— 41 —
creations are beginning to find" and further on "His works are clear inspiration, which is a point very hard to attain to in landscape art; but in him one may almost say that it was as evident as in Blake."
(Rossetti, vol. II, p. 504 and 529.)
g) 1880.Rossetti writes a sonnet on Blake. (Five English Poets, vol. I, p. 338.)
Influence of William Blake's painting.
In the foregoing pages I have shown how Blake's philosophy can be traced in the art works of Rossetti; how it was this philosophy which to no small extent directed the bent of Rossetti's genius and made of him a painter of imagination. Next to the influence of Blake's mysticism on Rossetti's art we have to place the influence of Blake's thoughts and criticisms upon art as laid down by him in his "Descriptive Catalogue" and in his "Marginal Notes to the Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds". Though Rossetti's admiration for Blake's drawings, engravings, and coloured prints must have been great, as the reminiscences of these productions were used in one of Rossetti's best poems, in the Blessed Damozel, as I pointed out before, yet the traces we find of Blake's artistic influence in Rossetti's art works are few and of a comparatively small value.[1]
In 1798 there appeared the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, his "Discourses on Painting". Blake wrote marginal notes to these works, first in 1803 and for a second time about 1820, and vehemently criticized them. His other critical opinions have been expressed in a descriptive Catalogue[2] which he wrote for an
- ↑ It may be that the colouring of Rossetti's pictures forms the one exception here; but as comparatively few pictures of D. G. Rossetti were accessible to me in the originals, I cannot form an adequate opinion in this matter.
- ↑ A descriptive Catalogue of Pictures, poetical and historical Inventions painted by William Blake in Water Colours being the ancient Method of Fresco Painting restored and Drawings for public Inspection and for sale by private Contract. London 1809.
