Collections and Critiques

It was an everyday matter for William Blake to converse with the ghost of a flea or Milton's apparition, and his works are clearly those of a man who saw "A world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower." The subject matter of most of the paintings in the present exhibit, the Book of Job and the Divine Comedy, completely suit the artist's mystical nature; only such a man could tear from the delicate medium of watercolors all the horror and ecstasy of Job's sufferings and Dante's revelation.

Blake's power reaches its greatest height when he paints violent confluent; and the eternal struggle of good and evil, the major theme of both works, provides him with a wonderful opportunity for an objectification of his most intense mystical passions. The idea of a series of paintings allows Blake to produce a sort of drama with his brush, a drama whose conflict ends in a religious purgation of evil. The resolution is also joyous and lively, for in the last of the Job series the harps and horns are taken down from the trees, and the books are thrown aside.

The exception bears out the theme fully in its dynamic quality, beauty of composition, and use of expressive color. "Then the Lord answered Job out the Whirlwind" provides an example. Beneath the figure of God, the bodies of Job's friends bend, and their backs and the long, curved lines of the whirlwind form a rhythm of line which focuses the eye on the divine figure. His outstretched arms and stern face at once accuse and protect. The deep blue of the sky highlights the figures and at the same time expresses the mystery and fearfulness of heaven, while the whirling lines intensify the movement. But though the colors are forceful and appropriate, it is Blake's drawing that gives to the paintings a supernatural greatness.

At times, as in "Simon Prophesying Over the infant Christ," the composition seems artificial and the colors weak. The composition of all the works is contrived, but Blake usually uses his contemporary conventions to produce a heightened effect, and only seldom does he fail. Generally the movement flows upward and inward toward the center, where often a great figure of good or evil protects or destroys. Sometimes the composition is unconventional, as in "Lucia Carrying Dante in his Sleep," where the strange, vivid seen, the striking composition, and the ennobled character of the figures make one realize that William Blake was a great, great man.