Nebuchadnezzar (Blake)
Encyclopedia
Nebuchadnezzar is a colour monotype print with additions in ink and watercolour portraying the Old Testament Babylonia
n king Nebuchadnezzar II by the English poet, painter and printmaker William Blake
. Taken from the Book of Daniel
, the legend of Nebuchadnezzar tells of a ruler who through hubris
lost his mind and was reduced to animalistic madness and eating "grass as oxen".
According to the biographer Alexander Gilchrist
(1828–1861), in Blake's print the viewer is faced with the "mad king crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity, and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet."
Nebuchadnezzar was part of the so-called Large Colour Prints; a series begun in 1795 of twelve 43 cm x 53 cm colour monotype prints, of most of which three copies were made. These were painted on millboard, after which the board was put through Blake's printing-press with a sheet of dampened paper to make the prints. After they were printed, Blake and his wife Catherine
added ink and watercolour to the impressions. It existed in four impressions (copies), now in: Tate Britain
in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
, and a fourth which has been missing since 1887. Blake believed that Nebuchadnezzar was connected to the Christian apocalypse
and to his personal view on the stages of human development.
. The plates for the Large Colour Prints and the first prints were made in 1795, but further impressions seem to have been printed in about 1805. In the late summer of 1805, Blake sold to Thomas Butts Jr. eight impressions of the Large Colour Prints, including the Tate Nebuchadnezzar, for £1.1 each.
John Clark Strange bought Butts's prints on 29 June 1853 and later acquired the rest of the collection that was sold to Henry George Bohn. Although he originally wanted to produce a biography on Blake, he later abandoned this idea after he learned of Gilchrist's biography. However, his journal was filled with his notes for the biography, and contain many accounts from those who knew Blake, excerpts from Blake's journal, and analysis of Blake's work. In his journal, he describes Nebuchadnezzar "crawling on his belly, naked covered with hair & nails grown long, eating grass.—'What was singular was that Blake's conception was almost a facsimile of an ancient German print of the same subject and which design Blake had never seen." Kenneth Clark
identified the earlier image as a book illustration of a werewolf
by Lucas Cranach the Elder
, although a closer similarity is with the small figure of the saint in Albrecht Dürer
's 1496 engraving The Penance of St. John Chrysostom
.
naked on hands and knees carrying his crown. Nebuchadnezzar is represented as being in the wilderness and is, according to Samuel Palmer
, similar to an older German woodcut
where "almost the very same figure appears. Many years had elapsed after making his own design before Blake saw the wood cut." A further depiction was added to Edward Young
's Night Thoughts
Volume VII.
The image of Nebuchadnezzar is connected in Blake with the apocalypse in which the three people that the biblical Nebuchadnezzar burned to death were united with the Son of God, and this image is also connected to Blake's belief in four states of existence in which those burned are able to transcend into the final stage of human existence. Also, Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a statue
represents human history from the beginning until the Apocalypse, and the image of Nebuchadnezzar's rule is connected to Blake's myth of Albion
in The Four Zoas.
commented: "Crawling on all fours in his shaggy insanity. The tawny beard trails across the left hand: the nails are literally "like birds' claws", and the flesh tints very red and "beefy." The glaring eyes, too, have almost lost their human character. The background represents a thick jungle. A fine wild conception." The image inspired a passage in the poem City of Dreadful Night
(1870s) by James Thomson
(1834–1882):
Babylonia
Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia , with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as a major power when Hammurabi Babylonia was an ancient cultural region in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), with Babylon as its capital. Babylonia emerged as...
n king Nebuchadnezzar II 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...
. Taken from the Book of Daniel
Book of Daniel
The Book of Daniel is a book in the Hebrew Bible. The book tells of how Daniel, and his Judean companions, were inducted into Babylon during Jewish exile, and how their positions elevated in the court of Nebuchadnezzar. The court tales span events that occur during the reigns of Nebuchadnezzar,...
, the legend of Nebuchadnezzar tells of a ruler who through hubris
Hubris
Hubris , also hybris, means extreme haughtiness, pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of power....
lost his mind and was reduced to animalistic madness and eating "grass as oxen".
According to the 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), in Blake's print the viewer is faced with the "mad king crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity, and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet."
Nebuchadnezzar was part of the so-called Large Colour Prints; a series begun in 1795 of twelve 43 cm x 53 cm colour monotype prints, of most of which three copies were made. These were painted on millboard, after which the board was put through Blake's printing-press with a sheet of dampened paper to make the prints. After they were printed, Blake and his wife Catherine
Catherine Blake
Catherine Blake was the wife of the poet, painter and engraver William Blake , and a vital presence and assistant throughout his life as an artist.-Life:...
added ink and watercolour to the impressions. It existed in four impressions (copies), now in: Tate Britain
Tate Britain
Tate Britain is an art gallery situated on Millbank in London, and part of the Tate gallery network in Britain, with Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It is the oldest gallery in the network, opening in 1897. It houses a substantial collection of the works of J. M. W. Turner.-History:It...
in London, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts, is one of the largest museums in the United States, attracting over one million visitors a year. It contains over 450,000 works of art, making it one of the most comprehensive collections in the Americas...
, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
Minneapolis Institute of Arts
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts is a fine art museum located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, on a campus that covers nearly 8 acres , formerly Morrison Park...
, and a fourth which has been missing since 1887. Blake believed that Nebuchadnezzar was connected to the Christian apocalypse
Apocalypse
An Apocalypse is a disclosure of something hidden from the majority of mankind in an era dominated by falsehood and misconception, i.e. the veil to be lifted. The Apocalypse of John is the Book of Revelation, the last book of the New Testament...
and to his personal view on the stages of human development.
History
Nebuchadnezzar was adapted from an earlier print in Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and HellThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets...
. The plates for the Large Colour Prints and the first prints were made in 1795, but further impressions seem to have been printed in about 1805. In the late summer of 1805, Blake sold to Thomas Butts Jr. eight impressions of the Large Colour Prints, including the Tate Nebuchadnezzar, for £1.1 each.
John Clark Strange bought Butts's prints on 29 June 1853 and later acquired the rest of the collection that was sold to Henry George Bohn. Although he originally wanted to produce a biography on Blake, he later abandoned this idea after he learned of Gilchrist's biography. However, his journal was filled with his notes for the biography, and contain many accounts from those who knew Blake, excerpts from Blake's journal, and analysis of Blake's work. In his journal, he describes Nebuchadnezzar "crawling on his belly, naked covered with hair & nails grown long, eating grass.—'What was singular was that Blake's conception was almost a facsimile of an ancient German print of the same subject and which design Blake had never seen." Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...
identified the earlier image as a book illustration of a werewolf
Werewolf
A werewolf, also known as a lycanthrope , is a mythological or folkloric human with the ability to shapeshift into a wolf or an anthropomorphic wolf-like creature, either purposely or after being placed under a curse...
by Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder
Lucas Cranach the Elder , was a German Renaissance painter and printmaker in woodcut and engraving...
, although a closer similarity is with the small figure of the saint in Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer was a German painter, printmaker, engraver, mathematician, and theorist from Nuremberg. His prints established his reputation across Europe when he was still in his twenties, and he has been conventionally regarded as the greatest artist of the Northern Renaissance ever since...
's 1496 engraving The Penance of St. John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom
John Chrysostom , Archbishop of Constantinople, was an important Early Church Father. He is known for his eloquence in preaching and public speaking, his denunciation of abuse of authority by both ecclesiastical and political leaders, the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, and his ascetic...
.
Other versions
Blake had earlier depicted Nebuchadnezzar on Plate 24 of The Marriage of Heaven and HellThe Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is a book by the English poet and printmaker William Blake. It is a series of texts written in imitation of biblical prophecy but expressing Blake's own intensely personal Romantic and revolutionary beliefs. Like his other books, it was published as printed sheets...
naked on hands and knees carrying his crown. Nebuchadnezzar is represented as being in the wilderness and is, according to Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer
Samuel Palmer was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker. He was also a prolific writer. Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.-Early life:...
, similar to an older German woodcut
Woodcut
Woodcut—occasionally known as xylography—is a relief printing artistic technique in printmaking in which an image is carved into the surface of a block of wood, with the printing parts remaining level with the surface while the non-printing parts are removed, typically with gouges...
where "almost the very same figure appears. Many years had elapsed after making his own design before Blake saw the wood cut." A further depiction was added to Edward Young
Edward Young
Edward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.-Early life:He was the son of Edward Young, later Dean of Salisbury, and was born at his father's rectory at Upham, near Winchester, where he was baptized on 3 July 1683. He was educated at Winchester College, and matriculated...
's Night Thoughts
Night Thoughts (poem)
The Complaint: or, Night-Thoughts on Life, Death, & Immortality, better known simply as Night-Thoughts, is a long poem by Edward Young published in nine parts between 1742 and 1745.The poem is written in blank verse...
Volume VII.
The image of Nebuchadnezzar is connected in Blake with the apocalypse in which the three people that the biblical Nebuchadnezzar burned to death were united with the Son of God, and this image is also connected to Blake's belief in four states of existence in which those burned are able to transcend into the final stage of human existence. Also, Nebuchadnezzar's dream of a statue
Nebuchadnezzar's statue vision in Daniel 2
Daniel 2 is the second chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible. The chapter's source text is predominantly written in Aramaic. According to the text, Nebuchadnezzar is the king of Babylon who is troubled by his dreams. He demands an interpretation for his dreams or will have his mystic...
represents human history from the beginning until the Apocalypse, and the image of Nebuchadnezzar's rule is connected to Blake's myth of Albion
Albion (Blake)
In the complex mythology of William Blake, Albion is the primeval man whose fall and division results in the Four Zoas: Urizen, Tharmas, Luvah/Orc, and Urthona/Los. The name derives from the ancient and mythological name of Britain, Albion.-Sources:...
in The Four Zoas.
Critical response
Alexander Gilchrist, Blake's early biographer, believed that "The metallic tinting of the moss-grown crags is rendered almost as successfully as in 'Newton,' and the printing throughout the picture is well carried out, with none of the opaque oily surfaces which occur in some others of the series." Dante Gabriel RossettiDante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
commented: "Crawling on all fours in his shaggy insanity. The tawny beard trails across the left hand: the nails are literally "like birds' claws", and the flesh tints very red and "beefy." The glaring eyes, too, have almost lost their human character. The background represents a thick jungle. A fine wild conception." The image inspired a passage in the poem City of Dreadful Night
City of Dreadful Night
The City of Dreadful Night is a long poem by the Scottish poet James "B.V." Thomson, written between 1870 and 1873, and published in the National Reformer in 1874, then in 1880 in a book entitled The City of Dreadful Night and Other Poems....
(1870s) by James Thomson
James Thomson (B.V.)
James Thomson , who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night , an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment.-Life:Thomson was born in Port Glasgow, Scotland, and, after...
(1834–1882):
- After a hundred steps I grew aware
- Of something crawling in the lane below;
- It seemed a wounded creature prostrate there
- That sobbed with pangs in making progress slow,
- The hind limbs stretched to push, the fore limbs then
- To drag; for it would die in its own den.
- But coming level with it I discerned
- That it had been a man; for at my tread
- It stopped in its sore travail and half-turned,
- Leaning upon its right, and raised its head,
- And with the left hand twitched back as in ire
- Long grey unreverend locks befouled with mire.
- A haggard filthy face with bloodshot eyes,
- An infamy for manhood to behold. - Canto XVIII, from line 13
Further reading
- Butlin, Martin. The Paintings and Drawings of William Blake. 2 vols. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1981.