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0: SUGGESTIONS FOR READERS FOR OPTIMAL VIEWING
1: INTRODUCTION
2: BACKGROUND & CONTEXT
3: BLAKE'S COLOR PRINTING METHODS
4: THE TWO-PULL THEORY
5: THE ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST
TWO-PULL PRINTING
6: WHY "NURSES SONG"
WAS PRINTED TWICE
7: OCCAM'S RAZOR
8: POSTSCRIPT: SOME IMPLICATIONS
9: NOTES
10: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
11: WORKS
CITED |
9:
NOTES |
1 William Blake, annotations
to William Wordsworth’s “Preface” to The Excursion. Complete
Poetry and Prose, ed. Erdman, 667 (hereafter cited as “E” followed
by page number).
2 The one-pull
method is described in Essick, Printmaker 125-35, and Viscomi,
Idea 119-28. As Phillips (103 and 120n31) points out, W.
Graham Robertson (in Gilchrist 404-06) had previously suggested
(or at least implied) that Blake used the two-pull method. However,
Robertson is addressing only the technique Blake used for his large
color prints, first designed and executed in 1795, not the color
prints in the illuminated books. Phillips also notes that Martin
Butlin was “convinced” (103) of the two-pull theory. Indeed, Butlin
at least suggests as much, without explanatory details, in William
Blake 48, Paintings and Drawings of Blake 1:156, and
“Physicality” 5. Phillips 120n31 also cites Butlin and Gott "p.111";
but in that section of the catalogue, signed by Gott alone, Gott
states explicitly that “both sets of tints” (i.e., the ink and the
color-printing medium) were “printed … together” in one pull (111).
Raymond Lister (not cited by Phillips) implies a two-pull theory
in his comment that the color prints in the Large and Small
Book of Designs were “colour-printed on the base of impressions
from relief-etched plates, instead of being colour-printed from
the beginning” (61).
3 The Tate Britain
exhibition labels for items 119b and 205 (Lucifer and the Pope in
Hell and Visions of the Daughters of Albion frontispiece)
implied (as in Lister 61) that color-printed intaglio etchings
and relief etchings for the Large and Small Book of Designs
were printed in 1794 in monochrome and then reprinted two years later
in colors.
4 How Blake identified
The Book of Ahania (1795) and The Book of Los (1795),
in which the text pages were printed from intaglio plates, is not known.
Today they are routinely classified as illuminated books, perhaps because
of their color-printed frontispieces, title pages, and vignettes. All
copies of Gates, however, were printed in black ink and left
uncolored.
5 Monochrome impressions,
whether printed in shades of black ink, such as those in most copies
of America (and, later, Jerusalem) or in colored inks,
such as those in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy B (1790)
and the Experience section of Songs of Innocence and of Experience
copy O, were produced and sold as monochrome copies and should not be
considered unfinished. Copy designations and plate numbers for the
illuminated books follow Bentley, Books.
6 Laurie’s method
combined on one plate mezzotint, stipple, and, for the outlines, etching,
which he inked warm with camel hair brushes with their tips cut off
to form stump brushes. He was awarded 30 guineas by the Society of
Arts in 1776 for the invention of this color printing method (see Burch
87 and Hardie 56-57).
7 For the concept
of graphic “syntax,” see Ivins, esp. 60-62, and Gascoigne, where the
identifying characteristics of all the various relief, intaglio, and
planographic processes are clearly described and illustrated in magnified
details.
8 According to Landseer,
“The pretensions of engraving, as of all the arts denominated Fine,
are simple, chaste, unsophisticated. Art ever disdains artifice, attempts
no imposition, but honestly claims attention as being what it is. A
Statue is to be looked at as being a statue—not
a real Figure; a Picture, not as a portion of actual Nature; a Print,
not as a copy of Painting” (178).
9 Landseer 182-83.
He goes on to claim that only “the eye, the hand, and the judgment of
a Painter, can alone confer value on a coloured work of art—call
it picture, print, or whatever you please: nothing else can entitle
it to the denomination of a work of Art.” Finishing, of course,
also required the “genuine Painter, who (even were he to be well paid
for it) could never submit to stifle his inventive powers in the drudgery
of copying his own works, while by multiplying them, he lessened the
nominal value of each” (183).
10 The first book
in England with color prints was the Book of Hawking, Hunting, and
Heraldry, printed in 1486 in St. Albans, Hertfordshire (Friedman
4). Jackson’s was technically the second book in England with color
prints. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, aquatint plates
with etched outlines replaced the key and tone blocks, making the facsimilizing
of wash drawings a relatively simple one-pull procedure, as Richard
Earlom’s facsimiles of Claude Lorraine’s and Giovanni Cipriani’s drawings
attest. French graphic artists like Gilles Demarteau used the chiaroscuro
method with aquatints (and other plates) to produce prints in imitation
of paintings (as distinct from wash drawings).
11 There was
an inherent limit to the amount of time Blake could spend on preparing
the plates for color printing. Unlike ink, water-soluble colors,
even those mixed with a retardant, would have dried on the plate
had Blake dawdled. What Blake said in his “Public Address” about
drawing, that it required a “firm and decided hand” working “at
once” (E 576), was true not only of drawing the plate image but
of printing in multiple colors. The hand “which Doubts & Hesitates
in the Midst of its Course” (E 575) will fail to produce the best
possible image.
12 According to
J. T. Smith, writing in 1828, “Blake’s coloured plates have more effect
than others where gum has been used,” because they “are coloured . .
. with a degree of splendour and force, as almost to resemble sketches
in oil-colours” (Bentley, Records, 473, 472). Smith based his
assertions on works like “Albion rose,” which was one of “those beautiful
specimens [the Small and Large Book of Designs] . . .
coloured purposely for . . . Ozias Humphry” (Bentley, Records,
473). Smith’s opinion that the opaque colors characteristic of Blake’s
color printing are more “beautiful” than the transparent tints characteristic
of water color drawings (which he equated with their binder, gum arabic)
reflects the then fashionable taste for water colors in “imitation of
the effect of oil painting . . . the explicit desirability” of
which was “the bellwether of a new consciousness of the changing potential
of water color art” (Cohn 11).
13 J. F. Gautier
D’Agoty’s Myologie has plates measuring 30 x 40 cm. to 66 x
46 cm. Every impression in the two copies we examined revealed signs
of registration at the corners. The same is true of the eight plates
in his Anatomie, measuring from 32 x 40 cm. to 40 x 54 cm., and
53 of the 63 plates color printed in his Observations, averaging
20.5 x 14.6 cm.; it is also true of the 15 plates in Cours complet
d’anatomie, by A. E. Gautier D’Agoty, measuring 40 x 55 cm., which,
according to Burch, are examples of color printing at its best (63).
We found the same to be true of every color-printed impression we examined
in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery (San Marino, California),
the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the Yale Center for British
Art (New Haven, Connecticut), and the Ackland Museum (Chapel Hill,
North Carolina). These collections include works by Le Blon, Louis
Bonnet, J. B. Jackson, Nicolas Le Sueur, Arthur Pond, Elisha Kirkall,
Charles Knapton, Gilles Demarteau, Hubert Goltzius, Ugo Da Carpi, J.
B. M. Papillon, Jean Francoise Janinet, and Philibert Louis De Bucourt.
Even the color prints by Pablo Picasso on display at the Museum of Modern
Art (New York) showed signs of the second pull. Misregistration and
multiple platemarks in color prints are visible in good reproductions
in books (see color plates I, II, IV in Friedman and color illustrations
46, 48, 52, and 57 in Lilien). Most reproductions, however, including
those in Phillips’ book, are trimmed to the image, thereby hiding the
evidence of multiple printing.
14 While it is
possible to print an impression by rubbing the back of a sheet of paper
lying on an inked relief-etched plate (though not for those sheets printed
on both sides), to print from both levels and create the kinds of even
embossments we see in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell copy F
requires a rolling press. One of the labels in the Tate Britain exhibition,
item 117c, suggested that Blake may have printed his plates with his
hand. Phillips claims that, in two-pull color printing, Blake may not
have passed “the plate and impression through the rollers a second time,”
but printed by “carefully applying pressure with the tips of his finger”
(Phillips 102) or “by using the palm of his hand” (Phillips in Hamlyn
and Phillips 106). Ruthven Todd also argued that Blake’s color prints
did not require a press, believing, incorrectly, that the colors would
have been badly smeared had they gone under the rollers (37). Colors
applied to surface areas often did smear beyond the platemark, as in
the frontispiece to Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy F.
15 By “accidentals”
we mean the accidental inking or coloring of etched valleys, smudges
of ink or color printed along the relief escarpments or the edges of
the copperplates, diminishing amounts of ink or color on letters and
pictorial motifs, and other mere accidents of inking (sometimes called
“foul inking”) and color printing that do not intentionally contribute
to the printed image. The vast majority of Blake’s relief etchings
contain at least minute examples of such flaws. For examples from The
Song of Los and how they indicate sequential printing without
wiping, see Dörrbecker 320-21; Essick, Printmaker 128-29; and
Viscomi, Idea 287. For sequential printing without wiping in
Blake’s color-printed separate plates, see Essick, Separate Plates
25, 32, 44. For the sequential printing of the large color prints,
first designed and executed in 1795, see Butlin, “Physicality.”
16 In the Blake
exhibition at Tate Britain, item 118a was “Nurses Song” from Songs
of Innocence and of Experience copy E; item 118b was “Nurses Song”
from Songs of Innocence and of Experience copy C. The
latter shows no signs of misregistration and was presented as proof
of the perfect registration supposedly exemplified by all the other
color prints in the exhibition.
17 Phillips 99,
quoting Geoffrey Morrow of the National Gallery of Canada.
18 Phillips
interprets the small holes he claims exist in the four Ottawa impressions
not only as registration pinholes but also as evidence that Blake
began his color printing experiments with these four plates (98).
The evidence for the Experience plates in Songs of Innocence
and of Experience copies F, G, H, and T1
having been printed together and before copies B-E is presented
in Viscomi, Idea 267-73. Viscomi also suggests that these
four copies are not incomplete, despite having only 15-17 plates,
but were printed as works in progress. They may have been Blakes
first color-printed illuminated books. Phillips believes the supposed
pinholes that he identifies as registration guides mark exactly
where Blake began developing the technique (98). The Marriage
of Heaven and Hell copies E and F, however, which are as accomplished
as the Experience color prints, were color printed in the
same style and on the same Edmeads & Pine paper used in early
copies of Songs of Innocence, and they could have preceded
Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies F-H and T1,
which were printed on paper without watermarks, as could have copies
A-D, G, and M of There is No Natural Religion, which were
rudimentarily color printed, also on paper without watermarks. With
Songs of Experience, Blake seems to have seized the moment
for all of its graphic possibilities: to practice color printing,
to proof new plates, and to gather from the resulting impressions
a few sets of prints. Had developing the technique been Blake’s
sole intention at the time, then he would probably not have used
seventeen plates, let alone systematically printed four impressions
per plate, nor would he have formed copies out of the resulting
impressions. Given the evidence now at hand, we do not know for
sure which plates Blake color printed first, or even if the first
experiments in color printing are extant. Phillips also discusses
(106) Blake's use of lead white in early color-printed copies of
Songs of Innocence and of Experience and implies that the
lead white was printed from the plates. The lead white we have found
in copies of Songs of Innocence and
of Experience was applied by hand to the individual impressions.
19 Phillips also
speculates that pinholes may have been present in other impressions
but repaired (101). In all the eighteenth-century color prints using
pinhole registration that we have seen, the holes, even when repaired,
are not difficult to see as slight, rounded marks in the paper. Many
of the original color prints, particularly the later French chalk engravings
meant to imitate pastel drawings, were trimmed to within the platemark
and pinholes, thereby eliminating evidence of printing and enabling
the print to pass as a drawing.
20 Faithorne mentions
a bottom sheet “to compass and make the Margin of the Plate” (58), but
says nothing further about registration. Anon., Sculptura, offers
nothing on printing. Dossie describes a bottom sheet, “the size of
those that are to be printed,” used to “mark out the place where the
plate should lie, that he [the printer] may the more readily put it,
each time an impression is to be taken from it, in its proper situation”
(2:193-94).
21 Letter to Bernard
Quaritch, 31 March 1922 (quoted in Viscomi, Idea 102). Songs
of Innocence and of Experience copy E has many poorly registered
images. The “Introduction” in Experience has a 3.0 cm. top margin
but only a 2.3 cm. bottom margin, making the image appear to be falling
down the sheet; “Laughing Song” has a top margin that is 3 mm. wider
than the bottom and the image slants to the right. “Nurses Song” has
a top margin 4 mm. wider than the bottom. Though less pronounced, the
same “skillful carelessness” is apparent in Songs of Innocence
and of Experience copies B, C, and D. From the perspective of a
book designer, these early copies with color-printed impressions are
not visually coherent: an Innocence poem is in Experience,
the ink color differs in the two sections, Experience has plates
in different lettering styles and ink colors (e.g., plates 34-36).
This kind of disregard for precision and uniformity appears throughout
Blake’s graphic works. For example, even the relettering in pen and
ink on the additional impression of plate 2 in The Book of Urizen
copy C is not registered to the printed words. The engraved lettering
in Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, the Job engravings, and the
“Laocoön” separate plate also shows a lack of precision in the placement
of the letters relative to each other and relative to the preliminary
lettering scratched into the plates.
22 Considerably
more than 50% of the plates in the Huntington Library collection
are crooked in relation to the edges of the sheets, or are printed
far too low on the sheets. These include Songs of Innocence
copy I (printed 1789), The Book of Thel copy L (1790), Songs
of Innocence and of Experience copies E (1789, 1794) and N (1795),
The Song of Los copy E (1795), and Milton copy B (1811).
Works in the Pierpont Morgan Library collection follow suit: in
Europe copy G (1794), 9 of 17 plates fall too low on the
sheet (on average by 1.5 cm.); in Marriage copy F (1794),
11 of 27 plates are misaligned; and in Songs of Innocence
copy D, 10 of 31 impressions are poorly aligned, either falling too
low on the sheet, off center, slanted, or all three. In Songs
of Innocence and of Experience copy V (c. 1818), also in
the Morgan Library collection, almost 50% of the plates are misaligned.
We see similar high numbers in the copies of Songs of Innocence
and of Experience in the Yale Center for British Art collection,
such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience copies F and
L (1789/1794, 1795), and Songs of Innocence copy G of 1789
(illus. 51).
An examination of the books, early and late, in other collections
would no doubt yield similar results.
23 Le Blon did
not use a bottom sheet to print, though The New Encyclopedia Britannica
article on “printing” mentions “a hand drawn grid” (vol. 14, column
1051). Lilien, however, states that “this can only be described as
a misleading and regrettable term to describe the roughening of the
copper surface required for starting work on a mezzotint plate” (83).
24 Similarly,
the notion that Blake transferred his designs and texts from paper to
copperplate, to avoid having to draw and rewrite his text backwards
directly on the plate, creates a clumsy and unnecessary inefficiency
for someone like Blake, skilled at designing and writing backwards.
See Essick, Printmaker 89-92, and Viscomi, Idea 16-25,
28-29, 370.
25 For more detailed
information on bottom sheets in printing and why we can be sure they
were not used by the Blakes, see Viscomi, Idea 105-07, 394nn5,
6, 8.
26 We are grateful
to Keith Parker, assistant curator at The National Museum of Science
& Industry, London, where the press is located, for measuring the
circumference of the top roller.
27 With hand-made
yellow ochre ink, we were able routinely to produce three impressions
from the plate in one inking, with exactly the kind of decreased
saturation that characterizes Songs of Innocence and of Experience
copy E (see illus. 71-73).
28 John Updike
noted in his review of the Metropolitan Museum Blake exhibition that
Blake “laboriously [wrote] his self-published poems in minute backward
lettering” (9).
29 Phillips writes
of the “failure to appreciate Blake’s achievement, and the time
and skill that it required to accomplish…” (95).
30 See Le Blon’s
statement, quoted earlier, about his “reducing the Harmony of colouring
in painting to Mechanical Practice, and under infallible Rules” (iv).
31 Reconstructing
an illustrated text by dividing it into text and illustration and
invisibly reconstituting these parts is not characteristic of Blake,
an artist/poet for whom words and images are elements in a unified
visual composition. Moreover, Blake appears often to go out of his
way not to conceal his hand in the creative process. Rather than
dividing the image into sketch and finished work in his water color
drawings, Blake conflated the two stages, as his unerased and often
vigorous pentimenti reveal (e.g., the illustrations to Thomas Gray
and Dante).
32 It is of
course possible for practice and theory to run at cross-purposes;
see for example Essick, Production, for contradictions
between the painterly tendencies in Blakes nineteenth-century
prints and his linear aesthetic. In the present instance, however,
we believe that practice gave rise to theory, and that this genetic
relationship accounts for the consistencies between Blakes
graphic techniques and his comments on memory, measurement, repetition,
and imagination quoted here.
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0: SUGGESTIONS FOR READERS FOR OPTIMAL VIEWING
1: INTRODUCTION
2: BACKGROUND & CONTEXT
3: BLAKE'S COLOR PRINTING METHODS
4: THE TWO-PULL THEORY
5: THE ARGUMENTS FOR AND AGAINST
TWO-PULL PRINTING
6: WHY "NURSES SONG"
WAS PRINTED TWICE
7: OCCAM'S RAZOR
8: POSTSCRIPT: SOME IMPLICATIONS
9: NOTES
10: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
11: WORKS
CITED |
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