Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences, three vols. (1789–91); F. Yrubslips [pseud. Francis Spilsbury], The Art of Etching and Aqua Tinting (London, 1794); John Landseer, Lectures on the Art of Engraving (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1807); J. Baxter, The Sister Arts, or A Concise and interesting View of the Nature and History of Paper-making, Printing and Bookbinding: Being designed to unite Entertainment with Information concerning those Arts, with which the Cause of Literature is peculiarly connected. (Lewes: J. Baxter, 1809); John Hassell, Calchographia: or, The Art of Multiplying (London, 1811); William Young Ottley, An Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving (London: J. & A. Arch, 1816), Notices of Engravers, and Their Works (London, 1831); Hewson Clarke & John Dougall, The Cabinet of Arts, or General Instructor in Arts, Science, Trade, Practical Machinery (London: T. Kinnersley, 1817); Charles Frederick Partington, The Printer’s Complete Guide (London, 1825); Theodore Henry Fielding, The Art of engraving (London : M. A Nattali, 1841); Hans W. Singer & William Strang, Etching, Engraving, and the other methods of printing Pictures (London: Kegan Paul & Co., 1897); Fr. Lippmann, Engraving and Etching: A handbook for the use of students and print collectors, translated

180

18. 19.

20. 21. 22.

Notes to pages 48–50 by Martin Hardie (London: M. Grevel & Co., 1906); A. M. Hind, A Short History of Engraving & Etching (London: British Museum, 1908); Howard C. Levis, Descriptive Bibliography of The Most Important Books in the English Language Relating to the Art and History of Engraving and the Collecting of Prints (London: Ellis, 1912–3; reprinted 1974); Hesketh Hubbard (ed.), How to Distinguish Prints (Woodgreen Common, 1926); John Buckland-Wright, Etching and Engraving: Techniques and the modern trend (London: Studio Ltd., 1953); Gabor Peterdi, Printmaking: Methods Old and New (New York & London: Macmillan, 1959); Stanley William Hayter, About Prints (London: Oxford University Press, 1962); Richard T. Godfrey, Printmaking in Britain: a general history from its beginnings to the present day (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978); Antony Griffiths, Prints and Printmaking: An Introduction to the history and techniques (London: British Museum, 1980, 1996); Gavin Bridson & Geoffrey Wakeman, Printmaking & Picture Printing: A Bibliographical Guide to Artistic & Industrial Techniques in Britain 1750– 1900 (Oxford: The Pough Press, 1984); Raymond Lister, Prints and Printmaking: A Dictionary and Handbook of the Art in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Methuen, 1984); Printmaking in Britain 1775–1965: Two centuries of the art of the print in Britain, exhibition catalogue (London: William Weston Gallery, 1987); Carol Wax, The Mezzotint: History and Technique (London: Thames & Hudson, 1990); Susan Lambert, Prints: Art and Techniques (London: V&A Publishing, 2001). W. Faithorne The Art of Graving and Etching (London: A. Roper, 1702) (reissue of the edition of 1662 with supplement), pp. 4–5. Diderot & D’Alembert, L’Encyclopédie: Gravure-Sculpture annotates the illustration: ‘Gravure, En Taille-Douce, En Maniere Noire, Maniere de Crayon, & c. Planche Iere :… 12. Marteau à repousser. f le bout qui sert à repousser; g la tête. 13. i le tas à repousser, il eft d’acier trempé & trèspoli; l son pied de bois. … 18. Repousser. q, r les branches du compas à repousser, recourbées en s t; s pointe émoussée ou arrondie; t pointe coupante: on suppose ici que x u soit le côté gravé d’une planche, & le point z l’endroit où l’on auroit effacé quelque chose, où il y auroit un creux, il s’agit de faire revenir cet endroit uni, c’est ce qu’on appelle repousser. Pour y parvenir on appliquera la pointe émoussée s au point z; on fera arriver l’autre pointe t que l’on appuiera contre le dos de la planche, de maniere qu’elle y marque un point apparent qui se trouvera correspondre àl’endroit marqué z: cette opération faite, on placera la planche sur le tas, fig. 13. en observant de mettre le côte gravé de la planche sur la face i du tas, & avec le bout f du marteau on frappera sur l’endroit correspondant au point z qu’on a marqué avec la pointe du compas sur le dos de la planche: cette opération est faite lorsqu’on s’apperçoit que l’endroit qui étoit creux est au même niveau du reste de la superficie du cuivre. Il est essentiel qu’un curvre soit parfaitement uni dans toute son étendue, parce que les objets qui se trouveroient gravés dans les endroits creux, ne s’imprimeroient pas aussi-bien que le reste, ou bien le noir de l’impression venant à s’arrêter dans cesendroits, formeroit des taches sur l’épreuve. Voyez l’article EPREUVE’. (in Bibliothèque de l’Image, 2001 reproduction, 2) T. H. Fielding, The Art of Engraving (London: M. A. Nattali), pp. 14–16. A. M. Hind, A Short History of Engraving & Etching (London: British Museum, 1908), p. 5 G. Peterdi, Printmaking: Methods Old and New (New York and London: Macmillan 1959), pp. 39–40.

Notes to pages 51–3

181

23. Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 42. 24. A photograph of the verso of a painting on copper, Autumn by Johann König (sixteen– seventeenth century German), shows the hammer marks and rolling at the planishing stage. See I. Horovitz ‘The Materials and Techniques of European Paintings on Copper Supports’, in Komanecky (ed.), Copper as Canvas (Phoenix, AZ; New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 63–92, p. 67, Fig. 4.3. 25. MFA accession numbers: M25250.1–12. 26. MFA accession numbers: 1993.91–2. 27. MFA accession number: 2001.551. 28. E.357A.1892/V.6a. 29. Horovitz in her essay, ‘The Materials and Techniques of European Paintings on Copper Supports’, describes the methods and marks of planishing: ‘After a sheet was formed, it could then be smoothed by hand with a planishing hammer, which had a wide, circular, flat head, and if not too heavy, would easily flatten only the surface of the copper’. ‘To certain extent it is possible to identify visually evidence of methods of manufacture such as hammering and rolling. Hammering is often evident in the form of concentric rings and concavities, and if marked, cause distortion of the plate as a whole. The hammer marks can be small or large; sometimes two sets of hammer marks of different sizes can be seen, and they are usually but not invariably confined to the back of the plate’. ‘Rolling is characterized by a series of parallel waves or undulations running vertically or horizontally on the sheet, and which can be seen in raking light. … Sometimes hammer marks can appear misshapen or oval, indicating that rolling has taken place after hammering (Fig. 4.3)’, Horovitz ‘The Materials and Techniques of European Paintings’, p. 66. 30. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 761; Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 143, 382, 167, 113, 235– 6. 31. These marks are visible on some prints, see Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, pp. 753, 762, Illustrations 4, 9. 32. Image of the copper plate is reproduced in Godfrey, James Gilray: The Art of Caricature, p. 55, cat. 4B. 33. See note 15. 34. E.505–1966/V.6.e. 35. Eaves, The Counter-Arts Conspiracy, pp. 230–3. 36. Ibid., p. 233, fig. 4.37. 37. E.356A.B–92/V.6.B.II. 38. E.357A.1892/V.6a. 39. The hammer marks for planshing are similar to Fig. 4.3 in M. K. Komanecky (ed.), Copper as Canvas: Two Centuries of Masterpiece Paintings on Copper 1575–1775 (New York and Oxford: Phoenix Art Museum & Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 67. 40. T. Clayton, The English Print 1688–1802 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press), p. 117. George Vertue (1684–1756) was the leading English portrait engraver at the time. See Clayton, The English Print, p. 20. 41. Hind, A Short History of Engraving, p. 154. 42. See Tuer, Bartolozzi and His Works. 43. E.2127–1917. 44. E.2126–1917. 45. The list of ‘Copper plates engraved by Bartolozzi known to be still in existence’ by Andrew Tuer in Bartolozzi and his Works (pp. 57–9) failed to record these two copper plates.

182

Notes to pages 53–8

46. See Chapter 4 for the information about Pontifex and other copper plate makers. 47. R. T. Godfrey, Printmaking in Britain: a General History from its Beginnings to the Present Day (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978 p. 55). William Sharp noted that the dotting manner had an advantage over line or mezzotint engraving because ‘assistants can without any knowledge of drawing, or any natural taste perform the greatest part of the labour’, in Sharp’s letter of 1810 printed in H. C. Levis, Descriptive Bibliography of The Most Important Books in the English Language Relating to the Art and History of Engraving and the Collecting of Prints (London: Ellis, 1912–3; 1974), pp. 96–9. 48. R. N. Essick and M. D. Paley, Robert Blair’s The Grave illustrated by William Blake, a study and facsimile (London: Scolar Press, 1982), pp. 204–22; G. E. Bentley, Jr, A Blake Bibliography: Annotated lists of works, studies and Blakeana (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1964), pp. 530–1. 49. E.3158–1990/V.24 50. T. Clayton, The English Print, p. 202. 51. E.2298.a–1910. 52. E.249–1949/V.6a. 53. E.3241–1914. 54. E.437, 438–1935. Images of the copper plate and print are reproduced in Godfrey (2001), 54, 55, cat. 4A, 4B. 55. E.3266–1948/V.6b.I. 56. TGA 7216/5, etched copper plate, 100mm x 155mm. 57. B. Hunnisett An Illustrated Dictionary of British Steel Engravers (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1989), pp. 83–4. 58. Clayton, The English Print, p. 14. 59. E.1456–1926. 60. E.1462–1926/V.6c. 61. R. T. Godfrey, Printmaking in Britain: a general history from its beginnings to the present day (Oxford: Phaidon, 1978), p. 102; R. Lister, Prints and Printmaking: A Dictionary and Handbook of the Art in Nineteenth-Century Britain (London: Methuen, 1984), p. 73. 62. William Weston Gallery Printmaking in Britain 1775–1965: Two centuries of the art of the print in Britain, exhibition catalogue (London: William Weston Gallery, 1987), p. 104. 63. See Godfrey, Printmaking in Britain, p. 103; William Weston Gallery Printmaking in Britain, p. 104. Palmer mentions in his letters to a friend and collector, Frederic George Stephens, in 1880 that ‘you must not be alarmed if an apparition or “double” of the Early Ploughman appears before very long at No. 10; … for, after a long sleep, he has been rebitten with a love of early rising, and has set forth to his work, so his aged parent trusts…’ (R. Lister (ed.), The Letters of Samuel Palmer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), p. 993); and ‘I hope the rehabilitated and almost re-etched ‘Early Ploughman’, a proof impression of which ought to reach you about the same time as this note, will show that I have not left off taking pains with my work’ (Lister (ed.), Letters, p. 996). 64. See R. Lister, Samuel Palmer: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1974), p. 274. Samuel Palmer’s letter to Herbert Palmer in 1880 expressed his dissatisfaction with the latter’s rebiting and printing: ‘I would not advise the supplying any Early Ploughmen where the birds are obliterated – I believe you have yet to see the full result of your rebiting when you taken any impression briskly wiping in this direction’ (Lister 1974, II: 1031, Letters 1880[31]).

Notes to pages 58–60

183

65. ‘Etching’, wrote Palmer in a letter in 1872, ‘seems to me to stand quite alone among the complete arts in its compatibility with authorship. You are spared the dreadful deathgrapple with colour which makes every earnest artist’s liver a pathological curiosity… But the great peculiarity of etching seems to be that its difficulties are not such as excite the mind to ‘restless ecstasy’, but are an elegant mixture of the manual, chemical and calculative, so that its very mishaps and blunders (usually remediable) are a constant amusement. The tickling sometimes amounts to torture, but, on the whole, it raises and keeps alive a speculative curiosity – it has something of the excitement of gambling, without its guilt and its ruin. For these and other reasons I am inclined to think it the best comptu exponent of the artist-author’s thoughts’ (Lister, Prints and Printmaking: A Dictionary and Handbook of Art in Nineteenth: A Dictionary and Handbook of the Art in Nineteenth Century Britiain (London: Methuen, 1984), p. 73; Lister (ed.), Letters, p. 865). 66. Lister, Prints and Printmaking, p. 73. 67. E.460, 459–1953/V.6c. The typed scripts inside of the box cover read: ‘As soon as I can pack it I am going to send a small offering for your own, Sir Frank Short’s and Mr. Crigg’s acceptance, in the shape of some of the etching tools which were used by S. P. in the whole of his work form the beginning. He used to say that those with German silver fittings were made by one Donaldgon, in industrious, between bibulous, intervals – a noted man at his craft. I will ask you to make the division; but sufferest that the burinholder should go to Sir Frank, as he is an engraver, of which fact he lately sent me an exquisite piece of evidence. A. H. P’. It is signed at the end: ‘A. H. Palmer, 1923’. 68. Lister Samuel Palmer, p. 30. 69. Son and pupil of William Holl, the elder. His brothers Benjamin, Charles and Francis Holl were also engravers. They were part of the family business of engraving. (Lister, Prints and Printmaking, p. 229) 70. E.505–1966/V.6.e. 71. E.77–1940/V.6BII. 72. Liber Studiorum 79; M23240, M23241 PDP. 73. The two kinds of different hammer marks show two different hands, the former likely by Turner and the latter probably by Thomas Lupton. 74. W. G. Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, a description and a catalogue (London: Macmillan, 1878), p. 155; G. Forrester Turner’s ‘Drawing Book’, the Liber Studiorum (London: Tate, 1996), p. 143. Impressions of the first and the second plates are reproduced in A. J. Finberg, The History of Turner’s Liber Studiorum, with a New Catalogue Raisonné (London: Ernest Benn Lmt., 1924), pp. 316–7. An impression of the third plate is online at Tate Collection: http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid= 35563&searchid=11679. 75. Finberg, History, p. 317. 76. See Rawlinson, Turner’s Liber Studiorum, a Description and a Catalogue (London: Macmillan, 1906), pp. 180–2. 77. The technique of soft-ground etching is entirely drawing with the assistance of acid, excluding the cutting of either the metal or ground. Firstly, place a piece of tissue paper over a metal plate coated with tallow; then, draw the design on to the tissue paper. When the paper is removed, the tallow comes away from the plate where the lines are drawn. Finally, immerse the plate in acid. See Belsey, Gainsborough the Printmaker (Aldeburgh, Suffolk: Peter Pears Gallery, 1988), p. 34. 78. In 1826 Geddes gathered a selection of ten plates for publication, and Wilkie also had a similar edition in 1824. But neither edition was popular at its time. See M. Myrone and

184

Notes to pages 60–5

M. Rosenthal (eds), Gainsborough (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), p. 236; P. Black, ‘Andrew Geddes: Herald of the Etching Revival’, in H. Smailes, Andrew Geddes (1783– 1844): Painter-Printmaker (Edinburgh: National Galleries of Scotland, 2001), p. 85; N. Tromans, David Wilkie: Painter of Everyday Life (London: Dulwich Picture Gallery, 2002), pp. 117, 125. 79. Keynes ‘Some Uncollected Authors XLIV’, Book Collector (Spring 1970), pp. 33–5. 80. A. Cozens A New Method of assisting the Invention in drawing Original Compositions of Landscape (London: J. Dixwell, 1785); reprinted in A. P. Oppé, Alexander & John Robert Cozens (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1952; facsimile, Paddington Press, 1977).

3 Blake’s Engraved Copper Plates 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24. 25.

The sixty-six years cover from 1766 to 1833, the year of Smith’s death. J. T. Smith A Book for a Rainy Day: or, Recollections of the Events of the Last Sixty-Six Years (London: Richard Bentley, 1845), pp. 81, 82 n). Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake (1863), vol. 1, p. 367. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 533. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, vol. 2, p. 267; Bentley,Blake Books, p. 54. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 9. 1806; recorded in Bentley, Blake Records. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 422. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 119. Ibid. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 511. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 118. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, pp. 127, 129, 161, 163. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 595; Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 41. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, pp. 42–5. Book Collecting & Library Monthly (October 1968), p. 11. The record in the bibliography edited by David Erdman says ‘Not examined’ under this item (English Language Notes, 4 (September 1966), p. 23). Todd probably quotes from the book by Lewis and Hofer, which I have not seen. Keynes, Blake’s Separate Plates, p. 74; Bentley, Blake Books, p. 511. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 44. Keynes, ‘Blake’s Job Copperplates’, pp. 123–4. These electrotype plates were made for the publication of Gilchrist’s The Life of William Blake. There are sixteen electrotypes, those of Plates 3, 6, 8, 16, 24, 27, 29, 33–34, 36, 43, 46–48, 53. See Bentley, Blake Books, p. 381 n. 3, pp. 429–30. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 54. Blake’s technique and Todd, Hayter and Miró’s experiments are described in Stanley William Hayter’s New Ways of Gravure, pp. 64, 130 and 204, and Ruthven Todd’s ‘The Techniques of William Blake’s Illuminated Printing’. Hayter, New Ways of Gravure, p. 204. See Todd, ‘The Techniques of William Blake’s Illuminated Printing’. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 212.

Notes to pages 65–7

185

26. Measurement is by Essick with a Brown and Sharpe blade micrometer (Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 92, n. 16). 27. Briggs, ‘Mr. Butts, the Friend and Patron of Blake’, The Connoisseur: An illustrated magazine for collectors, 19 (October 1907), pp. 92–6. 28. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 176; Blake Books, p. 86 n. 3, pp. 99, 106; Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 92. 29. In an early essay by John Thomas Smith on Blake (Nollekens and his Times, 1828), John Linnell wrote a note in the margin on p. 468, ‘The liquid mentioned by Mr. Smith with which he says Blake used to Draw his subjects in outline on his copper plates was nothing more I believe than the usual stopping as it is called used by engravers made chiefly of pitch and diluted with Terps. The most extraordinary facility seems to have been attained by Blake in writing backwards & that with a brush dipped in a glutinous liquid for the writing is in many instances highly ornamental & varied in character as may be seen in his Songs of Innocence and the larger work of one hundred plates called Jerusalem[.]’, Bentley, Blake Records, p. 460 n 1. 30. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, pp. 89, 92. 31. Ibid., p. 92. 32. Ibid., p. 93. 33. See Gilchrist, Life of William Blake, vol. 2, p. 267. 34. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 429. 35. John Sampson says, ‘the title page would appear to have been engraved twice by Blake. In Gilchrist’s reprint the date is omitted … In some [original] copies the date has evidently been inserted by hand’, Sampson (ed.), Poetical Works of William Blake, p. 105. 36. Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 429–30 n. 5. 37. Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 429–30. 38. Essick describes the process: ‘The original plate is impressed into soft lead, wax, or plaster. If either of the latter two matrices are used, the mold must be coated with an electrically conductive material so that copper will be deposited on it when placed in a galvanic bath. After removal from the mold, the thin electrotype, or “shell”, is mounted on a thick metal base for support in printing. In order to increase the relief of the electrotype so that it can be more easily inked and printed, heated wax is often dropped onto the raised areas on the mold that, in the finished shell, will be the recessed whites. This process is so much a regular part of electrotyping that it has its own name – “building up”.’ (Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 96) Essick’s references are from Fielding, The Art of Engraving, pp. 94–100; The Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th edn (1911), vol. 9, p. 252, vol. 27, p. 547. 39. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 96. 40. The Rowfant Library. A Catalogue of the Printed Books… Collected by Frederick LockerLampson (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1886), p. 138: The Songs of Innocence and of Experience was ‘Formerly in the possession of Mr. Butts, Blake’s friend. The volume was cut down by an earlier owner to meet the dimensions of an old weekly washing book, from the covers of which Mr. Locker has rescued it’, see R. N. Essick, The Works of William Blake in the Huntington Collections, p. 159. Plate 32 The Clod and the Pebble is inserted into this copy between 1866 and 1886. 41. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 165. 42. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates, p. 9. 43. Preston (ed.), Letters from Graham Robertson, p. 469.

186

Notes to pages 67–74

44. Keynes said the copper plate of Christ Trampling Upon Urizen (partly by Blake and partly by Thomas Butts Junior, c. 1800) was sold with the Shaw collection in 1925 and ‘is now in America’, G. Keynes, Blake’s Separate Plates, p. 35. 45. October 1968 issue of Book Collecting & Library Monthly, p. 10. 46. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 526. 47. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 218. 48. See Essick, ‘Blake in the Marketplace, 2005,’ Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 39: 4 (2006), p. 182. I thank Robert Essick for this information. 49. See Keynes, Blake’s Separate Plates, p. 49 and Bentley, Blake Books, p. 511. 50. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 362. 51. Essick’s note says this is according to A. H. Palmer in his ‘Princess’ Notebook No. 7, p. 352, in the collection of Joan Linnell Ivimy. Also noted in Raymond Lister’s Samuel Palmer, p. 52. 52. See Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 85 n. 27. 53. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 86. 54. Essick has given a photo of the plate in the book. 55. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 86. 56. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 48. 57. G. B. Hughes, ‘Blake’s work for Wedgwood’, Country Life, 126: 3261 (3 September 1959), pp. 194–6; G. B. Hughes, English and Scottish Earthenware 1660–1860 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1961), pp. 113–4. 58. Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 631–2. 59. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 560. 60. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates, p. 928; Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p.100. 61. Mrs. Q and Windsor Castle with a note on the Plates by Joseph Grego and Memoirs of the Life of the Celebrated Mrs. Q by Edward Eglantine, Esq. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co. Ltd, 1906). 62. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 568. 63. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 511. 64. Keynes’s Blake Studies, c. 28, p. 225: ‘John Linnell and Mrs. Blake’, contains a history of Dante plates. 65. Keynes, Blake Studies, pp. 221–9, 299. 66. October 1968 issue of Book Collecting & Library Monthly. 67. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates, p. 7. 68. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates, p. 8. 69. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 236. 70. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 251. 71. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates, p. 10. 72. Bentley, Blake Records, pp. 357–67; Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, pp. 119–21. 73. Keynes, Blake’s Separate Plates, p. 59. 74. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 121. 75. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, pp. 92, 196–7. 76. Bentley, Blake Records, pp. 175–6. 77. Gilchrist suggests that Blake engraved at least the portrait of Queen Philippa (The Life of William Blake, vol. 1, p. 20). So do A. G. B. Russell, The Engravings of William Blake (Boston & New York: Houghton Mufflin, 1912), no. 117, L. Binyon, The Followers of

Notes to pages 74–88

78.

79. 80. 81.

82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

96.

97.

98. 99.

187

William Blake: Edward Calvert, Samuel Palmer, George Richmond & Their Circle (London: Halton & Truscott Smith Ltd., New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1925), p. 36, A. Blunt, The Art of William Blake (London: Oxford University Press, 1959), p. 3, and Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 32. According to Essick, a proof in the collection of Raymond Lister lacks all letters but bears the title inscription in pen and ink and a pencil note objecting to the spelling of ‘Philippa’ (Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 119). Ibid. Ibid., pp. 42–5. Anon., An Alphabetical Catalogue of Plates, engraved by the most esteemed artists, after the finest pictures and drawings of the Italian, Flemish, German, French, English, and other schools, which compose the stock of John and Josiah Boydell, engravers and printsellers (London: W. Bulmer and Co., 1803), p. xiv. G. Bentley, The Stranger from Paradise: A Biography of William Blake, (London & New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 288. Devon Libraries Local Studies, Exeter working papers in British book trade history: The London book trades 1775–1800 (http://www.devon.gov.uk/etched?_IXP_=1&_ IXR=121438 last accessed 1 October 2008). Housed in the same box as M23239–41 PDP. See earlier part of this chapter; Essick and Young, ‘Blake’s ‘Canterbury’ Print: The Posthumous Pilgrimage of the Copperplate’, BIQ, 15: 2 (Fall 1981), pp. 78–9. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 86. A photograph of the hammer marks of roughly this area is reproduced in Bentley ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 721, illustration 2. Todd, Blake’s Dante Plates. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 235. Ibid., p. 236. Bindman, William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, pp. 49–101. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, pp. 240–1. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 241. Ibid., p. 236. Illustrations of the callipers (and other engraving tools) can be seen on Diderot & D’Alembert, L’Encyclopédie: Gravure-Sculpture (1772), Plate 1, Fig. 18, and T. H. Fielding, The Art of Engraving (1841), frontispiece, p.16. Measurement from Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job’, p. 49. For all the photographs of the recto and verso of these plates and prints with marked areas indicating hammer marks on the plate, see M. Y. Sung, Technical and Material Studies of William Blake’s Engraved Illustrations of the Book of Job (1826) (PhD thesis, Nottingham Trent University, 2005). From the Yale Account Book (‘Subscribers & Purchasers of the Book of Illustrations of the History of Job Designed and Engraved by William Blake. Began 1823 – & Published March 1826 by the Author & J. Linnell’), now in the Beinecke Library, Yale University. Cited by Bryant, ‘The Job Designs’, p. 105. According to Linnell’s letter to C. W. Dilke, dated 27 September 1844. See Bentley, Blake Records, pp. 326–7. Essick says, ‘On 9 December 1936, the American Art Association / Anderson Galleries of New York offered at auction a set of the Job engravings as lot 62. …An annotated copy of the catalogue in the Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia, records a price of

188

Notes to pages 88–113

$5000 for this lot, but I have not been able to find any record of its vendor or purchaser’ (Essick, ‘Blake’s Job: Some Unrecorded Proofs and Their Inscriptions’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 19:3 (Winter 1985–6), p. 54). Bentley recorded that it was in ‘Yale’ (G. E. Bentley, Jr, Blake Books Supplement: A Bibliography of Publications and Discoveries about William Blake 1971–1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 195–6). My follow-up found that the impressions are now in the Beinecke Library of Yale University. 100. Reproduced in Bindman, William Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job. 101. Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job’, p. 61. 102. Ibid., pp. 63–4. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., pp. 66–7. 105. Ibid., p. 68. 106. Ibid, p. 74. 107. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Job Copperplates’, pp. 237–8. 108. Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job’, p. 82. 109. Ibid., pp. 83–4. Reproduced proofs in Bindman, William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job. 110. Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job’, p. 88. 111. This is shown on the fifth state proof, the Hanley proof (TEXAS), where burnishing and highlight are added (Ibid., p. 93). 112. See note 99. 113. Bryant, ‘The Job Designs’, p. 105. 114. Ibid., pp. 105, 109. 115. Ibid. 116. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake (1863), vol. 1, p. 297. 117. Another similar account is George Richmond’s note in his copy of Gilchrist’s Life of Blake: The fire-place was in the far right-hand corner opposite the window; their bed in the left hand, facing the river; a long engraver’s table stood under the window (where I watched Blake engrave the Book of Job. He worked facing the light), a pile of port-folios and drawings on Blake’s right near the only cupboard and on the poet-artist’s left – a pile of books placed flatly on one another; no bookcase. See G. E. Bentley, Jr, ‘William Blake, Samuel Palmer, and George Richmond’, Blake Studies, 2:2 (1970), p. 44. 118. Bryant, ‘The Job Designs’, pp. 105, 109. 119. Essick, William Blake’s Commercial Book Illustrations, p. 37. 120. Ibid., p. 110. 121. see Bentley, Blake Records, p. 234; Essick, ‘Blake’s Engravings to the Book of Job’, p. 36. It is an undated draft of an advertisement for Job, probably composed in 1863, now among the Linnell family papers. 122. Bentley in his recent article on Blake’s copper plates uses my findings and diagrams to reconstruct the possible size of the original copper sheets, see Bentley ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 728. 123. In my most recent visit to the BMPD in 2008, the crossing lines on the versos of the Job copper plates appear to have become even more blurred. This proves that evidence left on the original objects deteriorates with time, making my record in this chapter an important account of their current state. 124. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 225. 125. Ibid., p. 225, n. 3.

Notes to pages 113–21

189

126. Bryant, ‘The Job Designs’, p. 105. 127. Ibid., p. 109. 128. Bentley, Blake Records, pp. 588, 602–3, 326; Bryant, ‘The Job Designs’, p. 109. 129. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, p. 30. 130. Ibid., p. 31. 131. Ibid., p. 30. 132. ‘The Techniques of William Blake’s Illuminated Printing’, and Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, pp. 6–7. 133. Viscomi, Blake and the Idea of the Book, pp. 7–8.

4 Copper Plate Makers in Blake’s Time 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, pp. 752–3. Ibid., p. 754. Ibid., p. 756. Ibid., p. 757. According to the firm director Matthew Yorke’s email to me in October 2007, there are some records at their premises in Leeds, but relating to 1900’s, nothing earlier. 6. C. E. Jackson, Bird Etchings: the Illustrators and their Books, 1655–1855 (London: Cornell University Press, 1985), pp. 202–4: ‘Selby etched his drawings on copper plates and then either took or sent the plates to William Home Lizars in Edinburgh. Either Lizars or one of his workmen took a pull from Selby’s plate and worked on any parts necessary to bring the plate to a very fine state of completion. Selby and Sir William Jardine both purchased their copper plates and etching ground from Pontifex of London, and their letters refer to the progress made in drawing and “biting” or etching their plates. If they made a mistake or accidentally over-etched a plate, they relied on Lizars to correct by burnishing to lighten it.’ 7. J. R. Harris, The Copper King: a biography of Thomas Williams of Llanidan (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964), ps. xiii, 176. 8. E. Hinterding, ‘The History of Rembrandt’s copperplates: with a catalogue of those that survive’, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, p. 256 n.12, p. 306 n.193; republished as The History of Rembrandt’s Copperplates: with a Catalogue of those that Survive (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers, 1995); ps. 10, 60 in 1995 edn. 9. C. E. C. Pontifex, The Family of Pontifex of West Wycombe, Co: Buckingham 1500–1977 (Brighton: The Author, 1977); C. A. H. Franklyn., The genealogy of Anne the Quene (Anne Bullen) and other English families including Broughton of Impens, N. Petherton, Bridgwater, Co. Somerset, Pontifex of West Wycombe, Co. Buckingham, Waddington of Mexborough, Co. York, Walwyn of Kilmersdon and Frome, Co. Somerset, and of Bognor Regis, Co. Sussex, together with a supplement to ‘A short genealogical and heraldic history of four families’ (Brighton: The Author, 1977). 10. ‘The London Book Trades 1775–1800: a checklist of members’, http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/111542/1.html (last accessed 1 October 2008). 11. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 753. 12. It is not certain whether ‘B. Jones’, a printseller and publisher at Grays Inn Lane, Holborn, in 1798, was the plate maker. See I. Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800: A Topographical Guide (Exeter: Ian Maxted, 1980), p. 99.

190

Notes to pages 121–7

13. H. Kent, in Kent’s Directory for 1791–99 (London: R. & H. Causton), records ‘Pontifex & Fountain, Silversmiths, 13, Hosier-lane’, which is possibly Daniel Pontifex, William’s brother. 14. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 754. M. Tolley, ‘The Auckland Blakes’, Biblionews and Australian Notes & Queries, 2S, ii (1967), pp. 6–16. 15. Pontifex, The Family of Pontifex, p. 19. 16. The image is online at: http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/johnson/exhibition/236.htm (last accessed 1 October 2008). 17. S. Porter (ed.), ‘Southern Millwall: The Mellish Estate in Southern Millwall’, Survey of London: vols 43 and 44: Poplar, Blackwall and Isle of Dogs (London: Athlone, 1994), pp 480–9. 18. It is possibly the firm mentioned by Bentley in Blake Books (pp. 545–6): the ‘Farringdon Works & H. Pontifex & Sons, Ltd. – 9–13 George Street, Manchester Square, London W1’. 19. T. Allen The History and Antiquities of London, Westminster, Southwark and parts adjacent, 5 vols (London: G. Virtue, 1827–37), vol. 3, pp. 12, 679. 20. W. F. Prideaux, ‘Jacobean Houses in Fleet Street’, Notes and Queries, series 10: 3 (1 April 1905), p. 250. 21. D. Hughson, London, being an Accurate History and Description of the British Metropolis and its Neighbourhood to Thirty Miles Extent, from an Actual Perambulation), 6 vols (London, 1805–9), vol. 4, p. 92; Prideaux, ‘Jacobean Houses in Fleet Street, p. 250. 22. Allen, The History and Antiquities of London, vol. 3, p. 679. 23. James Upton, ‘We have the happiness to be, Dear Sir, Your affectionate brethren in Christ, WM. SPENCER; JAMES BUTTERS; THOMAS KING; CHARLES BROAD; RUSSELL PONTIFEX; GEORGE FARR.’ Deacons of the Baptist Church, Church Street, Blackfriars Road, Surrey. In J. Skepp, Divine Energy: or The Efficacious Operations of the Spirit of God upon the Soul of Man, etc. (London: James Upton, 1815), pp. iii, vi. 24. The London Directory for 1820 enters Russell Pontifex as of 23 Lisle Street, Leicester Square, Coppersmith, brasier and copper plate maker. See Pontifex, The Family of Pontifex, p. 45. 25. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. XL. 26. All in ESSICK collection; Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 186. For the first and second states, see Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. 186; Essick, ‘Blake, Linnell, & James Upton: An Engraving Brought to Light’, Blake Newsletter 7: 4 (1974), pp. 76–9. For the third state, see Essick, The Works of William Blake in the Huntingdon Collections, ps. 26, 33. 27. Bentley, Blake Records (2004), pp. 340–1. 28. Ibid., p. 341 29. Ivimy MSS in Bentley, Blake Records (1969), and (probably later passed to and is) in Joan Linnell Burton’s possession according to Bryant (1987), ‘The Job Designs: A Documentary and Bibliographical Record,’ in Bindman (ed.), William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, p. 103. 30. Bentley, Blake Records (2004), p. 797. 31. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 341. 32. September 1818. 33. Bentley, Blake Records, (2004) p. 343. 34. See I. Bain, ‘Thomas Ross & Son: Copper- and Steel-plate Printers since 1833’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, No. 2 (1966), pp. 16–7.). Lahee was one of the major

Notes to pages 127–31

35. 36. 37. 38. 39.

40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

191

copperplate printers of the early nineteenth century, who printed important works for artists such as Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job (1827), J.M.W. Turner’s ‘Norham Castle on Tweed’, published in the Liber Studiorum, and John Martin’s mezzotint plate of Paradise Lost (1827). See Bryant, ‘The Job Designs’ (1987), pp. 108–9, n. 3. D. Worrall, ‘William Bryan, Another Anti-Swedenborgian Visionary Engraver of 1789’, Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 34: 1 (2000), pp. 14–22. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 343. This is the third state and the final state. See Essick, ‘Blake in the Marketplace, 1984,’ BIQ (1985), pp. 26, 33. Bentley, Blake Records, p. 345. From Linnell account books, the Cash Account Book 1822–36 (private collection of Joan Linnell Burton) and the Yale Account Book (Beinecke Library, Yale). See Bryant, ‘The Job Designs: A Documentary and Bibliographical Record’, in Bindman (ed.), William Blake’s Illustrations of the Book of Job, pp. 105, 109. A. T. Story, The Life of John Linnell (London: R. Bentley & Son, 1892), ch. 5. Ibid., pp. 64–71. Ibid., pp. 77–8. Ibid., pp. 102–3. Ibid., p. 288. (Bentley, ‘William Blake and His Circle: A Checklist of Publications and Discoveries in 2007’, BIQ, 42:1 (Summer 2008), p. 8. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’. The Old Bailey online: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Ref: t18100221-44. The Old Bailey online: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Ref: t18101205-8. The Old Bailey online: The Proceedings of the Old Bailey Ref: t18220522-49. Bentley, Blake Books (2000), p. 236. Alternative plate number: Bentley 33, Erdman 29, Keynes 33 Bentley 72, Erdman 72, Keynes 72. Bentley 100, Erdman 100, Keynes 100. Bentley, Blake Books (2000), pp. 236; ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 757. (1826; BMPD) I. Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800: A Preliminary Checklist of Members (Surrey: Dawson, 1977). Kent, Kent’s Directory for 1791–99; Thomas Mortimer, The Universal Director (London, 1763), John Penfred, The earliest directory of the book trade (1785), Universal British directory 1790–98. Universal British directory 1790–98, Underhill (1817) This plate belongs to Stephen Lloyd of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. I am grateful for the information he gave me on this copper plate. See Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 757 n. 125. Bentley’s reference is from Anon., ‘Copper-Plates for Engraving’, in Rees’ Cyclopaedia (1819), V. 9, 4T2. Devon County Council Local Studies: London Book Trades 1775–1800: a topographical guide: http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/121438/1.html (last accessed 1 October 2008). Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 235–6. An image of the press can be seen on the website: http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=207028 (last accessed 1 October 2008).

192

Notes to pages 132–45

64. W. J. E. Crane, Bookbinding For Amateurs: The Various Tools and Appliances Required and Instructions for Their Effective Use by W.J.E. Crane (1885), ‘Bookbinding Tools and Appliances’, Part 5. 65. Maxted, The London Book Trades 1775–1800: A Topographical Guide, pp. 9–12. 66. See Exeter Working Papers in British book trade history: The London book trades 17751800: a topographical guide: http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/121438/1.html (last accessed 1 October 2008). 67. Worrall, ‘William Bryan’, pp. 26–38.

5 Blake’s Virgil Woodcuts and the Earliest Re-engravers 1.

L. Binyon, The Followers of William Blake: Edward Calvert, Samuel Palmer, George Richmond & Their Circle (London: Halton & Truscott Smith Ltd., New York: Minton, Balch & Co., 1925). 2. A. H. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer¸ pp. 15–6 (London: Seeley & Co., 1892). 3. Ibid., p. 16. 4. E. Calvert, A Memoir of Edward Calvert Artist by His Third Son (London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1893), p. 19. 5. Important studies on Blake’s Virgil include Keynes’s ‘Thornton’s Virgil’ in Blake Studies (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1949; second edn., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), The Illustrations of William Blake for Thornton’s Virgil, with the first eclogue and the imitation by Ambrose Philips. The introduction by Geoffrey Keynes (London: Nonesuch, 1937), The Wood Engravings of William Blake: Seventeen Subjects Commissioned by Dr Robert Thornton for his ’Virgil’ of 1821 Newly Printed from the Original Blocks now in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1977), R. Essick, A Troubled Paradise: William Blake’s Virgil Wood Engravings (San Francisco, CA: J. Windle, 1999). 6. I had volunteered to catalogue a part of this collection (Armstrong collection of woodblocks) in 2006, and in 2008 with a research grant from the Printing Historical Society, and there is an upcoming opportunity to continue the cataloguing project with the support of the Huntington Library from 2009. 7. British Museum Prints & Drawings, registration number: 1939.0114.3. 8. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, vol. 1, p. 273. 9. The illustrations were also issued separately as a pamphlet: Illustrations of the school-Virgil: in copper-plates and wood-cuts: whereby boys will learn with greater facility, deeper impressions be made, and ideas acquired at the same time as words (London: F. C. & J. Rivington; J. Johnson; and Newberry, 1814). It includes seventeen double-sided leaves, for seventy-three illustrations on fifty-six leaves. Many leaves also have up to four illustrations on each side. I thank Keri Davies for this information. 10. Essick, A Troubled Paradise, p. 7. 11. According to a note in Linnell’s journal, the drawing for this engraving either has a wrong name for the designer (‘Blake del’.), or had been taken over by Blake from Linnell. On 18 Oct. 1820, Linnell wrote: ‘Began a small Drawing on a woodblock of Polypheme (from N. Poussin) for Dr. Thornton, to receive a guinea for it’. See Bentley, Blake Books, p. 629. 12. Reproduced in The Wood Engravings of William Blake: seventeen subjects commissioned by Dr Robert Thornton for his ’Virgil’ of 1821 newly printed from the original blocks now in the British Museum (London: British Museum, 1977), between p. 26 and 27. ill. 7.

Notes to pages 145–50 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22.

23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

28.

29.

193

Annotations to Reynolds. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, vol. 1, p. 273. Calvert, A Memoir, p. 19. ‘Fine Arts. The Vicar of Wakefield. With thirty-two Illustrations by W. Mulready, R.A. Van Voorst’, Athenaeum (21 January 1843), p. 65. Ibid. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, vol. 1, p. 274. Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 783–4. Henry Cole (1808–82) was a civil servant, industrial designer, museum director (at the V&A) and a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. He organized with Prince Albert the Great Exhibition of 1851, which included the part of printing exhibits. He also edited a series of children’s books called Home Treasury, for which he commissioned best artists of the day to illustrate the books, including Linnell and some Royal Academicians. See J. I. Whalley, Cobwebs to Catch Flies: Illustrated Books for the Nursery and Schoolroom 1700–1900 (London: Elek, 1974, pp. 20–1. Charles Dilke owned The Book of Urizen, Songs of Innocence and Experience, ‘Vision of Queen Catherine’. Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 181, 384, 660. Bentley, Blake Books, pp. 783–4: ‘The author (‘Cole’) is identified in the marked editorial file of the Athenaeum now in the London office of the New Statesman. The research for the article is probably referred to in an undated letter to Linnell from Charles Wentworth Dilke (the editor of the Athenaeum) which A. H. Palmer copied into an Exercise Book with the Ivimy MSS: ‘I shall be most happy to have another morning with Blake. Mr Cole writes to me that he has named next Tuesday morning & to breakfast with you’. Presumably Dilke and Cole were coming to see the Virgil woodblocks in Linnell’s possession, one of which was borrowed to print for the article’. Robert Essick, ‘A Relief Etching of Blake’s Virgil Illustrations’, BIQ 25:3 (winter 1991– 2), pp. 117–27, p. 125. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 630: ‘There are proofs of the untrimmed blocks in the BMPR (no. 2–5, 6–9, on 2 sheets); in Mr. Hofer’s collection (no. 2–5); in that of Mrs. G. Ramsay Harvey (no. 2–5); and in the Fitzwilliam Museum, with the Island in the Moon (no. 6–9)’. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 630: ‘Blake’s Virgil drawings were made in a sketchbook which was broken up after 1924, and separate sketches may now be found, inter alia, in the collections of Harvard, Sir Geoffrey Keynes, Princeton Art Gallery, and Yale’. The drawings are reproduced in The Illustrations of William Blake for Thornton’s Virgil, with the first eclogue and the imitation by Ambrose Philips. The introduction by Geoffrey Keynes (London: Nonesuch, 1937). The Public Address. H. Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting in England. A Catalogue of Engravers who Have Been Born, or Resided in England. Digested from the Manuscript of George Vertue (London: J. Dodsley, 1782), p. 4. The early editions of 1763 and 1765 do not contain this note. A. Jamieson, Universal Science, or the Cabinet of Nature and Art: Comprising Above One Thousand Entertaining and Instructive Facts and Experiments, Selected from Various Departments of Natural Philosophy, and the Useful Discoveries in the Arts, 2 vols (London: G. & W. B. Whittaker, 1821). vol. 2, p. 149. It was later published in Print Quarterly, 4 (1987), pp. 343–61.

194

Notes to pages 150–2

30. Bewick complained in his Memoirs (ch. xxiii, ed. Iain Bain), and in a letter to his friend, John Dovaston (in Bewick to Dovaston: letters 1824–1828, ed. Gordon Williams: Nattali & Maurice, London, 1968), both passages written in the year of his death, 1828, that he regretted the disappearance of the pictures that hung on the walls of ‘every farm house, cottage and hovel’, when he was a boy, i.e. in the 1750’s. The letter to Dovaston says, When I was a boy, or youth, I saw in every farm house cottage and hovel, the walls hung around with large Wood cut pictures – some of them well done and some very poorly executed – but all of them meant well inasmuch as they had a powerful tendency to stimulate the brave and hardy people to acts of virtue and patriotism… But such pleasant stimulants are now utterly done away with… See M. Martin, The Case of the Missing Woodcuts, manuscript in the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University; later published in Print Quarterly 4 (1987), p. 343. 31. Bewick, Memoirs, ch. xxiii. 32. Morris Martin cites Holcroft, Memoirs of the late Thomas Holcroft (1816), Jonathan Swift, Baucis and Philemon (1709), Goldsmith, The Citizen of the World, cf. letter to Henry Goldsmith, Jan. 13 1759, The Deserted Village (1770), George Smith, Country Lovers (1770), Dorothy Wordsworth, Recollections (Edinburgh: Edmonston & Douglas, 1874, 8), etc. 33. For example, Oliver Goldsmith in his famous poem the Deserted Village says Imagination fondly stoops to trace The parlour splendours of that festive place; The white-washed wall, the nicely sanded floor, …The pictures placed for ornament and use, The twelve good rules, the royal game of goose… In The Citizen of the World (1758), Goldsmith has similar passages: A window patch’d with paper lent a ray That dimly shew’d the state in which he lay; The sanded floor that grits beneath the tread, The humid wall with paltry pictures spread; The royal game of goose was there in view And the twelve rules the royal martyr drew; The Seasons fram’d with listing found a place And brave Prince William shew’d his lamp-black face. 34. Blake’s Chaucer: Prospectuses, First Prospectus. 35. Essick, William Blake, Printmaker, p. 190. 36. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. XXV. 37. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. XXIV. 38. It is included in Bell’s British theatre (1797), vol. 28. 39. Essick, The Separate Plates of William Blake, p. XIV. 40. Martin, The Case of the Missing Woodcuts (1987), pp. 350–61. 41. British Library Manuscripts: George Cumberland Note Books 1801–10: BM Add. MSS 36519: D, f.165 (1803); E, f.209 91804); F, f.251 9 (1806); G, f.303 (1807); H, f.335 (1808); I, f.385 (1808). Bentley, A Blake Bibliography (1964), pp., 61–2. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., p. 61. 44. The twelve rules on this broadside are: ‘Prophane No Divine Ordinances, Touch No State Matters, Urge No Healths, Pick No Quarrels, Maintain No Ill Opinions, Reveal

Notes to pages 152–5

45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65.

195

No Secrets, Encourage No Vice, Repeat No Grievances, Make No Comparisons, Keep No Bad Company, Make No Long Meals, Lay No Wagers’. Martin dated this broadside from a number written on it: ‘The number “88” in the top right hand corner of this sheet, corresponds with page 30, item 88, in the catalogue of their productions published by William and Cluer Dicey in 1754. Under the page heading “Wood Royals” are listed “Mix’d Fancies, with Historical and other diverting Descriptions to each”.’ (Martin, The Case of the Missing Woodcuts (1986), p. 16). The article has an online version: http://library.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/s5VII/2/111 (last accessed 28 September 2008). Martin, The Case of the Missing Woodcuts (1987), p. 357. Ibid., pp. 350–8. Important books on Thomas Bewick’s wood engravings include: T. Hugo, The Bewick Collector: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Works of T. and J. Bewick (London, 1866), Bewick’s Woodcuts (London, 1870); I. Bain (ed.), Memoir of Thomas Bewick. (Oxford University Press, 1975), Thomas Bewick: An Illustrated Record of his life and work (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: The Laing Gallery, Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1979); Sydney Roscoe, Thomas Bewick: A Bibliography Raisonné of Editions of the General History of Quadrupeds, The History of British Birds and the Fables of Aesop Issued in his Lifetime. (London: Oxford University Press, 1953; reprinted by Dawsons of Pall Mall, 1973). See examples in K. Lindley, The Woodblock Engravers (Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1970), p. 36. One of the references is Bertha E. Mahony Miller, Illustrators of Children’s Books, 1744– 1945 (1970), p. 164. R. Lister, Infernal Methods, p. 33. Raymond Lister in his Infernal Methods, p. 33), suggests that Blake did not use the special tools for wood engraving, but simply used the burin for copper engraving. Lister shows the engraving tools on pp. 14–15. Some of these tools, however, can be used for both wood and copper engraving. See Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 750. Ibid., Cat. 810. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 808. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 809. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 674. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 806. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 807. Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 773. Bentley, ‘Blake’s Heavy Metal’, p. 714: ‘For his drawings Blake also used Canvas, “Fine linen” (no. 667–68), Muslin (no. 811), Ivory (no. 376–78, miniatures of Thomas Butts, his wife, and son), Glass (Felpham Rummer [1803], not in Butlin), Panel (no. 750 [‘Ghost of a Flea’], 810), Pine (no. 808–9), Mahogany (no. 674, 806–7), and a Woodblock (no. 773).’ D. M. Sander, Wood Engraving: An Adventure in Printmaking (London: Peter Owen, 1979), p. 15. B. Gascoigne, How to Identify Prints: A Complete Guide to Manual and Mechanical Processes from Woodcut to Inkjet (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004), 6a. Palmer, The Life and Letters of Samuel Palmer, p. 15; Bentley, Blake Records ( 2004), p. 377.

196

Notes to pages 155–60

66. Bentley, Blake Records (2004), p. 488. 67. Keynes, Blake Studies, pp. 136–42. 68. Reproduced in Keynes, Drawings of William Blake, pl. 83. Also in Butlin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, Cat. 773, Pl. 1017. 69. Viscomi has discussed the technique in Blake and the Idea of the Book, pp. 68–9. 70. For a print image, see http://www.swanseaheritage.net/article/full.asp?ARTICLE_ ID=805 (last accessed 28 September 2008) or http://www.famsf.org/imagebase_zoom. asp?rec=4159201101760041 (last accessed 28 September 2008). 71. Another engraving with the same white-line technique is the portrait of ‘Abraham Hondius’ (painter in the reign of Charles II), line-engraving, engraved by T. Chambars after Ipse, in Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of painting in England (1780), Vol. III, 13. The figure on the canvas that the painter points to is a white-line figure in contrast with the blackline portrait of the painter. 72. The paper was presented at the Biannual Conference of the British Association for Romantic Studies, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2005 (forthcoming in BIQ). 73. The process is described in ‘Account of a new style of engraving on copper in alto relievo, invented by W. Lizars’, Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, 2 ( January-April 1820), p. 19. I thank the generosity of Keri Davies, who sent me his yet-to-be published paper for reference. 74. E. M. Harris, ‘Experimental Graphic Processes in England 1800–1859. Part III’, Journal of the Printing Historical Society, 5 (1969), p. 49. 75. Ibid., p. 50. 76. See www.blakearchive.org for images. 77. Bentley, Blake Books, p. 430. 78. Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, vol. 1, p. 58, describes the print as ‘one of [Blake’s] earliest attempts, if not his very earliest, in that peculiar stereotype process he… invented’. 79. Alternative plate number: Bentley 8, Erdman 6, Keynes 6. 80. Bentley 9, Erdman 7, Keynes 7 81. Bentley 10, Erdman 8, Keynes 8. 82. Bentley 11, Erdman 9, Keynes 9. 83. Bentley 12, Erdman 10, Keynes 10. 84. Bentley 13, Erdman 11, Keynes 11. 85. Bentley 15, Erdman 13, Keynes 13. 86. Bentley 16, Erdman 14, Keynes 14. 87. Bentley 17, Erdman 15, Keynes 15. 88. Bentley 18, Erdman 16, Keynes 16. 89. Bentley 5, Erdman 2, Keynes 2. 90. Bentley 6, Erdman 3, Keynes 3. 91. Bentley 7, Erdman 4, Keynes 4. 92. Bentley 11, Erdman 8, Keynes 8. 93. Bentley 9, Erdman 6, Keynes 6. 94. Bentley 10, Erdman 7, Keynes 7. 95. Bentley 12, Erdman 9, Keynes 9. 96. Bentley 18, Erdman 15, Keynes 15. 97. Bentley 15, Erdman 12, Keynes 12. 98. Bentley 1, Erdman i[1], Keynes 1. 99. Bentley 13, Erdman not numbered, Keynes 13. 100. Bentley 38, Erdman not numbered, Keynes 38.

Notes to pages 160–3

197

101. Bentley 41, Erdman not numbered, Keynes 41. 102. All these plates are numbered the same by Bentley, Erdman and Keynes. 103. Essick,The Separate Plates of William Blake, Fig. 28. 104. Essick, Ibid., Fig. 29. 105. Ibid. 106. Lister, Infernal Methods. L. Binyon, Little Engravings Classical and Contemporary Number II. William Blake being all his woodcuts (1902), p. ii. 107. W. Vaughan , E. E. Baker, and C. Harrison, Samuel Palmer 1805–1881: Vision and Landscape (London: British Museum, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005), p. 60. 108. Ibid., p. 79 109. Ibid., p. 94 110. Ibid., p. 139. 111. W. J. Linton, Wood-Engraving (1884), pp. 35–6. 112. Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences, (London: Methuen, 1907) p. 47. 113. Viscomi, ‘Blake after Blake: A Nation Discovers Genius’, in Clark and Worrall (eds), Blake, Nation and Empire (2006), p. 221. 114. Crane, An Artist’s Reminiscences, p. 56.

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http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/111542/1.html (last accessed 1 October 2008). http://www.devon.gov.uk/localstudies/121438/1.html (last accessed 1 October 2008). http://www.forbes.com/collecting/2002/02/06/0206hot.html (last accessed 30 September 2008) http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=207028 (last accessed 1 October 2008). http://www.rochester.edu/college/eng/blake/ (last accessed 1 October 2008) http://www.rochester.edu/college/eng/blake/butlin.html (last accessed 2 October 2008) http://www.rochester.edu/college/eng/blake/1795/1795/index.html (last accessed 2 October 2008). http://www.tate.org.uk/servlet/ViewWork?workid=35563&searchid=11679 (last accessed 3 October 2008).

INDEX

Ackermann, R., 54 Agrippa, 145 à la poupée, 31 Aldegrave (Aldegrever, Heinrich), 151 Allen, Charles, 113 An allegorical subject showing eight young girls circling a woman seated among clouds, 55–6 Ancients, The, 141, 161–3 aquatint, 38, 60, 122 Armstrong, James Tarbotton, 47, 142–4, 153, 163 Arp, Hans, 32 Audubon, John James, 47, 133, 138 Avena (poet), 35 automatic writing/drawing, 18–23, 34–42, 117–18, 166 Bacon, Christopher, 5 Baker, T, 75 Baldwin & Co., 76, Baldwin, Cradock and Joy, 10, 76 Baldwin, George, 35–6 Balthus, 38 Banks (engraver), 125 Barlow, John, Portrait of Horace Walpole, 131, 137 Barlow, Thomas Oldham, 58 Barrow, J., 70 Bartolozzi, Francesco, 48, 53–4, 75–6, 122, 136 Head of an old man, 48, 53, 122, 136 Portrait of A. N. Caracci, 48, 53, 122, 136 Basire, James, 10, 63, 75, 121 Baxter, George, 142 Beham, Hans Sebald, 51, 151

Bell and Daldy, 28, 70 Bell, George, 28 Bella, Stefano della, The Medici Vase, 51 Bentley, Richard, 8 Bewick, Thomas, 5, 142, 150–7, 161–2 Birch, Thomas, 52–3 Birch, William Russell, A View from Mr Cosway’s Breakfast-room, Pall Mall, with the Portrait of Mrs. Cosway, 131, 137 Blair, Robert, 54, 137, 145, 160 Blake, Mrs, 61, 63, 67, 68, 70–2 Blake, Robert, 158 Blake, William, A Cradle Song, 158 A Descriptive Catalogue, 27 A Dream, 158 All Religions are One, 159 America, 5, 27, 51, 121, 136, 159 America cancelled plate a, 5–6, 30, 62, 65–6, 72–3, 166–7 Annotations to Reynolds’s Discourses, 11, 20 Book of Urizen, 42, 51 Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, 6, 10, 13, 62, 68, 71–3, 77–81, 88, 151 Christ Trampling on Satan, 67, 72, 120, 122, 136 Christ with the Doctors in the Temple, 178 Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, 45 Compositions from the Works Days and Theogony of Hesiod (Flaxman), 62, 70 Deaths Door, 54, 160–1 Essays on Physiognomy, 62, 64 Europe, 51, 120–1, 136–7, 159

– 213 –

214

Index

Eve Tempted by the Serpent, 45 Evening, 154 Elements of Morality (Salzmann), 27 Experimental Relief Plates, 160 Frieze: Oley Bridge, 154 George Cumberland’s calling card, 63, 72 Holy Thursday, 158 Iliad (Flaxman), 28 Illustrations of the Book of Job, 4–15, 18, 52–4, Chapter 3, 119–24, 128, 131, 136–7, 155, 165, 167 Illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, 6, 10, 13, 28, 41, 62, 70–3, 77, 81–3, 120, 123, 128, 136 Infant Joy, 158 Jerusalem, 13, 15, 62, 69, 120, 130–1, 137, 158, 160 John Caspar Lavater, 8 Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion, 27, 62–3 Little Tom the Sailor, 159 Milton: A Poem, 8, 51, 160–1 Mirth, 27 ‘Miscellany’for Abraham Rees’s The Cyclopaedia, 111 Moore & Co’s Advertisement, 69 Morning Amusement & Evening Amusement, 62, 64 Mrs Q, 62, 70 Nativity, 45, 178 Newton, 7 Night, 158 Night Thoughts (Young), 27, 145 Nurse’s Song, 4–5 ‘Paolo and Francesca’, 42, 82 Poetical Sketches, 27 Public Address, 1, 14 Satan smiting Job with Sore Boils, 154 Sepulchral Monuments (Richard Gough), 6–7, 10, 13, 28, 62–3, 72–3, 119, 121, 135 Songs of Innocence, 27, 29, 51, 121, 158, 161 Songs of Innocence and Experience, 30, 62, 66–7 Spring, 158 The Accusers, 27 The Agony in the Garden, 178

The Approach of Doom, 158 The Beggar’s Opera, 6, 13, 62, 64, 72–3, 75, 112, 119, 121, 135 The Blossom, 158 The Body of Abel found by Adam and Eve, 154 The Book of Ahania, 51 The Chimney Sweeper, 158 The Clod & the Pebble, 62, 67 The Divine Image, 158 The Ecchoing Green, 158 The Expulsion of the Rebel Angels, 178 The Fall of Rosamond, 8, 151 The Gates of Paradise. For Children, 27 The Ghost of a Flea, 154 The Horse, 45 The Idle Laundress & Industrious Cottager, 62, 64 The Judgment of Solomon, 45 The Little Black Boy, 158 The Little Boy Found, 158 The Little Boy Lost, 158 The Little Girl Found, 158 The Man Sweeping the Interpreter’s Parlour, 8, 161 The Man Who Taught Blake Painting in His Dreams, 33 The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 51 The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, 45 The Prophet Isaiah Foretelling the Destruction of Jerusalem, 154–5 The School Boy, 158 The Shepherd, 158 The Speaker, 27 The Virgin and Child, 154 The Voice of the Ancient Bard, 158 Virgil woodcuts, 18, 47, 70, 113, Chapter 5, 167 Visions of the Daughter of Albion, 159 Wedgwood’s Catalogue of Earthenware and Porcelain, 62, 69 Wilson Lowry, 8 Winter, 154 Blunt, Anthony, 25 Bohn, Henry G., 70, 76 Boydell, John and Josiah, 76 Breton, André, 32–5, 39 Browne, Hablot Knight (Phiz), 47, 59, 120

Index David Copperfield, 133, 139 The Pottleton Legacy, 133, 139 Bryan, William, 127 Buckingham, James Silk, 133, 138 Bunyan, John, 161 burin, 12, 38, 40, 46, 57–8, 60 burnisher, 49–50, 57, 78, 88 Burton, Joan Linnell, 109–10 Butts, Frederic John, 42, 67 Butts, Thomas, 8, 11, 14, 20–1, 27, 42, 67, 73, 117 Butts, Thomas, Jr, 7, 10, 27, 42, 65, 67, 73, 76 Byfield, Mary, 145 Cadell & Davies, 54 Cadell, T., 55–6 Caesar, Augustus, 145 Caesar, Julius, 145 Calder, Alexander, 38–9 callipers 49–50, 86 Calvert, Edward, 37, 48, 141, 145, 155, 162 The Bride, 136, 162 The Brooke, 162 The Chamber Idyll, 162 The Return Home, 162 The Sheep of his pasture, 136, 162 cancelled copper plate, 6, 27, 46, 48, 58, 62, 65–6, 72–3, 123, 131, 136–7, 166 Carracci, Annibal, 48, 53, 122, 136 Carroll, Lewis, 33 Chagall, Marc, 39 chalk manner, 53 Chamberlaine, John, 53 Char, René, 32 Chirico, Giorgio De, 37 Clare, John, 37 Clark, Steve, 16 Claussin, Ignace Joseph de, Six’s bridge, 120 Clowes, Wm & Sons Ltd, 70 Cole, Henry, 147–8 Collyer, J., 55 Colnaghi, 68 Cope, Charles West, 58 Cooper, R., Mrs Anne Damer, 47, 132, 137 Corbusier, Le, 39

215

Costello, Martin, 129 Cosway, Richard, 123, 131, 136, 137 Cox, E. W., 133, 138 Cozens, Alexander, 60 Crane, Walter, 155, 162 Crawguill, 133, 138 Crevel, René, 32 Cromek, Robert, 54, 160 Cruikshank, George, 47–8, 59, 123, 132–3, 136–9, 142 A Trump, 133, 138 Dombey and Son, 133, 139 Duke of Wellington, 138 Fairburn (Senior) Dashing Song Book for 1813, 132, 138 Fairburn’s Authentic Account of the Assassination of Spencer Perceval, 132, 138 Guy Mannering, 132, 138 Kenilworth: or the Golden Days of Queen Bess, Part I, 132, 138 Mathews as the old Scotch Woman, 123, 136 Memoirs of Harriette Wilson, 132, 138 Memoirs of Joseph Grimaldi, 133, 139 Othello and Desdemona 132, 138 Portrait of John O’Neill, aged 64, 132, 137 The Annals of Gallantry, 132, 138 The Autobiography of a Joke for Bentley’s Miscellany, 133, 139 The Backslider, 133, 138 The Good Genius, 133, 138 The Loving Ballad of Lord Bateman, 133, 139 The Metropolis of England Displayed, 132, 138 The Secret for Bentley’s Miscellany, 133, 139 The Two Interviews for Bentley’s Miscellany, 133, 139 The Wife, or Woman as They are: A Domestic Drama, 133, 138 The Wits Magazine and Attic Miscellany, 132, 138 Twilight Tales, 138 Cumberland, George, 60, 63, 72, 152 Cumberland, George Jr, 72 Dalí, Salvador, 31–2, 39

216

Index

Damer, Anne, 47, 132, 137 Davies, Hugh Sykes, 31 Davies, Keri, 157 Degas, Edgar, 47 Dennis, Gertrude Weyhe, 68 Dickens, Charles, 133, 139 Dilke, Charles Wentworth, 147–8 Disraeli, Benjamin, 14 Dixon (copper plate printer), 12 Doo, George Thomas, Portrait of a girl (or The Fair Forester), 48, 55, 132, 137 Portrait of Culvier, 132, 137 double-sided copper plate 48, 51–2, 55 Dring, Edmund Hunt, 29, 30 drypoint, 38, 69, 71–2, 82–3, 85, 87, 92–3, 97, 99, 104, 109 Dürer, Albert, 9, 151 Earlom, Richard, Rubens’s Wife, 121, 139 Eastwood, William, 131–2, 136–7 Edwards, James, 130 Eleanor, Queen, 151 electrotype, 5–6, 27, 30, 47, 62, 65–7, 158, 163 Ellis, E. J., 24 Eluard, Paul, 31–2, 39 Enfield, William, 27 Epicurus, 145 Ernst, Max, 32, 38 Etching Club, 58 Faithorne, William, 48–9 Frontispiece of An Account of the Present War between the Venetians and Turks, 47, 51 Farringdon Works, 123, 125 Fittler, James, Henry the Second; or, the fall of Rosamond, 151 Flawn, James, 130 Flaxman, John, 28, 157, 62, 70, 157 Freud, Sigmund, 21, 34–6 Fullom, S. W., 133, 139 Fuseli, Henry, 37, 113 Gainsborough, Thomas, 60

Gater, Joseph, 130 Geddes, Andrew, 48, 60 Cavalier 123, 136 Mr. & Mrs. Terry, 123, 136 Portrait of Alex Nasmyth, 131, 137 Richmond Park, 123, 136 George III, King, 53 Giacometti, Alberto, 38 Gilbert and Rivington Ltd, 70 Gilchrist, Anne, 23 Giles, John, 68 Gillray, James, 48, 52, 55, 58 A Peep into Lady W…y’s Seraglio, 48, 52, 55 Apothecaries: Taylors & … Conquering France and Spain, 48, 52, 55 Girtin, Thomas, 17 Goldsmith, Oliver, 151–2 Goldwin, E., 122 Goya, Francisco, Andalusian Smuggler with Bull (verso) / Andalusian Smuggler (recto), 48, 152 Maja (verso) / Maja against a background of Demons (recto), 48, 152 Witch on a Swing (verso) / Warlock on a Swing among Demons (recto), 48, 152 graver, 74, 85, 88, 97, 99, 103, 107, 112–13, 154, 162 Graves, Robert, 13, 52 Gray, Thomas, 14 Green, Henry, 125 Grego, Joseph, 70 Gross, Anthony, 38 Haden, Francis Seymour, 48 Hall, John, Portrait of Isaac Barre, 48, 55, 121, 135 hammering, 11–12, 46, 49–59, 73, 79, 82, 99, 105 Hammerton, William, 130 Harris, George 69, 79–80, 86, 88, 109–11, 119–20, 130–1, 136–7 Haslem and Co., 120, 123, 135 Havell, Robert, Sr, The White Headed Pigeon, 47, 133, 138 Haydon, S. J. B., Portrait of Turner, 59 Hayley, William, 159

Index Hayter, William Harry, 38 Hayter, William Stanley, 5, 7, 15, 21–3, 25, 31, 38–42, 65–6, 166 Cinq Personnages, 39 Heath, James, 10, 76 Hecht, Joseph, 38 Hiam, W., 132–3, 137–8 Hill, I., 122 Hisben, 151 Hodges, William, 131, 137 Hoehn, Harry, 71, 82 Hofer, Philip, 64, 93, 99 Hogarth, Mrs, 76 Hogarth, William, 6–7, 10, 13, 47, 48, 64, 73, 75–6, 112, 121, 135, 156–7 Hogarth painting the Comic Muse, 47, 156 The Gate of Calais or The Roast Beef of Old England, 47 The Sleeping Congregation, 47 Holcroft, Thomas, 151 Holl, F., Portrait of a clergyman, 133, 139 Holl, William II, 48, 52 Houbraken, Jacob, Portrait of Sir Francis Drake, 48, 51–2 Portrait of Walter Raleigh, 48, 51–3 Hughes & Kimber, 132, 134, 138 Hughes, 133, 138 Hunter, Henry, 64 Huntington, Henry E., 142 Intaglio, 31, 39–40, 52, 87, 113, 145, 153, 156–7, 160–1 Ivins, William M, Jr, 4 James I, 125 Jerome, St, 65, 73 John the Baptist, St, 65, 73 Johnson, John, 122 Jones, 75, 119, 121, 135, 139 Jones and Pontifex, 121, 135 Jones, Mary, 121–2 Jones, Richard, 121, 135 Jones, Robert, 121 Junior Etching Club, 58 Jutzi, Alan, 142

217

Kafka, Franz, 36–7 Kauffman, Angelica, 132, 137 Keene, Charles, 48 King Charles’ Twelve Golden Rules, 151–3, 207 Klee, Paul, 37 Knowles, J. Sheridan, 133, 138 König, Johann, 51 Kooning, Willem de, 39 Kris, Ernst, 39 Lahee, James, 12, 111, 127 Large, Thomas, 132, 136–7 Laurens, Paul-Albert, 38 Lawrence, Thomas, 132, 145 Lee, Rupert, 31 Leech, John, 47 Dashes of American Humour (Yankee Stories), 133, 139 The Great Highway: A story of the world’s struggles, 133, 139 The Month, 133, 139 Lewis, Wilmarth S., 64 Leyden, Lucas van, 151 line engraving, 39–40, 53–5, 59–60, 75–6, 151 Linnell, Herbert, 71 Linnell, John, 10, 14, 66, 68, 70–2, 77, 81, 86–8, 90–1, 94, 97, 100, 103, 108–14, 117, 126–9, 134, 141, 143, 145–8, 155, 157 Linnell, John S., 127 Linton, William James, 162 lithograph, 38, 60 Lizars, William Home, 120, 133, 138, 157 Peter Morris M.D, 157 White-Headed Pigeon, 133, 138 Lloyd, Stephen, 137 Locke (Lancaster), 123 Locker-Lampson, Frederick, 67 Lockhart, John Gibson, 157 Loughton, Elizabeth, 121 Loughton, Hannah, 121 Lupton, Thomas, Ploughing, Eton, 59 Maclise, Daniel, 59 Maheux, Anne, 17

218

Index

Maile, G., Windsor Castle, 70 Malkin, Benjamin Heath, 63 Martin, John (Baptist pastor), 128–9 Masson, André, 33–4, 38–9 Visionary Portrait of Heraclitus, 33 Matthews, Joseph, 130 Mayhew, Henry, 133, 138 Mee, Jon, 16 Meheux, J., 151 Mesens, E. L. T., 31 mezzotint, 48, 53, 59–60, 77 Miró, Joan, 7, 15, 21–3, 25, 32–4, 37–42, 65, 166 Self-Portrait, 1 33 Molineux, T., 153 Monceau, Henry Louis Duhamel du, 86, 88, 103–4, 110 Monnet, Charles, 55 Morland, George, 62, 64 Morris, William, 142 Mosley, C., The Gate of Calais or The Roast Beef of Old England, 47 Moss, W. E. (William Edward), 7–8, 15, 21–2, 25–31, 40, 42, 65–6, 166 Mulready, William, 57, 146, 149 Neagle [, James], 55 Newton, A. Edward, 68 Oldbourne Hall, 125–6 Opie, John, 13 Ottley, William Young, 47 Pailthorpe, F. W., 139 Palmer, Herbert, 58, 110 Palmer, Mary, 129 Palmer, Samuel, 37, 58, 68, 110–11, 141, 155, 162, Evening, 162 Moonlight, a Landscape with Sheep, 162 The Early Ploughman, 48, 58 The Weary Ploughman, 162 The Willow, 48, 58 Paul, Henry Howard, 133, 139 Penrose, Roland, 31 Peret, Benjamin, 32

Perine, George, The Battle of Bunker’s Hill, 120, 139 Phillips, Thomas, 54 Phiz (see Hablot Knight Browne) Picasso, Pablo, 22, 37–8 Pickersgill, Henry William, 132, 137 Piroli, Thomas, Twelve Stories of the Old Testament, 47 planishing, 11, 49, 51–2, 69, 74, 78, 80–2, 181 Pollock, Jackson, 39 Pontifex, the firm and mark, 53, 76–7, 81–2, 86–112, 120–30, 134–6 Pontifex and Woods, 123, 135 Pontifex, Daniel, 121 Pontifex, Edmund Alfred, 123, 135 Pontifex, Edmund, 122–3, 130, 135 Pontifex, H. & Sons, 120, 125 Pontifex, Henry and Son, 123 Pontifex, Russell, 76–7, 86, 120–3, 126–30, 134–5 Pontifex, Russell Frederick, 123, 135 Pontifex, William Jr, 76, 123, 135 Pontifex, William Sr, 76–7, 120–3, 126, 130, 135 Poussin, Nicolas, 145 Prot, The fuit inutilement, 55 Pyne & Nattes, 122 Quaritch, Bernard, 29–30 Quentin, Harriet, 70 Raddon, William, Susan Countess of Gilford, 123, 136 Ratcliff of Birmingham, 10, 76 Read, Herbert, 31–3 Reavey, George, 31 Relief etching, 1, 3, 6–15, 19–23, 30, 38, 40–2, 60, 65, 73–4, 117, 120, 129, 148, 154, 157–8, 161–6 Rembrandt van Rijn, 47, 120 Jacob Caressing Benjamin, 51 The Night Watch, 47 The Raising of Lazarus, 51 repair of copper plate, 10, 46, 48, 57, 66, 75–6

Index repoussage, 7, 12–14, 18, 45–6, 49–60, 69, 73–118 reuse of copper plate, 10, 45–6, 51, 62, 81, 86, 88, 103, 119 Reynolds, Graham, 39 Reynolds, Joshua, 11, 20, 131, 137 Richard Clay & Co., 66 Richmond, George 68, 141 Rimbaud, Arthur, 37 Ritson, Joseph, 151–2 Robertson, Graham, 7–8, 15, 21–6, 31, 33, 40, 42 King of the Jews, 25, 42 ‘Orc’ or ‘Flames of Desire’, aft er Blake’s Book of Urizen, Plate 3 42 ‘Paolo and Francesca’, 42 Robinson, Crabb, 68 Rogers, Richard, 152 Rosenbach, 66 Rosenwald, Lessing J., 27, 41, 65–6, 71, 160 Rossetti, Daniel Gabriel, 15, 23 Rossetti, William Michael, 23 Rowlandson, Thomas, 47–8, 131–2, 136–7 Nap in the Country/ Nap in Town, 47, 131, 136 Rural Felicity, or Love in a Chaise, New Feats of Horsemanship, The Country Squire new mounted, The Wanton Frolic, The Hairy Prospect, or the Devil in a Fright, The Sanctified Sinner, The Curious Wanton, 132 The Willing Fair, or Any Way to Please, 131, 137 Royce, William Hobart, 68 Rubens, Peter Paul, 121, 139 Ryland, W. Wynne, 76 Sade, Marquis de, 33 Salt & Co., 76 Salzmann, Christian Gotthiff, 27 Sargent, John, 55–6 Saunders, Mr, 64 Savage, William, 4 Schiavonetti, Luigi (Lewis), 54, 131, 137, 160 The Grave, 54, 131, 137, 160 Selby, Prideaux John, 120 Sellers, John, 120, 133–4, 139

219

Sessler, 68 Sharp, William, 13–14, 48, 52 Edward Long, 13–14, 52 Sharpe, Charles William, The Wolf and the Lamb, 57 Shaw, E. J., 67 Sherman, Welby, Evening, 162 Short, Francis Job, A Woody Landscape, 48 Skepp, John, 126 Smith, Albert, 120, 133, 139 Smith, George, 151 Smith, John Thomas, 61 Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers, 58 soft-ground etching, 60 Soupault, Philippe, 32–4 steel-faced copper plate, 28, 47 stipple engraving, 53–5, 59–60, 85, 122, 136, 151 Stothard, Thomas, 55, 79, 111, 151 Strang, William, 48, 50 Strange and Stanleys, Earls of Derby, 125 Strange, Robert, 55 Stuart, C. G., 55, 121, 135 Sung, Mei-Ying, 136 Swanson, A., 132–3, 139 Symons, Julian, 25, 32, 36 Tanguy, Yves, 36, 39 Tatham, Frederick, 15, 23, 27, 31, 61, 63, 67–8, 71 Taubman, Alfred, 9 Thompson, John, The Vicar of Wakefield, 146 Thornton, Robert, 141–67 (Chapter 5) Todd, Christopher, 24 Todd, Ruthven, 3, 7–8, 15, 21–32, 36–42, 64–7, 70–2, 82, 118, 166 Townsend, Joyce, 17 Townshend, Piers, 17 Truchy, L. (Louis), May Day, 55 Trumbull, John, 120, 139 Turner, J. M. W., 34, 48, 59, 77, 122, 131, 136–7 Glaucus pursuing Scylla, 77, 122, 136 Liber Studiorum, 4, 77, 122, 132, 136–7

220 Ploughing, Eton, 48, 59, 132, 137 Upton, James, 126–9, Valdiere, Cesare Avena de, 35 Vallance, Sarah L., 17 Vertue, George, 48, 53 Villiers, Huet, 70 Voorst, R. A. Van, 146 W. W. Johnson & Sons, 123 Walpole, Horace, 35–6, 47, 150 Ward, James, 145 Watteau, Jean-Antoine, 62, 64 Wells, Gabriel, 68 Wertheimer, Max, 39 Wethered, Newton, 25–6 Weyhe, E. (Erhard), 67–8 Weyhe Dennis, Gertrude, 67–8 white-line, 145, 153–63 Whittow, Benjamin, 120, 130–2, 136–7 Wicksteed, Joseph, 25, 33 Wilkie, David, 48, 60 Wilkinson, R., 125

Index Winkles, B., 132–3, 139 Wint, Peter de, 48 Wood, James, 123, 135 Wood, John, 129 woodcut, ‘Canterbury Tales’, 151 ‘Chevy Chase’, 151 ‘Death and the Lady’, 151 ‘Duke Willy’, 151 ‘Fair Rosamund’, 151 ‘George and Dragon’, 151 ‘Godiva’, 151 ‘King Charles’ Twelve Golden Rules’, 151–3 ‘Margaret’s Ghost’, 151 ‘Robin Hood’, 151 ‘The Royal Game of Goose’, 151 Woollett, W., 55, 76 Wordsworth, Dorothy, 151 Worrall, David, 16, 134 Wyatt, Henry, 55, 132, 137 Yorke, Henry Vincent, 125 Yorke, Matthew, 125