 Good evening and welcome from Bedford Square and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for the second in a series of talks by authors of books recently published by the Paul Mellon Centre. I'm Martin Myrone, convener of the British Art Network based here at the Paul Mellon Centre, and I'm pleased to be the chair this evening for presentations and conversation around two recent PMC publications. Henrietta McBurney's Illuminating Natural History and Joseph Fiskomi's William Blake's Printed Paintings, which you can see behind me here, hopefully. The two authors have been invited to talk for about 20 minutes each about their books, sharing something about the genesis of their project, their aims and ambitions. We will then have some time for conversation, prompted by questions that we hope you, the audience, will submit. This evening's event is fully online and I'm sure you are all familiar with the webinar format, but just to be sure, we've got a housekeeping slide. She's hopefully coming up. Yeah, you should enter your questions for the speakers using the Q&A function at the bottom of your screen. You should see it in the menu at the bottom. I will then be able to pick up questions and relay them during the discussion section at the end. The chat function will remain open, but shouldn't be used for questions to the speakers primarily. It's a kind of chat, but for questions that you want put to the speakers, use the Q&A function. The session will be recorded and made available to the public, and do note that closed captioning is available. Click the CC button again at the menu at the bottom to enable captions. But now straight on to our first speaker. Philip Burney is a freelance curator and art historian whose interests include natural history illustration, material culture, the history of collections and portraiture. Henrietta was formerly curator in the Royal Library Windsor Castle, and has also held curatorial roles at Eaton College, the Garrett Club, Newton College, Cambridge. Publications include studies on the botanical illustrations of Alexander Marshall, found in the only known flower book painted by an English artist in the 17th century, and the Natural History Drawings for the Paper Museum, compiled by the 17th century Roman collector Casciano del Pozzo. Henrietta's interests in the intersection of art and science are very much apparent in her most recent publication, illuminating natural history, the art and science of Mark Catesby, which she will be discussing this evening under the title Catesby's Artistry. Henrietta. Thank you, Martin. And we're seeing that. Well, thanks very much, Henrietta. Good. Well, thank you very much to Martin and my full melon center colleagues. In my book on Mark Catesby, I include a chapter on Catesby as artist. And I want to give a particular inflection to the word artist by using the term artistry, by which I mean the craftsmanship of Catesby's art, the technicalities and techniques or processes by which he made the illustrations of the natural world. Joseph Fiskomi uses several words or phrases to describe Blake's illustrations that could equally be used of Catesby's. Blake's energy and creativity, imagination and restlessness and improvisation. I would like to add that both illustrators used experimental techniques and that both were highly individual color was also a significant element of their work as designers and printmakers. That's the concept of Catesby's Artistry under three heads. Catesby as designer, Catesby as printmaker. And in the last section, which I've called Catesby as borrower, I want to reflect on the idea of copying and reusing. Catesby was highly esteemed by his contemporaries for his watercolors of plants and animals. He left several statements about his work. I was not bread a painter. I hope some faults in perspective and other niceties may be more readily excused. From this we learn that Catesby was a gentleman amateur. In other words, he had no professional training. I was not bread a painter. Rather, he taught himself in the usual way of the time from artists manuals and from copying prints and other artists work. His watercolors and drawings were made yet mainly during his two expeditions to America to Virginia between 1712 and 1719 and to South Carolina and the Bahama Islands between 1722 and 1726. His watercolors were used as models for his natural history of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands. A monumental work published by subscription in 11 parts between 1729 and 1747. When I first encountered Catesby's original watercolors in the 1980s in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, they were mounted into a unique copy of his book. It had been bought by George III in 1768, but instead of the usual two volumes, there were three, and instead of the usual hand-colored etched plates, the copy contained Catesby's and other artists' original drawings and watercolors. Because there were more drawings than etched plates, they had spread out of two into three volumes. A few years after I first saw them, the drawings were lifted from the volumes for their long-term preservation. The original drawing sheets were then mounted and housed in boxes in the air-conditioned print of Windsor. This was the room designed by Prince Albert, specifically to house the royal collection of prints and drawings. In the process of lifting the drawings, we discovered a significant number of other drawings on the backs of the sheets, what we call the verses. In effect, Catesby's discarded drawings, they had been hidden for view for almost two and a half centuries. In the 18th century, paper was expensive, so it was usual for craftsmen to use both sides of the sheet. These abandoned drawings consisted mainly of preliminary sketches or field studies. As you can imagine, uncovering them was an exciting moment. It provided fascinating glimpse into the processes involved in Catesby making his finished watercolors. It also became a piece of detective work to try and match up the sketches with the finished drawings. It never occurred to me at this point that I was beginning on a piece of research that would one day turn into a book. One of the drawings we found were simple pen and ink outlines or compositional sketches such as these. Some sketches and others had details finished in watercolors such as these. Some sketches presented puzzles. The faint outline, sorry, here we are. The strange long be a long necked bird seem rather like a doodle or caricature, but could it perhaps have been a first idea for Catesby's great new heron. The faint outline of a fox on another sheet puzzled me, as there was no equivalent finished drawing in Catesby's book. Other sketches were easy to match up with finished drawings. The outline of the lizard, drawn very lightly and graphite to the pen and ink drawing of the plant, later appears fully worked out in the finished watercolour on the right. Catesby not only added outlines of drawings to other drawings, he also cut up sheets and collage elements onto different sheets. Here he is clearly experimenting with his composition. The snake was cut out of another sheet and pasted over the corner of this plant drawing. In the print it's shown more convincingly curled up behind the plant stalk. Catesby believed that colour was essential to recording nature. He wrote, the illuminating of natural history is so important to a perfect understanding of it that I may have a clearer idea maybe conceived from the figures of animals and plants in their proper colours from the most exact description without them. The verb illuminating functions on several levels. On the level of artistry it means painting very exactly in the tradition of illuminated manuscripts. But surely Catesby also intended it to mean that through art he was shining a light on or revealing the natural world. What is clear from his statement is that his art was in the service of natural history. He created his images to perfect an understanding of the natural world. In other words he came to art as an actualist. Painting equipment was rather more cumbersome in Catesby's day, handy watercolour boxes with cakes of pigment meaning only water to dye them didn't exist. Artists bought raw or ready ground pigments from posicrets and colour colour shops. These had to be mixed on the spot with a medium such as gum arabic and then diluted with water. Muscle or oyster shells were often used as mixing palettes as you can see in this lady painting. Catesby in common with other artists made some of his own colours especially when they were expensive to buy. As was common the purple red pigment made from cochineal insects. Catesby describes gathering these vehicles off the prickly pear cactus and the boreus and lessee process. He discovered that it was not always easy to capture and reproduce the colours of nature. Fishes had to be painted quickly once out of water before they faded. In this case of the hogfish I think we can agree he was rather successful. Other groups of animals such as amphibia, reptiles, crustacea and insects were easier especially if they could be preserved without fading or kept in captivity and studied up close. In these details you can see Catesby hand making went in different ways with different brush tricks to describe a range of textiles and markings of these animals. As a naturalist in the field Catesby observed the interaction and interdependence of plants and animals. As an artist he used colour as well as shape and form to underline what we would now call environmental or ecological connections. He saw the Baltimore Oriole nesting in the tulip tree. The connection between bird and tree is mirrored in the shared colours and also in the shape of the bird's breast and the lower part of the flower patterns. In the right hand composition the oval fruit and its mixture of green, pink and yellow colours are likewise reflected in the breast of the bird. As a designer Catesby was never static. He was restless in his search for connections and juxtapositions. When Catesby returned from his travels in America in 1726 he brought with him between two and three hundred watercolours. These designs were the preparatory stage for the printed illustrations in his book. He planned to have them engraved on the continent where the best engravers were working but lack of funds for such an expensive procedure meant he had to become his own creator. Not surprisingly he chose to etch rather than engrave his drawings. The technique of etching using a needle to draw the design through a wax layer directly onto the copper plate. The lines of which were then bitten by acid were similar to groin whereas engraving using a burin demanded greater time and expertise. Catesby now the technique of etching from the foremost etcher of the day the French artist Joseph Groupie. He said that it was under his kind of vice and instructions that I undertook and was initiated in the way of etching myself. Groupie made his name by copying the works of old masters and with a series of etched landscapes made after other artists paintings. His prints influenced by the romantic landscapes of Salvador Rosa were known for their freedom and spirit. While the etching technique was simple compared to engraving it nonetheless involved elaborate stages and much equipment as shown in this view of an etcher and engraver studio. Among the many activities going on here you can see several different methods for using acid by the etch lines into the copper plate, pouring it over the plate and immersing the plate in an acid bath. The experience to master the techniques for example the length of time to leave the etch copper plate in the acid bath to produce the exact quality of lightness or darkness of the line required. It's worth noting that the naturalist Alexander Wilson gave up, gave up trying to etch his own drawings after one attempt and handed the task on to a professional. By contrast, Catesby mastered the different skills and became a fluid texture. The landscape on the left demonstrates four different levels of fighting with the faintest lines for the furthest background and the darkest for the vegetation in the near foreground. The details in these two etchings of Catesby's on the right show him applying these rules to show the ship our distance on the rock so that it fades into the background. Catesby wrote that he chose to etch not in a graver like manner, but choosing rather to admit the method of cross hatching and to follow the humour of the feathers, which is more laborious and I hope has proved more to the purpose. While Goofy had taught Catesby the technical requirements section, Goofy himself did not produce natural history illustrations. Instead, Catesby looked to the work of a 17th century artist Francis Barlow to learn how to convey the texture of plumage and fur in a naturalistic way. Barlow had produced a well-known series of etched illustrations of animals for his edition of Esauce Fables in 1667. His book became a model for professional as well as amateur artists and was to run to four editions. Barlow was not acknowledged by Catesby in his book but he used to influence his work in a number of ways as we will see shortly. The un-coloured print of the Little Isle is a clear example of what Catesby described as the humour of the feathers. In the print of the summer duck, the different techniques of plumage are enhanced by the colouring. However, there was always a danger that colourists might obscure the etch lines as has happened in the black and white striped hair in this print. In these two etchings, Catesby conveys in a remarkable way the difference between the soft fur of the flying squirrel and the wiry hair of the skunk. The etching stage for Catesby was not simply a reproductive process, it provided a further stage to continue working on the narrative details of his illustrations. In these two plates, he adds a whole layer of information to his primary drawings, a tumbled-on barn structure for the purple martin and the whole dug by the turtle-delayed eggs. These are examples of Catesby's inventiveness in his etchings, a cartouche from that with its elements ingeniously made out of seashells and coral. At the headpiece to his account of Carolina and the Bahama Islands, constructed out of Native American ethnographic art, facts including weapons, cooking utensils, a smoking pipe and a string of beads. Although he never signed his drawings, Catesby added monograms to many of his etchings. These are further examples of his imaginative invention. His entwined initials, MC, become part of the organic design of many of his prints. Here we have dangling spiders, the prayer of the fish, and flourishes on the end of torn-off stems and coral. Catesby's expressive calligraphic line may have been developed from his use of writing manuals such as this one above. The 18th century was a period characterised by borrowing, adapting and repurposing, not just in visual art and architecture, but notably for example in music. Catesby's close contemporaries handled whom he may have met through Goopy and Bach and Telemann are well-known examples of composers who repurposed other composers' work as well as their own. In a similar way, Catesby borrowed from other artists' work, his re-use of other artistic sources, the striking and even on occasion surprising. While sometimes his borrowings may have been unconscious, at other times he interweave parts of other artists' work into his own designs. Sometimes he used their work wholesale. Catesby was familiar not only with other artists' engraved illustrations but also with original natural history drawings. After his return from America, he consulted the albums of coloured natural history drawings or books of miniature that Sir Hans Sloane was collecting for his museum. Trying to connect some of the sketches on the versos of Catesby's sheets with finished drawings took me to the British Museum where Sloane's drawing albums are kept. This for me was like discovering a treasure trove of images, just as it must have been for Catesby almost 300 years ago. One moment of revelation was finding the origin of the elusive fox. Here is Catesby's prototype by an unidentified artist in an album entitled Proqueductors. Catesby found several models from this album. Some of these were animals he had not been able to get close to in the wild. Sometimes some he appears to have considered better points on his own and some were of animals he may not have seen at all. The white fox was not included in his book but the grey fox was. In this instance Catesby seemed to have copied rather than praised his model as you can see by the different shape of the tail as he adapted the colouring to suit his purpose. In his final composition he also combines the illustrations of the fox with the Indian pink, somewhat out of scale. Sloane's quadrupeds volume included this drawing of an American bison by the Dutch artist Everard Kik. Catesby recorded in his description of the bison that, having then by me only a sketch of the animal which I thought not sufficient to make a true figure from, I have since been enabled to exhibit a perfect mix of this awful creature. It was Kik's drawing that supplied the perfect bite. He had seen the bison in the wild feeding off the locust tree and here he experiments with making a connection between the animal and its food source by ingeniously arranging the stem of the tree as if to share the bison. Catesby encountered many rattlesnakes when he was in America, dead and alive, unless surely have made drawings of them. However rather than use one of his own coins he chose to copy, possibly even trace, this watercolour by the 17th century French court artist Nicolas Robert. In his version he adds a few of his own details to the borrowed image very likely made from his own observations. The bang, the rattle seen from above and in cross section, and here they are again in his etching. So we have seen that boring could mean copying wholesale or even tracing. At other times it involved repurposing other artists work in different ways. He admitted that he had some difficulties with perspective and other niceties. Again he turned to Francis Barlow's Esau's fables which this time provided him with models for illustrating birds in life by poses. The pose of Catesby's bald-headed eagle swooping to catch a fish robbed by the osprey is taken from Barlow's hawk. And the osprey itself seems to be a very close copy if not tracing from Barlow's kite and frog and mouse illustration. For his image of his red-winged starling Catesby adapted the same swooping pose of the hawk again. It seems that Catesby couldn't resist the urge to keep adding new elements to his plates. Still boring from Barlow enlivened his compositions with delightful miniature details taken from several of Esau's illustrations. A miniature toad found crouching in the corner of Esau's the ox toad reappears hiding amongst the weeds in the background for his brown bitten. Starfish and some shells scattered by the by the beach dolphin are used are scattered on the shoreline of his flamingo. I am with an example of Catesby reusing another artist's work Hulse. We have seen several examples of him repurposing drawings and prints by other artists and integrating them with elements of his own compositions to create new and original works. However, with this drawing of the cacao tree by the French artist Obrier, he etched his model practically unaltered. Not only that, but he signed his print prominently from Wutterley with his monogram hanging from a leaf. This raises several questions. Is Catesby here suggesting that in the very act of making a print out of the drawing, he is creating an original work of art? If so, what does the concept of originality mean to him? I mentioned earlier that he never signed his drawings, unlike some contemporary natural history artists such as his friends Eric and Edwards. And apart from his acknowledging Joseph Goopy as his ancient teacher, Catesby names no other artists in his book. Of course, we must remember that in his day, the concepts of status, identity and ownership or intellectual property were at a very different point of development. Thanks largely to Hogarth, the Engravers Copyright Act was passed in 1735, while Catesby was halfway through his book. But this was made specifically in respect of the designers of engravings rather than drawings or paintings. These perhaps are some thoughts for consideration later. Meanwhile, I'll end with Catesby's own comment about his art in which he situates it in the wider context in which he made it. However, accurately, human art may be exercised in the representation of animals and plants. It falls far short of that inimitable perfection so visible in nature itself. Thank you. Thank you so much and I don't know if you had a chance to look in the chat already lots of comments coming through about what a fantastic range of images you're showing and so much of interest that you have to say and just to stress that the book itself is just kind of sumptuous with these extraordinary and striking images. So, thank you so much will return to some of these thoughts and questions that you're putting out there in the discussion towards the end of this evening. If you do, please enter questions in the Q&A box, you can see some are coming through already, and we'll get through as many as we can. I'm sure there's a lot to talk about. And also, if you had a chance to look in the chat, because it's telling amongst other things of how we have a global audience tonight, I think there's around 150 people attending, and they are from all corners of the world from Florence and Montreal to Hamilton, but I think it's quite a spread really isn't it. I think some places are rainier than others looking at the messages there. And indeed, our second speaker this evening is in the US at the moment and is joining us from there Joseph Fiskomi is James G Keegan distinguished professor of English literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. And I think Joe you're in the office at the moment. So, welcome. He's the author of numerous important studies of William Blake and the romantic period, including the seminal Blake and the idea of the book published by Princeton in 1993 and more recently a substantial, very substantial essay on Blake's afterlife afterlife and the posthumous book of his paintings was illuminated books in Blake and illustrated quarterly 2019 is also the co editor and co creator with Robert Essek and Morris ease of the William Blake archive. I'm a hyper media digital database of Blake's poetry and art, and it's a really just an incredible resource which has transformed the field and even if you don't think you're interested in Blake. And just as a, this is a kind of an online resource and what it shows about the potential of the digital archive. This evening. Joe will be talking about his book. William Blake's printed paintings methods origins, meaning, which examines 12, Blake's large 12 large Philip Prince of 1795. His presentation is entitled illustrations or paintings. So, over to you, Joe. Thank you. Thank you for your kind words. I have two teenage daughters who remind me how little I know. So, it's nice to know that I know I used to know something. We'll see if I still do. I'm going to pull this over into a shared screen and see if all this works correctly. Let's see. Shared screen. Don't worry, it's a moment Joseph. And it worked earlier so yeah, it's just, here it is. Okay, now, let's see if we can share that. Really well, launch meeting. Is that are you seeing it. Yep, we're seeing it. I'm not. I'm seeing it on the wrong screen. That would be confusing. You can see it. But take your time if you want to switch screens. That's absolutely fine. Yes, you can see it. We're good. Okay. What I'm going to do is try to answer this question. These questions were key to my research. And I'm going to start by looking at a poem. Look for clues, actually, from the illuminated books. This is a poem by Blake. This is what the original looks like and we can see that in its translation into type. A lot of information is lost. We're looking at something completely different than the type that pull the type is a copy. The original provides so much more information. But what is this that we're looking at. I know it's a print, but contemporary viewer would not. There's no sign here that this is a print. You get that sign when you turn the page or you actually see the original. And it's misregistered and you say okay well this is some kind of print. There's a registration involved. And then we know that it's a print because we know there's other copies, early copies, later copies. But in none of these do we see signs of print, no plate marks, no evidence of metal tools. Indeed, what we're looking at is something calligraphic. We're looking at a brushmark with that's been etched with an etching needle to create white and black lines. We got that technique in here from wood engraving, a massive black etched with a graver or a needle and clearly here we have a quill. So what are we looking at and we're seeing something in here in the background. We can see that Blake can move from printing this, this image to creating a drawing that functions really as a printed manuscript that oxymoron because each each time he prints it. We see each one is unique Blake is has a printable matrix, but he doesn't adhere to the convention of the repeatable image at all. So he's really very informed there. And we can see here in this, these shallows that this is some kind of relief plate. And really you've played Blake is writing with an impervious liquid, liquid impervious to acid here's nitric acid. And so what we're doing is creating a printable design on a copper plate, and you can see that each time he prints it, he does something a little different to it so we know it's a relief plate. And then around 1794 he, he starts printing relief, more shallowly, really with with the intention of putting colors, this is already invented with the idea of color printing printing colors from both surfaces here you see color coming from the plateau. And you see he's defining form, not by line so much as plateaus and a cavity negative space a cavity within a mass. And here you see he's printing the color. Here, this is important we'll come back to what what we're seeing here between the articulated colors that are printed in the flat color of the paper. What I want to see is what goes on when you print colors from the shallows and with the relief simultaneously, and you can see what's happening. Every time you do that, you create this halo, along the edge of the relief line. And you can also see that color printing for Blake and anyone really is at least a two stage process you can transfer colors from a plate or any matrix to paper, but you then have to finish it in watercolors and you see that very clearly here. And here's our halo. Note the yellow. That's the paper. This is an attempt to finish he never did finish this. This is a second pull that means it's been pulled from this plate without replenishing the ink. And we see here in this test plate, the halo effect what's causing it. The dabbler or the brush or whatever you're using to apply the ink and color isn't picking up isn't getting at the sides of the relief lines. And so here in this book et al we said very clearly, one, this is one ink black, but it's creating that halo effect. Now we're doing this because I want to know what this monoprint is, is it a relief plate. It has all the telltale signs of a shallow relief outline. And this is, we're seeing it right here there's that yellow of the paper, we're seeing the halo, all along the relief line, and in the second poll, we see it again. And we know this is metal I knew it was metal because it has a plate marking this is very interesting play markers it's a on the versa of the plate. This is a metal plate. With an outline printed in shallow, a very low relief. This is its second poll. This is clearly not a third poll, it's a separate impression he cleaned the plate, and he printed it again. And when he printed it again, he made sure not to make those mistakes of the halo effect. Now, another clue from other illuminated book is here. This is going this way. Okay, no problem. First full second full, but this is not this this is so we're not looking at a relief line, and we're not looking at an edge line. We're looking at something that has been printed plan a graphically painted on the plate and printed in each time. It was painted anew, and there's something here that's important. We see these straight, these lines. And what we're looking at is the striated effect of Gesso on a millboard, like moves a metal to millboard. And you can cover that effect with the first poll because the colors thick, but it shows up in the second poll. And if you try getting a third poll you're getting a poor impression, but you're seeing the Gesso ground very clearly. And you can see from the test what I'm doing here. The the color looks thicker than it actually is because it's carrying that look of the three dimensional Gesso ground and the ground is here, the colors can go wherever they want. Now, what we have is metal. And we have striations. Then we have these two plates that have neither is any relief sign any sign of metal. But they have no sign of Gesso and they have no sign of relief. And what they do have is exact size they are the exact size of this one. And so the, we see Blake starting his experiments with this one, and realizing that he doesn't need to etch a low relief outline, he can draw directly on an unetched plate. Now these are unetched metal, and they're the exact same size as this, which means we saw that that plate mark, which was the Verso that one of these is probably the recto of this copper plate Blake did this all the time very unorthodox, the print to etch on both sides but he got away with it and really fetching. And when he went to the copper Smith to get to new plates with his new exciting project in mind of model printing earlier works. He bought two plates, maybe three, but I suspect he just bought two and he hedged his bet by edging the background. I mean the Verso of the first one. So here's the pattern of production we get one, a second impression. The second work is your alone but there's one missing. The pattern of production is when he prints for the first time the design he has to pulls at least. Whoops. When he does three pulls as in Satan this one's missing. We know he's printed to this is very bad third pull you see the leg here is missing. There's very little ink or color left and the fourth and fifth impressions. He tries to eat out three impressions. And here's where that takes him. There's very little color left here he's missing the head of the horse. He can't get third pools, and by the next time he doesn't try he just prints to returns to the one much later and he refinishes it in 1805 and makes really a different painting altogether. The same with never can answer. And then he redid this in 1805. This one's missing. This is clearly a second pull I think it's so flat there's no, there's not much color. Transferring here from the plate and the the bottom one is 1805. Again, the pattern of production is print one second pull. Now the second pull is not a copy. These are all originals. You can't say this is a copy of this. This is a second unique pull with its own variants. And when he comes back to it he cleans the plate, and he prints it a new and that's a separate pull. And you have the same pattern of production here. And here you don't have any third printing or third pool. These were the last two. These are mono prints. So we have three printings. That's second one, Elijah house of death tactic and later one. Now this is important to 1805. This is discovered by Martin but Lynn and his tape conservators. When they examine their copy of Newton, they found an 1804 watermark, which is proof that these are mono prints, and not monotypes amount of type is without a printable matrix. A model print is a unique impression from a printable matrix so we know he could return to it at any time and reprint it. Now the most important thing is here first nine designs are modeled on earlier work. That's the clue we need to answer our question. One, two, three, four. And here is Blake going to his own portfolio his own repository of designs, a watercolor, a sketch in the notebook and another sketch in notebook another wash drawing. He's going back to his own earlier works and looking for images to recreate in this really cool new process. He has small pity as its earlier model, and it had the second of the pity drawings as its model. We see the same. Going back to a little vignette in marriage. You can answer does the same marriage of heaven how notebook. You see what Blake is doing he's, he's not inventing yet for the medium he's using the medium to reinvent works already executed in other medium. None of which are illustrations of his prophecies they all they're in diverse media, executed at different times. This is the only preliminary to a month to a monoprint 1795 drawing of heck it. That's it. I mean that one was done for this new medium. These two do not have any design of any kind notebook or anywhere else. So he's really doing these interesting melodramatic domestic scenes for the medium itself. Now this is the most important earlier work. Elijah in the chariot of fire I mean that's what the iconography tells us this is. He, he amplifies that iconography when he recreates it as a monoprint, but in 1805 when he prepared eight model prints for Thomas butts. From the 1795 printing and to he printed for him in 1805 on that 1804 water paper. He wrote titles and pencil underneath the papers imperial size paper and he underneath it that title was hidden by a mat until Martin button, and his conservators once again in preparing one of his great exhibitions. Well, the title, and the title was God speaking to Adam what this is. You can call it what you want and Blake can change his mind about what it means, but he can't change the iconography no more than Humpty Dumpty can change the meaning of words. It's still Elijah. It still functions that way. But he, he repurposes it or he calls it God speaking to Adam. There's, there's no image in the Bible with God or Yahweh with horses, let alone a flaming chariot. But what happens with people reading these illustrations, as though they form a narrative, they assume that chariot of fire was God judging Adam in 1795. And it wasn't 1795 we can see clearly Blake still had Elijah in mind. He changes his mind, which he's allowed to do, but much later. So, assuming that he had a plan, like Anthony blunt and so many others do is to misunderstand the process. This white line we're looking at is the outline on the matrix that Blake has drawn, and he's painting within the lines. This is indicating where he's putting paint. And we can see very clearly what he's doing he's taking this drawing here, he's going to open this up. He opens it up in the secondary drawing that he's going to transfer. And then he's going to go over that graphite with pen and ink on millboard on, which is not going to print. And that's his first painting on the millboard so you can see he is, he is painting. These are to painting what the relief etchings are to manuscript and drawings he's using the same tools brushes and paint and the same performance. This is that paint printed it reticulates on the paper. And of course, it is blots and blurs until you come in and you organize it with outline. You have enough ink or color here, a thick water base color to pull another impression. And there's your second impression diminished, because there's that much less color. And again, you come in and you can bring it out. The, the colors now are too diminished to get a third pool. And so when Blake takes it prints it again he cleans the matrix and he paints it up anew, and you have a third impression, not a third poll. And so you can see what Blake is doing. He's blots and blurs a loaded brush, going into it and finding form and bringing it out. Some thought that this little print here was the trial proof and the beginning of the series the set the selection of prints of the group was this one pity. And no, it looks that way. This looks like a nice. The image here tells us this is probably how he worked, but that's not what the material evidence tells us we what this is telling us is this is resolved in this drawing. He solves it by bringing this down and enlarging the horse. Aesthetically, he solves the problems raised by this one. When he comes to this it's a shallow really fetching. And so this can't go. This can't go to pity, which is on millboard. It's clear to see it. This is a discrete event. This is a drawing in the portfolio. Remember this here. Well there we see it again right here. So we have a, we have a relief plate. This is a digital recreation of that relief plate, and it's a failed. This is a failed experiment. It works on the small scale of you know three and a half by five inches, but it doesn't work when it's enlarge. This is very discordant. They're articulated against the flat. And so if this were his first this were really a trial and not a failed or failed experiment but actually trial for the large color prints. I think he's acting in coherently, he would be working in metal with that plateau style of delineating form, and then go over here to Gesso and millboard, only to go back to. Relief, low relief etching, and then from there back to millboard so it's it doesn't make any sense. So here we have Blake in 1795 preparing for drawings pity. And he's going to create four small independent drawings and experiment, and these two were meant for that copper plate. But they were taken out, because he really liked what he was doing here printing planet colors planet graphically. And he decides to take those quarters that were designed for Newton Eliza and do a new illuminated book using the technique that a that Albion rose taught him. Please leave that queue and join the queue that becomes the large color prints. And this experiment is more successful in color printing, and it's teaching him something that you have to put color everywhere on the impression and he can use a very thin line. And that's what he's doing he's learned that all he needs is a thin line he does not to paint. He doesn't need that line to transfer it as outline is the outline he can re impose. I'm going to run through these two because this is very exciting. What this is what you read when you read the song of Los. What Blake had created. And this is done at the same time he's working in landscape format for the mono prints. And he use one copper plate and then another cop plate matching it, and he finishes the continental prophecies Africa and Asia. What are these. What role is it a panel. I've never seen anything like this. I've recreated them to see what what they would have been like if he printed them. But what he did when he printed me he's he's he masked half, half of the plate under the rolling press, so he could take a landscape and re convert it to page format portrait format, and then he added for model prints from millboard. So this is the most unorthodox illuminated book of all. It's a combination of metal and millboard and color printing, exactly the kind he's doing in the model prints. And you see. I'm going to stop there. And there's a few more if there's time later in our discussion that I can show if they pertinent to our discussion. Okay. Thank you so much for again such a rich presentation such fantastic imagery and actually in both presentations and reminded us in both books. I mean we really really asked to kind of look closely to think about questions of technique and can almost look at the grain of the paper and the grain of the image and in such a such a kind of demanding way, but in a way which is also incredibly kind of enjoyable and visually alluring as well so thank you both for your presentations. I've got questions and thoughts but there are questions lined up, but specific questions for both speakers there's also a few questions about whether this is being recorded and whether it'll be available down the line and I think confirm it will be later in the spring it'll be posted online. So keep an eye on the website and you can return to this this evening's presentations in the future, but I mean can I ask you both just to kind of start the conversation really about with Kate speed with Blake they're very different artists and you know different centuries they're working in very different contexts, but for both of them. They're turning to print. I mean do you have it just to kind of encapsulate what does print as a medium mean for these, these individuals why turn to print. Maybe, maybe it's more straightforward answer with a speed and then play. Yeah, and well I think after Joseph's presentation definitely simpler with Kate speed because he was using etching to reproduce his drawings. So it was definitely a reproductive reproductive process for him, although we have seen that it wasn't straightforward reproductive, partly because the him I think this is the crucial thing for him. The point was that the etching stage, partly because it was done by himself rather than being handed over to another artist, continued to be a creative stage. Yeah, he goes on creating until the very moment that he hands his, etched his copper plates over to the printer. And all these extra little details and so on carry on so you can hardly let go and then finally he submits it to the printer so what I want to reiterate is that both his painting, growing and painting stage, and his etching stage, his printing were almost sort of equated in terms of originality to use that loaded word, but but creativity was other artists might have had and as he originally hoped to do might have just simply handed over the drawings to a printer and then that was the end of what they were doing, but not so. I think that was very striking. I mean, you, I think one of the introducing a talk about craftsmanship, but also that is that kind of investment in print as a creative medium, which actually I kind of started to think about Blake rather unexpectedly at that point. Joe, do you like to know that's exactly right. I caught that in your book, and I outlined it this is sounds like Blake. He had that idea further, and because he can. He can take it as far as any printer ever has, because he is his own printer he has a rolling press, and he uses the rolling press as a tool. He's actually experimenting with his press on what he can do to create these very interesting visual effects with color coming off of copper coming off of millboard on the paper. He can be experimenting all the way to that point of the process, no other printmaker in his day was doing that they might hold on to it as long as they could until the publisher or the printer said hey we need that we got to go to press. But Blake could also Blake would have greatly I admired Gates gates bees ability to render the drawing as exactly in his detailed as he has Blake was a professional engraver when the assignment called for a detailed reproduction of another person's drawing whether it was his friend of his flax man or fuselage or or just for the publishers. He did that and he could do that and he took pride in doing that that was what the job call for, but when he's working on his own when he's inventing and executing executing an original print, he can take as many liberties as he wants, and he does approach the print medium as an artist that this is not a exact repeatable image he's not even tied to his own models or the image on the plate itself, he will take liberties, and he does so all his life when he returns to a print. He may reinterpret it, he may re burnish it. But it's not going to the impression is not going to look like the one he had printed much earlier, and that's a whole different mind that you don't see in other contemporary printmakers. So I'm going to start drawing there's a few questions lined up here start drawing on these questions and feeding them through to you. There's actually two questions which are related both for Henrietta. One is anonymous, which you're welcome to do of course. So why is it important to just be important in the history of natural history illustration, why is important in the history of natural history illustration, and actually I think it kind of links with this question from john Hinks about whether you know if Thomas Buick was familiar with Kate's and John says he thinks you can take some similarities. Interesting about Buick I haven't thought of that, and possibly yes something I will look into, but I have to admit I haven't explored that but it's quite possible. So why was he important. Well, I think he broke away from the idea of static static illustrations of, of natural history. He was still quite early on in the, in the process to which he's looking to borrow to try and get away from profile pros and pose. Sorry. He was struggling with the idea that he wanted to bring movement into his, his, his, his important. Evidently, for the interaction he shows I use the word ecological and environmental which of course were not concepts that were were used at the time, thought about in the time, but he was one he was a pioneer in the sense that he went into the fields and drew animals in interaction with plants. So this was a completely new thing, apart from the evidence model of Maria Cibela Mary and who did it very specifically with insects but Kate's been pride to show the plenitude of natural history in this way. So he was not an armchair naturalist or illustrator working from home, he went out in the field, and then he conveyed, tried to convey what he'd seen in the wild in the book. Thank you. There's a question here which I think was directed to her originally but I think I'll ask to both of you. There's a basic kind of factual question here, which is about what was the year the copyright law and engraving was instated. But I think out of that comes a kind of larger question about authorship and the kind of the right of a printmaker the right of a creator to kind of profit or benefit from the images that they create so one or better you can ask the straightforward question about when copyright law for engravings applied and then also think perhaps a little bit about how your artists relate to that question of copyright or authorship in the medium of print. Henrietta, you mentioned Hogarth's. I'm not sure how much effect it had in the first generation. I think that war today, we're still fighting over copyright. I had to deal with that in building the Blake archive. It was very difficult. It still is the copyright often is a contract law. It's not even a copyright because things are in public domain now, but in the 18th century is a radical idea that I own the rights of my image and you don't and you have to pay me something if you reproduce it. It gets very complicated actually in the 19th century. When you begin to have photo mechanical reproductions and people. It's a new laws are passed basically for wealthy owners to protect valuable property. That was what we see in the 1870s and onward. But earlier in the France, I'm not like didn't pay much attention to that. But Gates be needed to I mean this was his bread and butter, he had to save this was his intellectual capital. Right now that that needs to send us to want to add to the in terms of the question why why print but it's clear there's a commercial operation or you know it's about publicity and and making a name isn't it. So I think that her boss law was, as I mentioned it came in, while kids we was halfway through his book. I don't think he struggled with these problems, as Hogarth did Hogarth was the one who really knows he was is producing his original designs and then the hacks and pops with busily get together, get together, you know, do a do a version or whatever. And then sell it for six months and he was selling his between Guinness so I mean there was a real commercial commercial thing there going for him. I think Gates be was just plowing on what he needed to do and you know he did it and then you died shortly afterwards. I think he was in himself thinking about thinking that his work would be plagiarized of course there were many artists after him who were in. But I think I was more interested in the idea of him as it were lifting other artists images with impunity I mean in they go. I think it's for him. It's, and there was nobody then say, don't do that or how dare you or I mean some of the artists were dead anyway but but I think it's because with him, even though at core he's a naturalist. The artist is in him. The artist streak in him can't. He's, he's as inspired by art as he is by the natural world. So it all there's a very fine line between what he's actually seen you like add the room and describing for the world to see. And it becomes changed in as he looks at something because he's seen some other image. And so a lot of it is unconscious, I think. I don't think there's a sort of protectiveness either by him, or by the rest of the world. I mean we are talking about very early stage early, etc by the end of by by Blake's time of course things. Yeah, one comment that I noted again in your remarkable book is that gates be saw drawing as the art of seeing. What moved you from looking to seeing it brought you to a whole nother level of understanding illumination is exactly the right word, it is shedding light, it's not just limning print. It is understanding and seeing it more clearly than you can any other way. Art is the means by which we see and understand the world Blake perfectly understood that, even though he would say you can see one must see through the eye not with the eye. It's still recognizing that the power of art to teach us how to see and knowing it affects our perception. And from there you can go in all kinds of directions for visionary art, Blake's idea of infinity and a grain of sand, but it's also a very species of romanticism, particularly in Wordsworth, what Katesby is doing, seeing the sublime beauty in the minutiae of the world. I was very struck by that that he would find insects or the things that are in words worthy in terms is the everyday and ordinary that we don't see, either because they're too small or we're too busy, or too familiar with them, and the attention to them really brings out information that's all around us that we don't know. That's a very romantic idea from a from a Wordsworthian and a Blake's idea of infinity and a grain of sand. I feel like we're just getting started and it's going all sorts of wonderful directions but I'm conscious of time and we need to move towards closing for the evening. I've got questions lined up, specific questions, but a question each for both of you, just to try and kind of round the evening off. I'm an anonymous contributor, but for Henrietta, are there any colour palette notes in Katesby's drawings? It was interesting, yeah, because that question of working towards the coloured image. Yes, in two of his verses, we see him annotating the drawing with colour notes. They are very primitive notes, they say yellow and green. That was more him trying out a method of a shorthand method in the field rather than, I mean, as well as taking his paintbrushes into the field, he sometimes used this method of recording colours by naming them. If you don't have a colour chart, it's occurred to me that you might have used a colour chart, as we know some artists at the period do, and later. But there's nothing surviving that tells us how do you have anything about his palette, unfortunately. Well, thank you. We've round to Joseph, a question from John Hinks. First thing to talk, thank you. I mean, there's lots of that in the chat as well if you want to. Oh, just lost a hand, sorry. Could you explain, could you please explain how you identify where an impression or pull is missing? Yes, that's a series of clues that come from knowing the pattern of production from the beginning, and we saw always two, and then provenance records. There's a reference to a work that we don't have. And I've done a good deal of work here in signing Blake this article on when Blake signed something that was signifying a sale. And we have nine monoprints that are signed, and we don't know what to make of them. Well, yes we do. That's evidence that he sold them to someone, we just don't know who the collectors were. We think he sold only to Thomas Butts, and Butts did have 11 of the 12, but there's another 10 that were owned in Blake's lifetime between 1805 and 1810. And I think I make a good case that those works that are signed were in collections, and then they start coming out of collections when those people die and their descendants put them up. We start seeing that in 1850s. Okay, just before Gilchrist's biography in 1863. So when you combine the information from the provenance of each work and the mode of production, it points to four missing works. Newton, there's a strong case to make that there's an impression of Newton missing from the 1795 printing. Satan as well. And the other two we already suspect Elon and Nebuchadnezzar, we thought they're untrace and that's how they're listed in the catalog resonate, but these other two were doubtful, although Martin Barlin does acknowledge that that is a possibility. I'm reading a list from 1827 in which they're on. So they had to exist by that time, but I shown that there were copies in these other collections, because those are the signed copies we have today. So those are out. They weren't around in 1827. If they're in someone's collection 1810 Mrs Blake no longer had them to sell yet we have a list of what she does have to sell. So it's it's clues like that. It's a detective story. So they may be out there somewhere. So what you're saying. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Well, you never, you never know. Well, thank you. You were due to run till half past. We could run for another two hours. I know, but we've still got just about 100 people with us, but we should say a big thank you firstly to Joseph and Henrietta for such fantastic presentations. And thank you and congratulations for such amazing books as well. I mean, your, your talks this evening really kind of focused on the investment in print and the investment in the graphic image as a kind of experimental medium as a creative medium. And that's communicated so well in the books in the form of the books, as I say, they're so rich illustrated and their images repeated and you focus in and move out. I mean, you know, Jeff's post images so, so, so well and it's a real kind of visual visual experience going through these books. So a huge recommendation to all our readers, all our listeners tonight to also become readers of your books. So thank you for your presentations. Thank you also to Shauna and Danny for getting things set up this evening and looking after us so well on the technical side. I believe that the there are more questions than we could go through this evening, but I think we will be capturing them and you'll be welcome to email through and we can pass on questions and comments to to tonight's panel in due course. The next event in this series is next week, 9th of March. We're going to focus on aesthetic encounters is dealing with art craft and design in the 19th century so I hope you will be able to join us again for that next week. In the meantime, just once more. Thank you, Joseph is going to thank you and you're at a McBurney for such wonderful presentations and thank you and everybody for attending and listening and feeding through your questions and comments this evening so good night for now. Thank you.