DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.31830#0028
first met Blake, and the same evening accompanied him home.
A boy of sixteen, he was thrilled with awe and delight as the old
man told him of his visions. Soon he was painting and engraving
in a manner closely imitated from Blake, as may be seen from the
works here reproduced (Plates 14 to 17).
Tatham had a son Frederick; this young man also came
under the spell, and joined the little circle. He was studying
to be a sculptor, and also painted miniatures. Frederick Tatham
is now chiefly remembered for having destroyed a quantity of
Blake’s manuscripts, having been persuaded that they contained
subversive and noxious doctrines. I do not know at what date
this happened. But it is certain that Tatham had the sincerest
love and admiration for Blake; during the last years of Blake’s
life he was one of his closest friends; he was present at his death,
and followed him to the grave in company with Calvert and
Richmond. Blake’s last work 011 his death-bed was done for
Tatham, who afterwards wrote a short biography of his friend
and master. This, bound up with the only coloured copy of
“ Jerusalem, 55 lay in MS. till 1906, when it was printed, with
Blake’s letters, by Mr. Archibald Russell. In that volume. Mr.
Russell has vindicated Tatham from some of the false charges
made against him : and however much we may deplore his mis-
guided act of destruction, his memory deserves something better
than indiscriminate obloquy. As an artist, however, he was not
of much account. In the Print Room of the British Museum
there is a portrait-sketch of a lady, and two water-colour studies
of the head of an old woman who lived in Epping Forest, drawn
because of her singular likeness to William Blake. There is
also an ill-drawn lithograph called The Prisoner; and the pencil
portrait of Mrs. Blake in the first year of her widowhood wfiich is
here reproduced (Plate 2). Cilchrist printed a woodcut after
this, but it is not faithful to the original.
Two other members of the group remain to be mentioned :
Henry Walter and Francis Oliver Finch. Henry Walter was
born in the same year as Calvert. In Mr. A. H. Palmer’s collec-
tion is a portrait drawing of Samuel Palmer at the.age of fourteen
which is fine and sensitive work. A later portrait of Palmer, in
water-colours and pen, is reproduced here (Plate 50). But
Walter’s chosen subjects were animals in landscape : and, to
judge from such examples as I have seen, he had, if no great
12
A boy of sixteen, he was thrilled with awe and delight as the old
man told him of his visions. Soon he was painting and engraving
in a manner closely imitated from Blake, as may be seen from the
works here reproduced (Plates 14 to 17).
Tatham had a son Frederick; this young man also came
under the spell, and joined the little circle. He was studying
to be a sculptor, and also painted miniatures. Frederick Tatham
is now chiefly remembered for having destroyed a quantity of
Blake’s manuscripts, having been persuaded that they contained
subversive and noxious doctrines. I do not know at what date
this happened. But it is certain that Tatham had the sincerest
love and admiration for Blake; during the last years of Blake’s
life he was one of his closest friends; he was present at his death,
and followed him to the grave in company with Calvert and
Richmond. Blake’s last work 011 his death-bed was done for
Tatham, who afterwards wrote a short biography of his friend
and master. This, bound up with the only coloured copy of
“ Jerusalem, 55 lay in MS. till 1906, when it was printed, with
Blake’s letters, by Mr. Archibald Russell. In that volume. Mr.
Russell has vindicated Tatham from some of the false charges
made against him : and however much we may deplore his mis-
guided act of destruction, his memory deserves something better
than indiscriminate obloquy. As an artist, however, he was not
of much account. In the Print Room of the British Museum
there is a portrait-sketch of a lady, and two water-colour studies
of the head of an old woman who lived in Epping Forest, drawn
because of her singular likeness to William Blake. There is
also an ill-drawn lithograph called The Prisoner; and the pencil
portrait of Mrs. Blake in the first year of her widowhood wfiich is
here reproduced (Plate 2). Cilchrist printed a woodcut after
this, but it is not faithful to the original.
Two other members of the group remain to be mentioned :
Henry Walter and Francis Oliver Finch. Henry Walter was
born in the same year as Calvert. In Mr. A. H. Palmer’s collec-
tion is a portrait drawing of Samuel Palmer at the.age of fourteen
which is fine and sensitive work. A later portrait of Palmer, in
water-colours and pen, is reproduced here (Plate 50). But
Walter’s chosen subjects were animals in landscape : and, to
judge from such examples as I have seen, he had, if no great
12