The Twelve Large Colour Prints of William Blake: A Study on Techniques, Materials and Context Minne Tanaka A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Nottingham Trent University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April 2008 ii ABSTRACT The Twelve Large Colour Prints of William Blake: A Study on Techniques, Materials and Context Minne Tanaka The aim of this thesis is to study in entirety the group of large colour prints which William Blake made between 1795 and 1805. The series of prints represents the single most important and complete development of Blake’s skill as an innovative printmaker. Although they include some of Blake’s best-known images, they have not been studied before in their entirety or from the point of view of analysing the techniques and methods Blake had used. My study will show how Blake executed these truly impressive prints in terms of materials, method and motives. The first half of the thesis deals with the materialistic aspects of Blake’s colour printing. In chapter one tracing the controversial two-pull discussion to the root, I will make clear the focus points as well as revealing the early tradition of experimental criticism on Blake’s colour printing method. Focusing on two important critics, W. Graham Robertson and Ruthven Todd, and the periods they lived, I attempt to reveal the role they played in a wider context. Also I show how the tradition of Blake’s art was inherited directly through the Ancients to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, which leads to Robertson and Todd. In the second chapter I deal with the development of Blake’s colour printing experiments. It is obvious that the Twelve Large Colour Prints were produced as a result of Blake’s series of colour printing experiments, starting with monocolour simple prints, going through the illuminated books progressing with more colours and higher skills. As the experiments processed, the illustrations started to get free from the text and became independent visual art. Thus the Large and Small Book of Designs are compiled of full-page designs taken from the earlier illuminated books and printed in full colours, and interestingly some prints are colour printed from intaglio-etched plates. Based on iii my direct experience of comparing various prints and feeling the differences of the stages in the experiments in a relatively short period of time during my two research trips to the United States, I attempt to reconstruct the development of colour prints placed in his entire oeuvre. Chapter three is the history of colour printing. Throughout history, many innovative printers attempted colour printing, but the number of those who succeeded both technically and financially was surprisingly few. Some were obliged to pursuit their aesthetic in amateurish wasteful spending even ending in bankruptcy, and some compromised the quality for mass production and cost effectiveness. But there have always been innovative printers trying to produce prints in colour. Taking in the whole picture, I try to understand Blake’s colour printing better. Chapter four is my attempt to record scientifically attained information about the materials Blake used. Most of the information in this chapter is taken from the results of the research conducted by the Tate conservationists led by Joyce Townsend. Thanks to their state of the art equipment, most of the pigments and other materials are now identifiable. By studying materials, we can grasp the method physically. The latter three chapters narrow the focus on the series of Twelve Large Colour Prints itself. Chapter five deals with the actual examination of the prints. During this doctoral project, I saw all prints extant, except two, Nebuchadnezzar at Minneapolis and Good and Evil Angels in a private collection in New York. Based on my direct experience, I give the full record of the location, comparison of different pulls and further information for each print. In chapter six I trace the footstep of academic criticism in the field of art history to show what has been said about the interpretation of the Twelve Large Colour Prints. The first important critic was Anthony Blunt. As the director of the Courtauld Institute he not only set the base tone of Blake criticism in this field with his monograph but educated many critics after him. Various critics contributed to accumulate knowledge, but none could propose a decisive narrative to unite the whole set of prints. The latest proposal was made convincingly by Butlin and Lindsay in 1989 to put them in six pairs. In chapter seven I attempt to give my own interpretation of Blake’s motivation from his contemporary social situation and the art discussion Blake joined in. In relation to the art world Blake lived in, especially to the boom of galleries opened one after another by influential printmakers, I speculate what drove Blake to invent new methods and produce those exuberant colour prints. iv CONTENTS Abstract i Contents iv Acknowledgements v Introduction 1 Chapter One The Controversy over Etching and Printing Methods in Blake 5 Chapter Two The Development of Blake’s Colour Printing Technique 42 Chapter Three History of Colour Printing 56 Chapter Four Pigments and Method 70 Chapter Five Examination of the Twelve Large Colour Prints 90 Chapter Six Interpretation 116 Chapter Seven Blake’s Motivation 175 Conclusion 192 Notes 198 Works Cited 221 v Acknowledgements First of all I would like to express my special thanks to my excellent supervisor, David Worrall. Throughout my long and tedious project, he instructed me with skill and patience. I am grateful for the inspiring atmosphere he has created for us when I was in England with my fellow students, and also for his encouragement during my hard time finishing up while teaching in Japan. I would also like to thank Keri Davis, Mei-Ying Sung, Sibylle Erle and William Easton for stimulating talks and lovely time. The staffs of the following libraries and museums have been helpful to me. British Library, the Tate Britain, British Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, Victoria and Albert Museum Department of Prints and Drawings, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, the Brotherton Library of the University of Leeds, the National Gallery of Scotland, Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, the Getty Center, the Yale Center for British Art, the Metropolitan Museum, New York, Pierpont Morgan Library, the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. I would also like to express my special gratitude to Professor Robert N. Essick for generously showing his private collection to me. Chapter Three: History of Colour Printing is based on my chapter, ‘Colour Printing, West and East: William Blake and Ukiyo-e’ published in The Reception of Blake in the Orient (London: Continuum, 2006), which developed from my paper read at ‘Blake in the Orient’ International Blake Conference held at Kyoto University on 29th-30th Nov. 2003. Last and not least, special thanks to my husband, Yuta Tsukihashi, for making all this happen to me by supporting and encouraging me by all means. And to my parents, Tsukasa and Amy Tanaka, and all my family for their support and love. 1 Introduction The group of large colour prints, or colour-printed drawings, which William Blake made between 1795 and 1805 represents the single most important and complete development of Blake’s skill as an innovative printmaker. This body of prints comprises some of the best known and most iconic of Blake’s images, including those of Newton, Nebuchadnezzar, and Pity, the best version of which are all in the Tate Collection. They were printed and completed at a time when Blake had moved from the production of the major relief-etched illuminated books of the early 1790s such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789, 1794), America (1793), and the First Book of Urizen (1794). Although they include some of Blake’s best-known images, they have not been studied before in their entirety or from the point of view of analysing the techniques and methods Blake had used. Just about every issue connected to them has remained obscure. For example, the dates of their printing and completion are unusually complex. In 1981 Martin Butlin who was at that time working on the two-volume Yale edition of the complete catalogue, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake, published an article in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly in which he reported that one of the most famous of these images, that of ‘Newton’ which had been on display in Tate Britain since its bequest by Graham Robertson in 1939 had revealed during conservation that although Blake had clearly signed and dated in his own hand “1795 WB inv [in monogram]” examination had revealed that the paper it was printed on bore the watermark “JWHATMAN/1804”’. In other words for scholars studying the important group of poems represented by the works referred to above which appeared to end with the Song of Los, Book of Ahania, or Book of Los in 1795, there could no longer be a neat narrative of Blake’s development as a print maker. Indeed the further one examines this group of colourprints, the more complex and intricate become the problems of reconstructing even the most basic understanding of them such as their dates. This thesis will present the first comprehensive examination and analysis of this difficult yet famous set of prints.1 The reasons why they have suffered a degree of scholarly neglect may be attributable to a number of reasons, perhaps the most 2 important of which is that for reasons to be outlined in detail below: Blake never made more than three impressions of each image.