The Ghost of a Flea - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Ghost of a Flea is a minature (21.4 x 16.2cm) tempera

Tempera

Tempera, also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of colored pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium . Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium. Tempera paintings are very long lasting, and examples from the 1st centuries AD still exist...

mixture with gold painting on mahogany type tropical hardwood panel by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...

, held in the Tate

Tate

-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...

Gallery, London. Completed between 1819 and 1820, it is part of a series of works depicting "Visionary Heads" commissioned by the watercolourist

Watercolor painting

Watercolor or watercolour , also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resulting artwork in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-soluble vehicle...

and astrologist John Varley

John Varley (painter)

John Varley was an English watercolour painter and astrologer, and a close friend of William Blake. They collaborated in 1819–1820 on the book Visionary Heads, written by Varley and illustrated by Blake...

(1788-1842). Fantastic

Fantastic

The Fantastic is a literary term that describes a quality of other literary genres, and, in some cases, is used as a genre in and of itself, although in this case it is often conflated with the Supernatural. The term was originated in the structuralist theory of critic Tzvetan Todorov in his work...

, spiritual art was very popular in Britain from around 1770 to 1830, during this time Blake often worked on unearthly, supernatural panels to amuse and amaze his friends.

At 21.4 cm x 16.2 cm the work is a greatly reduced miniature portrait. Blake generally worked on a small scale; most of his illuminated pages, engravings and many of his paintings are only inches high. Although Ghost of a Flea is one of Blake's smallest works, it is monumental in its imagination. Its tiny scale achieves its drama by contrasting the muscular bulk and apparent power of the creature against its incarnation in the panel as an insect.

Background

Blake first met John Varley in the autumn of 1818. Varley was 30 years younger than the artist,
and has been described as a "genial 17-stone bear of a man." A student of astrology

Astrology

Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...

and zodiacal physiognomy

Physiognomy

Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...

, Varley held a strong belief in the existence of spirits, but was frustrated by his inability to see them. Thus he was drawn to Blake, who claimed to have seen visions daily since when as a small child he had seen a tree "filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars." The two would often gather late at night in Varley's house, and played a game in which Varley would attempt to summon the spirit of a historical or mythological person. On the appearance of the spirit, Blake would then attempt to sketch their likeness.

According to Varley, the imagery of a Flea came to Blake during an 1819 séance

Séance

A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...

. Varley described the scene:

Blake's Victorian biographer Alexander Gilchrist

Alexander Gilchrist

Alexander Gilchrist was the biographer of William Blake. Gilchrist's biography is still a standard reference work on the poet....

(1828-1861) wrote that, three decades earlier in 1790, "Blake, for the only time in his life, saw a ghost... Standing one evening at his garden-door in Lambeth, and chancing to look up, he saw a horrible grim figure, 'scaly, speckled, very awful,' stalking downstairs towards him. More frightened than ever before or after, he took to his heels, and ran out of the house."

Although not directly stated by Gilchrist, there is a close connection between the ghost and the later The Head of the Ghost of a Flea.

Blake often said that he was joined by invisible sitters as he drew them, including, he claimed, a number of angels, Voltaire

Voltaire

François-Marie Arouet , better known by the pen name Voltaire , was a French Enlightenment writer, historian and philosopher famous for his wit and for his advocacy of civil liberties, including freedom of religion, free trade and separation of church and state...

, Moses

Moses

Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...

and the Flea, who told him that "fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature blood thirsty to excess." In his obituary, it was stated that, "The flea communicated to Mr. Blake what passed, as related to himself, at the Creation. 'It was first intended,' said he (the flea) 'to make me as big as a bullock; but then when it was considered from my construction, so armed—and so powerful withal, that in proportion to my bulk, (mischievous as I now am) that I should have been a too mighty destroyer; it was determined to make me—no bigger than I am."

In both his artwork and poetry, Blake often gave personality and human form to such abstractions as time, death, plague and famine. Fleas are often associated with uncleanliness and degradation; in this work, the artist sought to magnify a flea into "a monsterous creature whose bloodthirsty instinct was imprinted on every detail of its appearance, with 'burning eyes which long for moisture', and a 'face worthy of a murderer'."

Description

The muscular and nude Flea is depicted using its jutting tongue to gorge on a bowl of blood. Part human, part vampire and part reptile, the beast strides from right to left between heavy and richly patterned curtains. In his left hand he holds an acorn and in his right a thorn, both items drawn from the tradition of fairy iconography. His massive neck is similar to that of a bull, and holds a disproportionally small head, marked by glaring eyes and open jaws, and a venomous slithering tongue. According to the art critic Jonathan Jones, the flea is depicted as an "evil, gothic, grotesque stalking through a starry realm between stage curtains."

Ghost of a Flea is distinguished by its innovative use of gold leaf

Gold leaf

right|thumb|250px|[[Burnishing]] gold leaf with an [[agate]] stone tool, during the water gilding processGold leaf is gold that has been hammered into extremely thin sheets and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades...

. Beneath the curtain folds, the flesh of the flea and bright stars, Blake placed a thin foil of "white" gold which he made from gold-silver alloy. He then used a brush and powdered gold foil made into paint to colour much of the minute detail. Blake overlayed using thick brown paint derived from sugar, gum and glue.

The painting was created using Blake's distinctive tempera technique, which he describes in the lower right of the panel, beneath the shell gold signature, as "fresco

Fresco

Fresco is any of several related mural painting types, executed on plaster on walls or ceilings. The word fresco comes from the Greek word affresca which derives from the Latin word for "fresh". Frescoes first developed in the ancient world and continued to be popular through the Renaissance...

". On the reverse of the panel is written, "The Vision of the Spirit that inhabits the body of a Flea, and which appeared to the late Mr. Blake, the Designer of the vignettes for Blair Grave and the Book of Job. The Visions first appeared to him in my presence, and after wards till he had finished this picture. The Flea drew blood on this." Today the work is in relatively poor condition, partly due to the technique employed by Blake. Areas of the surface have cracked and dulled with age.

Although Blake was singular in his ability to directly transcribe visions onto canvas or paper, a number of visual and literary sources can be detected in this work. The art historian Hope Werness suggested that The Flea may be inspired by a 1665 work by early microscopist Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke

Robert Hooke FRS was an English natural philosopher, architect and polymath.His adult life comprised three distinct periods: as a scientific inquirer lacking money; achieving great wealth and standing through his reputation for hard work and scrupulous honesty following the great fire of 1666, but...

(1635-1703), whose Micographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies being Made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon includes a drawing of a flea microscopically observed.

Comparisons have been made to Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli

Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

's monstrous imps, while the image of the flea echos figures in Blake's earlier work, and his scaly body is similar to the monster in his 1805 pen and ink drawing Pestilence: Death of the First Born. In 2006, the Tate

Tate

hung The Ghost of a Flea and William Raddon's 1827 engraving after Fuseli's The Nightmare

The Nightmare

The Nightmare is a 1781 oil painting by Anglo-Swiss artist Henry Fuseli . Since its creation, it has remained Fuseli's best-known work. With its first exhibition in 1782 at the Royal Academy of London, the image became famous; an engraved version was widely distributed and the painting was parodied...

side by side in the "The Nightmare in Modern Culture" room of their "Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination" exhibition.

Reception

During his lifetime, Blake's prints were described as the work of a madman. This view was reinforced when word spread that Blake was inspired through visions, and, according to G. E. Bentley, "So plain was Blake's madness to some that they assumed he must have been confined in a madhouse" and few were willing to believe that the artist actually saw anything.

In 2006, the painting was described by the New York Times as Blake's "quite strangest and certainly most Gothic work".

Provenance

The Ghost of a Flea was purchased by Varley around 1820, and later passed to his son Albert Varley. A label on the reverse of the canvas states that the panel was sold by Albert in February 1878, a fact confirmed by an inscription written by the poet and artist William Bell Scott

William Bell Scott

William Bell Scott was a Scottish poet and artist.-Life:The son of Robert Scott , the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, and he published verses in the Scottish magazines...

(1811-1890) on the inside back cover of the Blake-Varley Sketchbook which reads, "I have since getting this book [in 1870], bought the painting of the "Ghost" of the Flea, from Mr Varley of Oakley St. Chelsea, son of John Varley". On July 14, 1892 it was sold at Sotheby's

Sotheby's

Sotheby's is the world's fourth oldest auction house in continuous operation.-History:The oldest auction house in operation is the Stockholms Auktionsverk founded in 1674, the second oldest is Göteborgs Auktionsverk founded in 1681 and third oldest being founded in 1731, all Swedish...

to W. Graham Robertson for £10.50.

It was first exhibited at Carfax, Oxford

Carfax, Oxford

Carfax is located at the conjunction of St Aldate's , Cornmarket Street , Queen Street and the High Street in Oxford, England. It is considered to be the centre of the city, and is at...

in 1906. In preparation for this showing, the panel was partially cleaned of dust. It was further treated when the exhibition ended by Stanley Littlejohn

Stanley Littlejohn

Stanley Littlejohn was an English painting conservator and restorer. He is best known for his work on Tintoretto's sketches, and for his restoration of a number of paintings and drawings by William Blake, including Glad Day and The Ghost of a Flea.Littlejohn began his career as an engraver...

(1877-1917), who, in the words of the Blake collector W. Graham Robertson, lifted "the veil of darkness...from it without any impairing of the surface, and the picture now appears exactly as described by Allan Cunningham. The colours, though deep, are clear and brilliant; the gold, used to heighten the lights, shines with its old power, and on the floor, between the feet of the striding." It was first displayed at the Tate on loan in 1913, and donated to the gallery by Robertson in 1948.

External links

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