BLAKE’S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE BOOK OF JOB

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22413, 28 May 1938, Page 18

BLAKE’S ILLUSTRATIONS FOR THE BOOK OF JOB

New Zealand Set Reproduced' Illustrations of the Book of Job. By William Blake. Reproduced in Facsimile from the Original “New Zealand” Set. With a, note by Philip Holer. J, M. Dent and Sons Ltd. (21A net.) [Reviewed by lAN DONNELLY.]

In his note to these “Illustrations of the Book of Job,” Mr Philip Hofei*, the present owner of the originals* refers to their discovery in Auckland 10 years ago. “Their sudden appearance,” he says, “is proof that surprises are not impossible, even in advanced state of the Blake collector’s knowledge.” Anybody who. cares for art in a general way, and those interested in things associated with William Blake, one of the rare examples in England, of a man skilled in two arts, should find delight in this beautifully produced volume of facsimiles. The reproduction is perfect and the result of a special process. To me, however, fhe book means more than it can to most other people. In the first place it provides the final vindic tion of an intuitive and necessarily unskilled personal judgment. A Pupil of Blake’s Pupil Probably this set of illustrations would have been known to' the

ing that my intuition was not as reliable as I had imagined. Nevertheless, I felt that I was right, and in Auckland I had the pleasure of obtaining the support of Alexander Stuart Boyd, a noted Scottish artist, living in retirement in the city. Controversy concerning the genuineness of the paintings ran all ways; but it was obvious that the final arbiters in the matter would have to be English experts, the most eminent of whom were Mr Laurence Binyon, of the British Museum, and Dr. Geoffrey Keynes, a London surgeon, • one of the greatest Blake authorities.

The owners decided to send the collection to England. Mr Binyon and Dr. Keynes, whose interest in the discovery had been roused by cabled reports in London newspapers, were Waiting anxiously to re the paintings; and in September it was announced that both were satisfied that the paintings were “substantially” .the work of William Blake. I was glad to have that verdict. The commercial side of the story is brief. The fourth, and hitherto unknown, set of “Illustrations of the Book of Job” was sold at Sotheby’s auction room for £SOO

world now without my assistance; but I may claim that work of mine brought the- paintings to public notice at Auckland in March, 1923. These pictures had been in that city lor more than 70 years, unnoticed and unknown, in any public sense. I am satisfied, too, that the owners did not realise they possessed a missing link in Blake scholarship. At the time I was deeply immersed in Blake, so much so that I had left the ‘‘Songs of Innocence and Experience” far behind and had taken to the thornier highways running through the Prophetic Books. I studied what I could of Blake’s pointings and ; drawings, for I found that to some extent the paintings illumined obscurities in the verse. The interlocking of two arts was in Blake’s case more apparent than the link between the poetry and painting of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, with whom he may be. compared, Blake, however, was a greater poet than Rossetti, and although his painting often lacked comparable finish, it had much more character. In my wrestlings - with the Prophetic Books I soon discovered that to get any': sort of key to the miraculous darlings of Blake’s mind it was. necessary to know as much as one could of the whole man.

on December 17, 1928. The pictures were bought, I believe, by an American dealer; and they probably passed straight from him to the present owner,. „ . _ , The chief/importance of the Job illustrations is not that they faithfully illustrate the Biblical narrative. The story of Job’s trials is, in fact, a subsidiary matter. The engravings, for which the Auckland set of paintings was a ' kind of sketch preliminary, give to those who study intently, and with knowledgl, a key to Blake’s mind. In seme of . the pictures Blake himself is certainly the hero, not Job at all; and the afflictions striking Job are

This explanation is needed to show that to some extent my mind was prepared as well as it could be for what, followed. One day in March, 1928, I Was shown a small painting ‘ by thd Auckland City Librarian, Mr John Barr. He asked me what I thought of it and what I believed it to be. At once I decided it was the work of William Blake. It was too typical to be mistaken. Mr Barr told me that he knew where there were many more like it. The next day I called on the owners of the paintings, Mrs E. J. Hickson and her sister, Miss Martin, both daughters of Albin Martin, an English .artist who had arrived in Auckland in 1851. From the beginning I could see that it had to be explained how Blake’s work came into the possession of Albin Martin. The owners of the pictures helped me as far as they could., Among correspondence belonging to Albin Martin I found letters irom John Linnell, the English painter, who Had been one of Blake’s earliest patrons. He had, for one thing, specially commissioned the artist to do him a set of Job illustrations. It appeared after a little more investigation that Albin Martin had been a pupil of Linnell. There was a further letter from Alfred Bell, a famous stained-glass worker, who had written to Martin, thanking him for a. loan of the Blake drawings in his possession. This was evidence enough to show the probability- of Albin Martin’s owning genuine Blake paintings. He had r.h#> best possible chance of acquiring them through his kindly master, Linnell. There was also in that house in Ellerslie -another Blake drawing of “The Wise and Foolish Virgins.” Three Sets Known

Iri-1928, so -far s.z Blake scholars knew, there were three sets , of “Illustrations of the Book of Job” in existence. The first series was executed for Blake’s patron, Thomas Butts; the. second, less carefully done, was for John Linnell; and the third, also presented to Linnell, had been drawn and touched with water colour to give an idea how the commissioned engravings might look. With limited research facilities at hand, it seemed fair to assume that the set in Auckland must have been one of those executed for Linnell. That, at any rate,. was the statement I made in an article written about the discovery. ' However, a few' days later, a rival newspaper was able to recount for the whereabouts of the Butts set and the two done' for Linnell. Doubt was then east upon the authenticity of the pictures, the general impression be-

symbolic of the doubts and trials confronting the artist. There is, of course, a private, personal element in practically every work done by Blake, whether in poetry or in painting. This is the reason why he is specially fascinating to those who venture past the few simple lyrics such as “Tiger, tiger burning bright.” It should be mentioned, however, that there is dark significance even in these superficially childish poem£. The Crowning Achievement

The Job illustrations may be t 'ken as the crown of Blake’s work. The subject was one which held His interest for many years and he concentrated on it much more than he did on anything else. Osbert Burdett, in his life of Blake, published in the new English Men of Letters scries, writes of the Job designs as follows:

Of the designs r themselves, little need now be said. Everyone knows them. Are there any greater illustrations to be found? They are Blake's most ambitious, most unchallengable, series. His' inspiration was never jicher, and his execution never more consistently maintained.

Of the Auckland series there is ncl much to be said beyond what is noted by Mr Hofer. It is evident enough that some of the drawings were coloured by another hand than Blake’s. 'He did not favour exuberant colouring himself, and who his partner in the work was nobody can now with certainty declare. I feel that the collaborator was probably his patient wife Catherine. Mr Hofer’s personal opinion is that Blake carried out completely both the drawing and colouring of eight of the designs in this senes; Five of the pictures, he thinks, are open to suspicion; but, as he says himself, this is merely a matter of opinion. The only point upon which one can be reasonably 1 emphatic is that any work in which Blake had a hand is instantly recognisable.

The house of Dent has done much

to help the Blake student, having published facsimile editions of three of the Prophetic Books in addition t„ several particularly useful studies by Joseph Wick steed and Max Plowman. The “Illustrations of the Book of Job,” not likely to be, particularly remunerative to the publishers, is a work for which many people should be grateful. The private reason why it means so much to me has already been explained. I thought pf the originals of those pictures, among other things, when ■I stood in Bunhill Fields at William Blake’s grave. They tell us much about the man whose noble dust lies there; -