User:Lithoderm/Blake's Illustrations of Milton


 * This article is about Blake's illustrations of the poetry of John Milton. For Blake's prophetic book see Milton: a Poem.

William Blake's illustrations of the poetry of John Milton grew from his deep involvement with Milton's writing and his conception of Milton as a prophet. They date from all periods of his career, from early sketches in his notebook (1780) to the Illustrations to Paradise Regained (1816-1825). As in his illustrations to Job and his illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, Blake introduced his individual, and highly unconventional, interpretation of the text into his illustrations. Upon commissions from his patrons the Reverend Joseph Thomas, Thomas Butts, and John Linnell, he drew and painted in watercolor illustrations to Paradise Lost, "L'Allegro", "Il Penseroso", "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", "Comus" and "Paradise Regained".

Illustrations to Comus
The Thomas set

Blake received the commission for his first set of miltonic illustrations in the postscript of a letter from John Flaxman to William Hayley of 31 July 1801. In the following months the patron, Rev. Joseph Thomas of Epsom, visited Blake at Felpham. The price promised in the letter was 5 guineas, but there is no record of when the illustrations were delivered or what was paid at that time.

The set consists of eight watercolors, each measuring 21.5 x 18 cm. (further description here)

After the death of Reverend Thomas, this set, as well as his sets of illustrations to Paradise Lost and On the Morning of Christ's Nativity, apparently passed to his godson, and from there to his grandson. Afterward they passed through several other owners, being dispersed in 1885, reunited in 1891, and finally sold to Henry E. Huntington in 1916. The Thomas set of Comus illustrations has since remained in the collection of the Huntington Library.

The Butts set

No written record of Blake's commission for the second set of Comus illustrations is extant, but because of stylistic differences from the Thomas set they are usually dated to c. 1815.

The eight illustrations of the Butts set follows the same subjects as the earlier Thomas set, but are slightly smaller (15 x 12 cm) and are differently composed from their predecessors.

After the death of Thomas Butts this set passed to Thomas Butts Jr., who sold them in 1853. They passed through several other hands before in 1890 they were gifted to the Boston Museum (now the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston), where they are held today.

Illustrations to Paradise Lost
There are twelve plates in each of the Paradise Lost sets, one for each of the books in the poem. While some of these, such as Satan, Sin, and Death: Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell, depict specific scenes from the epic, others, such as Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve, are syntheses of several scenes. In the latter case Blake employed visual barriers to separate the elements from different scenes, such as the arc of the bower in Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve.

In Blake's mythology, Albion's fall from a divine androgyny to a sexual nature divides him into the Four Zoas, their spectres (representative of hypocritical morality), and their emanations (female halves). In the Paradise Lost Illustrations, Adam is analogous to the fallen Albion, Satan to Adam's Spectre, and Eve to Adam's emanation.