{"id":3260,"date":"2020-09-19T09:56:32","date_gmt":"2020-09-19T09:56:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=3260"},"modified":"2020-09-19T09:56:32","modified_gmt":"2020-09-19T09:56:32","slug":"on-this-day-in-1820-the-visionary-heads-and-william-blakes-attitude-towards-death-part-ii","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bars.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=3260","title":{"rendered":"On This Day in 1820: The Visionary Heads and William Blake’s attitude towards Death (Part II)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yesterday, we marked 200 years since William Blake drew ‘Pindar and Lais the Courtesan’ on 18 September 1820<\/em>.<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, Dr Sibylle Erle <\/a>(Bishop Grosseteste University)<\/em> continues her reflection on Blake’s Visionary Heads… <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Portrait of William Blake <\/em>(c.1802-03), Tate<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

On This Day in 1820: The Visionary Heads and William Blake’s attitude towards Death<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This Blog post has 2 parts. Click here<\/a> to view part 1. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog discusses Blake\u2019s Visionary Heads not as a spiritual phenomenon[1]<\/sup> but as an expression of continuing bonds and Blake\u2019s attitude towards death. If we think of the drawing sessions not as s\u00e9ances but as contacts with the spiritual world, Blake\u2019s vision about life after death will come into focus. While the early heads were created in a s\u00e9ance-like ambience, as noted by Bentley (2004 363, 366), the later ones are different. By 1820, the wild, mad and eccentric Blake had calmed down; his new-found serenity, according to Bentley, is reflected in the faces of the later Visionary Heads (2002, 184).[2]<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blake\u2019s first biographer Benjamin Heath Malkin notes that Blake resented drawing from life and spoke of it \u2018as looking more like death\u2019 (quoted in Bentley 2004, 564). Many will agree that in Blake\u2019s sketches it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between the living and the dead, though there are some differences for knowledgeable viewers, for example it is the dead who float and disobey the laws of gravity in Blake\u2019s paintings. Blake was deeply interested in the relationship between life and death. For him, they weren\u2019t opposites; they were connected as two states of being. Blake is known to have talked to his \u2018dead\u2019, younger brother Robert all his life. He never forgot the dead; the dead were never far away. To console William Hayley, who had lost his son Thomas Alphonso at the age of 19, Blake wrote a letter of condolence (6 May 1800), telling the distraught father about the afterlife: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am very sorry for your immense loss [\u2026] I know that our deceased friends are more really with us than when they were apparent to our mortal part. Thirteen years ago. I lost a brother & with his spirit I converse daily & hourly in the Spirit [\u2026] Forgive me for expressing to you my Enthusiasm which I wish all to partake of Since it is to me a Source of Immortal Joy even in this world by it I am the companion of Angels. (E705) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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John Linnell, ‘The Man Who Taught Blake Painting in his Dreams’ (after William Blake), Tate<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Maybe it was less about seeing than talking to the dead for Blake. When in Felpham, a little village on the south coast, and working for William Hayley, to escape from the mundane drudgery, Blake went to the shore to talk with the dead from lives past: \u2018Here he forgot the present moment and lived in the past; he conceived, verily, that he had loved in other days, and had formed friendships with Homer and Moses; with Pindar and Virgil; with Dante and Milton.\u2019 (BR2 640)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Often associated with Blake\u2019s Visionary Heads and dating from around the same time is Blake\u2019s \u2018A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet\u2019 (c.1819-20), another drawing in the Tate Collection. It is also referred to as \u2018Elisha in the Chamber on the Wall\u2019 (Heppner 1991-92). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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William Blake, ‘A Vision: The Inspiration of the Poet (Elisha in the Chamber on the Wall’), Tate<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In Butlin, the image is listed among the Visionary Heads and just after \u2018The Man Who Taught Blake Drawing in His Dreams\u2019, although style and spatial organisation of this drawing are completely different (1981, #756). Heppner\u2019s motivation for suggesting a new title, moves the image closer to the Visionary Heads. Heppner, associating the scene with 2 Kings and the story of Elisha and the woman of Shunem, argues that the image represents the setting in which Elisha prophecies that the woman will bear a son. This story about a miracle, within the reach of an Old Testament Prophet, already contains the kernel for another miracle; this son will die, and Elisha will resurrect him from the dead. Blake\u2019s juxtaposition of life and death, through a story from the Bible, is also captured in the design as this chamber looks like a tabernacle, which is a secure box designed to hold consecrated bread from the Eucharist, in a Catholic Church. The consecrated bread is believed to contain the real presence of Christ and the fact that the tabernacle contains the consecrated element is indicated by a perpetually burning candle, often suspended above the tabernacle. The drawing was given by Catherine Blake to Frederick Tatham who also owned a head which could be Christ (Butlin 1981, #758). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Blake died in 1827 he was cheerful. He had been poorly for some time; his health was failing and we could say that he had accepted the inevitable. I think that Blake\u2019s death is consistent with his life. There is something trusting, if not child-like, in the description of the final hours as reported in Gilchrist\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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William Blake, ‘The Ghost of a Flea’, Tate<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n


Sibylle Erle<\/strong>, <\/strong>FRSA, FHEA, <\/strong>is <\/strong>Reader in English Literature at Bishop Grosseteste University in Lincoln. She is the author of Blake, Lavater and Physiognomy<\/em> (Legenda, 2010) and chapters and articles on Blake, Fuseli, Lavater, Tennyson, Ludwig Meidner and Frankenstein<\/em>. She co-curated with Philippa Simpson the display \u2018Blake and Physiognomy\u2019 (2010-11) at Tate Britain, co-edited with Laurie Garrison (and contributed to) the special issue Science, Technology and the Senses <\/em>(RaVoN, 2008) and co-edited with Laurie Garrison (general editor), Verity Hunt, Phoebe Putnam and Peter West Panoramas, 1787-1900: Texts and Contexts<\/em>, 5 vols (Pickering & Chatto, 2012). She co-edited with Morton D. Paley The Reception of William Blake in Europe <\/em>(Bloomsbury, 2019) and with Helen Hendry Monsters: Interdisciplinary Explorations in Monstrosity <\/em>(special collection for Humanities & Social Sciences Communications<\/em>, 2019-2020). Apart from reception, her current research projects are on monsters and death (Academic and Creative Reponses to Death and Dying: How do we tell the Children?) as well as conceptualisations of \u2018character\u2019 in the Romantic period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[1]<\/sup><\/a> Blake\u2019s Visionary Heads have been discarded as an example of eccentric or explained as a practical joke (Keynes 1971; Bindman 1977; Butlin 1981). With regard to influence, the drawings are testimony for Blake\u2019s awareness of European art. Bentley (2009), moreover, identified The Newgate Calendar <\/em>and Celebrated Trials <\/em>as sources for the portraits of the murderesses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

[2]<\/sup><\/a> Gilchrist, who thought of the drawings as moral statements, noted that it was easy to tell the bad from the good ([1907] 1998, 273).  Anne Mellor (1978) read Blake\u2019s Visionary Heads through the artistic and pseudo-scientific practices of physiognomy (Lavater) and phrenology (Spurzheim) and raised awareness of \u2018The Man Who Taught Blake Painting in his Dreams\u2019. Tom Hayes (2004) discusses this Visionary Head and Portrait of William Blake <\/em>(c.1802-03) as self-searching, androgynous self-portraits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bibliography<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bentley, G.E., Jr., \u2018Blake\u2019s Murderesses: Visionary Heads of Wickedness.\u2019 Huntington Library Quarterly<\/em>, 72.1 (2009): 69-105.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—, Blake Records<\/em>, second edition (New Haven and London: Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art by Yale University Press, 2004). Abbreviated to BR2. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

—, \u2018Blake\u2019s Visionary Heads: Lost Drawings and a Lost Book.\u2019 In Tim Fulford (ed.), Romanticism and Millenarianism<\/em>(New York: Palgrave, 2002), pp. 183-206.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bindman, David, Blake as an Artist <\/em>(Oxford: Phaidon 2977).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Butlin, Martin, The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake<\/em>. 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press 1988).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Curry, Patrick, A Confusion of Prophets: Victorian and Edwardian Astrology <\/em>(London: Collins & Brown 1992).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erle, Sibylle, \u2018From Vampire to Apollo: William Blake\u2019s Ghosts of the Flea c. 1819-1820.\u2019 In Bruder, Helen, P., Connolly, Tristanne (eds.), Beastly Blake, Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature<\/em> (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 225-252.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gilchrist, Alexander, The Life of William Blake edited and with an Introduction by W. Graham Robertson <\/em>(New York: Dover [1907] 1998).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Heppner, Christopher, \u2018The Chamber of Prophecy: Blake\u2019s \u201cA Vision\u201d (Butlin #756) Interpreted.\u2019 Blake\/An Illustrated Quarterly<\/em>, 25.3 (Winter 1991-92), pp. 127-31.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hayes, Tom, \u2018William Blake’s Androgynous Ego-Ideal.\u2019 ELH<\/em>, 71.1 (Spring 2004), pp. 141-165.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keynes, Geoffrey. 1971. \u2018Bake\u2019s Visionary Heads and The Ghost of a Flea.\u2019 In Blake Studies, Essays on his Life and Work <\/em>(Oxford: Clarendon Press), pp. 130-136.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mellor, Anne, \u2018Physiognomy, Phrenology, and Blake’s Visionary Heads.\u2019 In Robert Essick and Donald Ross Pearce (eds.), Blake in His Time<\/em> (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1978), pp. 53-74.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story, Alfred T., James Holmes and John Varley <\/em>(London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1894).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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