Friday, February 9, 2018

18th & 19th-century British Drawings & Prints (Tate)

James Thornhill
Three studies for Thetis at the Forge of Vulcan
ca. 1710
drawing
Tate Gallery

Anonymous British artist
Académie
ca. 1700-1800
drawing
Tate Gallery

Susanna Duncombe née Highmore
Head of a young woman in a blue hat
ca. 1760-90
drawing
Tate Gallery

John Hamilton Mortimer
Study of the Bacchus of Sansovino (from a cast)
before 1779
drawing
Tate Gallery

Bacchus III

The god who fled down with a standard yard
(Surveying with that reed which was his guard
He showed St. John the New Jerusalem;
It was a sugarcane containing rum
And hence the fire on which these works depend)
Taught and quivered strung upon the bend
An outmost crystal a recumbent flame
(He drinks all cups the tyrant could acclaim;
He still is dumb, illimitably wined,
Burns still his nose and liver for mankind) . . .
It is an ether, such an agony.
In the thin choking air of Caucasus
He under operation lies forever
Smelling the chlorine in the chloroform.
The plains around him flood with the destroyers
Pasturing the stallions in the standing corn.

– William Empson (1940)

James Barry
The Temptation of Adam
ca. 1790
etching, engraving, aquatint
Tate Gallery

James Barry
Satan, Sin and Death from Paradise Lost
ca. 1792-1808
etching
Tate Gallery

James Barry
Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos
before 1806
etching, engraving, aquatint
Tate Gallery

attributed to James Barry
Self-portrait
before 1806
drawing
Tate Gallery

Self-Portrait

He wants to be
a brutal old man,
an aggressive old man,
as dull, as brutal
as the emptiness around him,

He doesn't want compromise,
nor to be ever nice
to anyone. Just mean,
and final in his brutal,
his total, rejection of it all.

He tried the sweet,
the gentle, the "oh,
let's hold hands together"
and it was awful,
dull, brutally inconsequential.

Now he'll stand on
his own dwindling legs.
His arms, his skin,
shrink daily. And
he loves, but hates equally.

– Robert Creeley (1991)

Anonymous British artist
 Heroic Male Nude, Standing
ca. 1800-1900
drawing
Tate Gallery

Joseph Mallord William Turner
The Tenth Plague of Egypt
1816
etching, engraving
Tate Gallery

William Mulready
Academy Study
1842
drawing
Tate Gallery

Edward Burne-Jones
Study for Seated Woman for The Passing of Venus
ca. 1877
drawing
Tate Gallery

William Nicholson
Sarah Bernhardt
from Twelve Portraits (First Series)

1899
lithograph
Tate Gallery

William Nicholson
H.M. the Queen
from Twelve Portraits (First Series)

1899
lithograph
Tate Gallery

Victoria 

I am Queen and I shall do my utmost to fulfil
my duty towards my country.

Duty is a slapped mouth, sewn shut with cat-gut. 

To my dear, loyal subjects who are assembled to show
their good humour and excessive loyalty.

Apes, hyenas, jackdaws: how they screech and caw.

How proud I felt to be the Queen of such a Nation,
the Crown being placed on my head, so gently.

But such a weight! Monstrous as a beached whale.

It was, I remember, a most beautiful, impressive moment.
My robes draped on the chair beautifully.

White body full of blood, bruises that bleed.

Nothing was done without his loving advice and help,
darling Albert was the other part of me.

Filled with life after life after life after life after life.

The only ray of comfort I get for a moment is in the firm
conviction and certainty,

I remember the chloroform. So blissfully empty of voices.

of his nearness, his undying love and of our eternal reunion.
Impatiently I wait and I do my damn duty.

– Ruth Stacey (2015)


Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)