{"id":51,"date":"2023-09-07T17:34:42","date_gmt":"2023-09-07T16:34:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/?p=51"},"modified":"2023-09-07T19:17:07","modified_gmt":"2023-09-07T18:17:07","slug":"portrait-of-william-blake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/2023\/09\/07\/portrait-of-william-blake\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of William Blake"},"content":{"rendered":"

Luigi Schiavonetti, Portrait of William Blake<\/em>, after Thomas Phillips, 1808, etching.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Inscription: \u2018Painted by T. Phillips R. A. \/ Engraved by L Schiavonetti V A \/ William Blake \/ London, published by R.H.Cromek, 64 Newman St. May 1st 1808\u2019.<\/p>\n

This etched portrait of the artist and poet William Blake was commissioned by the publisher Robert Hartley Cromek as the frontispiece for an edition of Robert Blair\u2019s The Grave<\/em> (1743) that was produced in 1808. Cromek arranged for Blake to sit to the fashionable portraitist Thomas Phillips (the picture<\/a> is now in the National Portrait Gallery), and then for the printmaker Luigi Schiavonetti to copy the oil painting in etching<\/a>. Blake\u2019s portrait was painted by Phillips during Spring 1807 in his studio at 8 George Street, Hannover Square, and it was finished on 4 April according to Phillips\u2019s diary.<\/p>\n

Phillips liked to engage his sitters in conversation about their professions in order to catch a characteristic expression. In Blake\u2019s case this led to a friendly dispute about whether Michelangelo or the \u2018over-rated\u2019 Raphael had painted angels better. Blake stated categorically that Michelangelo\u2019s representations of angels were superior, and that in spite of never having seen any of Michelangelo\u2019s paintings, his opinion was based on good authority: \u2018\u201cI speak from the opinion of a friend who could not be mistaken\u201d. \u201cA valuable friend truly\u201d, said Phillips, \u201cand who may he be I pray?\u201d \u201cThe archangel Gabriel, Sir\u201d, answered Blake\u2019.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

Phillips asked how Blake knew that his supernatural friend, who claimed to have sat for Michelangelo, was Gabriel and not an evil spirit. Pleased with this remark, Blake told of how he had asked that same question himself of the vision. According to the version of the story that Phillips related to Alan Cunningham, Blake said that he \u2018\u201clooked whence the voice came, and was then aware of a shining shape, with bright wings, who diffused much light. As I looked, the shape dilated more and more: he waved his hands; the roof of my study opened; he ascended into heaven; he stood in the sun, and beckoning to me, moved the universe. An angel of evil could not have done that<\/em> \u2013 it was the arch-angel Gabriel\u201d. The painter marvelled much at this wild story; but he caught from Blake\u2019s looks, as he related it, that rapt poetic expression which has rendered his portrait one of the finest of the English school\u2019.[2]<\/a><\/p>\n

The designs for Blair\u2019s The Grave<\/a><\/em> were the works<\/a> by Blake that achieved the greatest public fame during his lifetime. Contemporaries had mixed views, however, on whether this was because of the remarkable invention of the artist or the suave accomplishment of the printmaker. Schiavonetti, himself, seems to have credited the quality of Blake\u2019s drawing for the success of the prints, writing to Cromek on 21 July 1807 to state that he had almost finished etching Blake\u2019s Day of Judgment<\/a><\/em>: \u2018As to what degree of plaisure [sic<\/em>] I have found in Engraving it you may easily conseive [sic<\/em>] it from the accuracy of the outline, the truth of the light and shadow, and the magical way with which the effect of [h]armony is contrived in the Drawing\u2019.[3]<\/a><\/p>\n

Blake had expected to engrave his own drawings, producing twenty at one guinea a piece, and felt cheated by Cromek when he gave the more lucrative work of printmaking to Schiavonetti. He certainly associated the publisher with the appellation \u2018knave\u2019 in his notebook: \u2018A petty sneaking knave I knew\u2026 \/ \u201cO! Mr. Cromek, how do ye do?\u201d\u2019. John Thomas Smith in his biography of Blake described Cromek as \u2018a man who endeavoured to live by speculating upon the talent of others\u2019.[4]<\/a> Cromek did admire Blake to some extent but also clearly saw him as exploitable. In a letter to the poet James Montgomery he characterized Blake as a \u2018wild & wonderful genius\u2019, and an inhabitant of \u2018Fairy Land\u2019 who believed that \u2018what has been called Delusion<\/em> is the only Reality<\/em>\u2019 and \u2018that this World is the only Cheat, Imagination the only Truth<\/em>!\u2019.[5]<\/a><\/p>\n

Blake in a poem included in a letter to his patron Thomas Butts in 1802 explained how \u2018a double vision is always with me\u2019: \u2018With my inward Eye, \u2018tis an old Man grey \/ With my outward a Thistle across the way\u2019.[6]<\/a> At other times, however, this double vision expanded to a \u2018three fold\u2019 or even \u2018fourfold vision\u2019 that is the poet\u2019s \u2018supreme delight\u2019. On the other hand, to see things only from a materialistic \u2018single vision\u2019 is to partake in \u2018Newton\u2019s sleep\u2019.[7]<\/a> Blake complained in a subsequent letter to Butts of the 10 January 1803 that the \u2018drudgery\u2019 of commissioned work imposed on him by his patron William Hayley was distracting him from a higher calling that placed him \u2018under the direction of Messengers from Heaven Daily & Nightly\u2019.[8]<\/a> Such talk of supernatural visitations led some of his contemporaries to consider Blake to be insane, and Alexander Gilchrist even included a chapter in his biography of Blake entitled \u2018Mad or Not Mad?\u2019 (first published in 1863). Blake, however, was sure of the divine source of his visions, writing to Butts in 1803, of the \u2018immense number of verses on One Grand Theme Similar to Homers Iliad or Miltons Paradise Lost\u2019 that he had written in three years living at Felpham. Blake had \u2018written this poem from immediate Dictation twelve or sometimes twenty or thirty lines at a time without Premeditation & even against my Will\u2019.[9]<\/a> Blake is referring here to his long poem Milton a Poem in 2 Books<\/em> of 1804 in which he claimed to have been possessed by the spirit of John Milton who entered his body via his foot: \u2018Then first I saw him in the Zenith as a falling star, \/ Descending perpendicular, swift as the swallow or swift; \/And on my left foot falling on the tarsus, enterd there\u2026\u2019.[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Blake\u2019s interest in Milton was probably stimulated by his patron Hayley\u2019s Milton collection, – put together by Hayley to aid him in writing his 1796 biography<\/a> of the author of Paradise Lost<\/em> – and by the commission to produce a portrait of Milton for Hayley\u2019s Marine Turret library. However, in spite of their mutual enthusiasm for Milton as a poet, Hayley and Blake had very different understandings of the meaning of poetry. As Blake stated of Hayley in a letter to his brother James: \u2018\u2018The truth is As a Poet he is frightend at me\u2019.[11]<\/a> Blake had a prophetic conception of poetry where direct inspiration was a surer guide than the imitation of approved models. As he wrote in the Preface to Milton<\/em>: \u2018We do not want either Greek or Roman Models if we are but just & true to our own Imaginations, those Worlds of Eternity in which we shall live for ever\u2019. Later in the same poem we find the lines: \u2018I am inspired! I know it is Truth! for I sing \/ According to the inspiration of the Poetic Genius\u2019.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

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A poet immersed in prophetic visions of eternity, taking dictation from supernatural messengers, and communicating with the dead through a form of possession, Blake is far closer to the mantic and inspired poet discussed by Anita Seppilli than to the polite moralising in verse of William Hayley\u2019s Triumphs of Temper<\/em> (1781). Seppilli wrote that when Ovid explained in Fasti<\/em>, VI, 5-8, that \u2018there is a god within us (\u2018Est deus in nobis\u2019<\/em>), it is when he stirs us that our bosom warms, it is his impulse that sows the seeds of inspiration\u2019, he was both describing a very ancient experience and one that is still felt by contemporary artists (although no longer connected to a superhuman cause). She goes on to add that \u2018the very word \u201cinspiration\u201d already suggests that poetry was not experienced as something born inside the individual human soul, but as something \u2013 a breath, a spirit? \u2013 that comes from outside and takes possession\u2019 [la parola stessa \u201cispirazione\u201d ci suggerisce gi\u00e0 che la poesia non era sentita come qualcosa che nasceva dentro allo spirito individuale dell\u2019uomo, ma come qualcosa \u2013 un soffio, uno spirito? \u2013 che veniva dal di fuori e si impadroniva dell\u2019uomo<\/em>].[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> G. E. Bentley, Blake Records<\/em>, second edition, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004, pp. 232-33.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Blake Records<\/em>, pp. 233-34; Allan Cunningham, The Cabinet Gallery of Pictures<\/em>, London, 1833, I, pp. 11-13.<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Blake Records<\/em>, p. 245.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Blake Records<\/em>, p. 613.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> R. H. Cromek to James Montgomery, April 1807, Blake Records<\/em>, p. 235.<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> William Blake to Thomas Butts, 22 November 1802, David V. Erdman (ed.), The Complete Poetry & Prose of William Blake<\/em>, New York: Anchor Books, 1988, p. 721.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid, p. 722.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid, p. 724.<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> William Blake to Thomas Butts, 25 April 1803, Ibid, pp. 728-29.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid, p. 110.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> William Blake to James Blake, 30 January 1803, Ibid, p. 725.<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Ibid, pp. 108-9.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Anita Seppilli, Poesia e magia<\/em>, Torino: Einaudi, 1972, p. 186.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Luigi Schiavonetti, Portrait of William Blake, after Thomas Phillips, 1808, etching.   Inscription: \u2018Painted by T. Phillips R. A. \/ Engraved by L Schiavonetti V … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73374,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[283393],"tags":[283628,176169,283759,284435,283930,284090,283518],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51\/revisions\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/poetryandmagic\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}