Page:William Blake in his relation to Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1911).djvu/45

— 45 — and misdrawings, touch us more even than any amount of capable and accomplished works dealing with imaginative themes, but lacking imagination. We find in these works a great preference for the Gothic style; Blake, in 1773, when an apprentice to Basire, the engraver, had been sent to make drawings in WestministerWestminster [sic] Abbey. For five years he was occupied in copying the monuments of the Abbey, and his love for the Gothic style never left him during all his life. "Gothic" he would say "is living form". Nowhere he has given more perfect expression olof [sic] his love for it than in his Illustrations of the Book of Job. )

Also he owed much to the formation of his style to Michael Angelo, but his knowledge of the master was derived from copies and prints, the only material available, which exaggerated the muscular development. (It was not until photographs of the Sistine frescos were available for study that Michael Angelo became truly known). Hence we find exaggerated muscular human figures in Blake's works, especially in his illustrations to the Prophetic Books, his male figures above all suffer from this fault. In his females is notable a graceful sweeping curve of the back-line, which together with the large eyes and oval faces gives these figures a peculiar charm and a great tenderness of expression. His innumerable floating angelic figures can hardly be surpassed by any artist as to their immaterial, heavenly aspect.

Remarkable is also Blake's colouring, which is of an extraordinary great brilliancy and transparency. Wonderful in colouring is e.g. Blake's representation of Jehovah which we find on the title page of the Book of Europe. Jehovah is represented here as an old man, the personification of the rigid rational laws, the creator of bodily existence, in accordance with the contents of the Book. From a fiery red sun he bends himself down in the