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vast black masses of space and with a pair of golden compasses gives measure and number to infinity.[1]
Splendid in colour are also many of Blake's "frescoes". Blake indicated with this name a particular process which in its details is as yet not known to us, but which mainly consisted in painting on a basis of plaster and carpenter's lime. A process partly already used by Cennino Cennini in 1437 and which George Cumberland[2] mentions in his "Thoughts on Outline". In all probability Blake, who was an intimate friend of Cumberland had his knowledge of this process from him, though he himself professes that his dead brother Robert in a dream advised him a particular mixture of water colours, and that further the Greek artist Appelles, viz. his spirit, had been his teacher in colouring. One of the most beautiful frescoes is the Procession to mount Calvary, a symphony of colours of an exquisite tenderness and great satiated mellowness.[3] Very beautiful and executed with infinite care and patience are the accessories in Blake's drawings and water colours; everywhere in his illustrations of the Prophetic Books, in his engravings of the Book of Job or of Young's Night Thoughts we find marginal drawings and small interspersed symbolical paintings, which are perfect miniatures. Generally these sketches are of a decorative character consisting of animals: serpents, spiders, and fishes; often also sprigs of green with a great tenderness of outline are used, and after Blake's stay in Felpham[4], we find occasionally small landscapes introduced in his paintings, a low horizon, a winding path, a
- ↑ Blake took the image from Milton's Paradise Lost VII, 225 where we find the following lines:
"He took the golden compasses, prepared
In God's eternal store, to circumscribe
This Universe, and all created things." - ↑ George Cumberland was a contemporary of Blake, a native of Bristol. Blake writes to him "I study your outlines as usual, just as if they were antique". (26th Aug. 1799).
- ↑ National Gallery London.
- ↑ Blake spent three years of his life 1800—1803 on the sea coast in Sussex, in the village of Felpham.
