REMINISCENCES OF BLAKE
Lamb was delighted with the Catalogue, especially with the description of a painting afterwards engraved, & connected with wh. is an anecdote that unexplained wd. reflect discredit on a most amiable & excellent man, but wh. Flaxman considered to have been the wilful act of Stod[d]art. It was after the friends of Blake had circulated a subscription paper for an engraving of his Canterbury Pilgrims that Stod[d]art was made a party to an engraving of a painting of the same subject by himself Stoddart's work is well-known: Blake's is known by very few. Lamb preferred it greatly to Stoddart's & declared that Blake's description was the finest criticism he had ever read of Chaucer's poem.
In this Catalogue, Blake writes of himself in the most outrageous language, says "This artist defies all competition in colouring," that none can beat him, for none can beat the Holy Ghost; that he & Raphael & Michael Angelo were under the divine influence, while Corregio & Titian worshipped a lascivious & therefore cruel devil, Rubens a proud devil &c. He declared, speaking of colour, Titian's men to be of leather & his women of chalk, & ascribed his own perfection in colouring to the advantage he enjoyed in seeing daily the primitive men walking in their native nakedness in the mountains of Wales.—There were about 30 oil paintings, the colouring excessively dark & high, the veins black & the colour of the primitive men very like that of the red Indians. In his estimation they wd. probably be the primitive men. Many of his designs were unconscious imitations. This appears also in his published works,—the designs to Blair's Grave, wh. Fuseli & Schiavonetti highly extolled, & in his designs to illustrate Job published after his death for the benefit of his widow.
23.2.52.
To this Catalogue & to the printed poems, the small pamphlet wh. appeared in 1783, the edition put forth by
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