Graphite on paper. verso: graphite on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39" aria-label="More by William Blake" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Blake</a>
Head Ghost a Flea A Profile and a Reduced Drawing Miltons First Wife
Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
animal / human
animals: fantastic
animals: features
animals: insects & lower animals
body
flea
ghost
head / face
magic and occultism
people
religion and belief
tooth
<p>When they were introduced in 1818, the astronomer and artist John Varley was struck by Blake’s visionary capacity. As a mutual friend put it, Varley ‘readily devoured all the marvellous in Blakes most extravagent utterances’ [sic]. Varley encouraged Blake to draw the figures that appeared to him, resulting in a series of so-called ‘visionary heads’. This unusual example was then used by Varley as an illustration of ‘Gemini’ in his <i>Zodiacal Physiognomy</i> (see the reproduction on the plinth by this showcase). Blake later developed the sketch to produce a finished tempera, hanging nearby.</p><p><em>Gallery label, March 2011</em></p>
paper unique graphite
15 October 2001 – 7 July 2002
2002-07-07
15 October 2001 – 7 July 2002
2002-07-07
2001-10-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-10-15
William Blake and His Followers
Collection based display
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
2006-02-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-02-15
Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination
Exhibition
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
2010-11-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-11-11
Blake and Physiognomy
Collection based display
29 October 2024 – 30 September 2025
2025-09-30
30 October 2024 – 2 February 2025
2025-02-02
2024-10-30
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
1 September 2025 – 31 January 2026
2026-01-31
2025-09-01
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
1 March 2026 – 31 August 2026
2026-08-31
2026-03-01
External
2024-10-29
William Blake and the Age of Romantic Fantasy: British Art & Imagination
Loan-out
The Head of the Ghost of a Flea. Verso: A Profile and a Reduced Drawing of Milton’s First Wife
support: 189 × 153 mm
Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
<p>When they were introduced in 1818, the astronomer and artist John Varley was struck by Blake’s visionary capacity. As a mutual friend put it, Varley ‘readily devoured all the marvellous in Blakes most extravagent utterances’ [sic]. Varley encouraged Blake to draw the figures that appeared to him, resulting in a series of so-called ‘visionary heads’. This unusual example was then used by Varley as an illustration of ‘Gemini’ in his <i>Zodiacal Physiognomy</i> (see the reproduction on the plinth by this showcase). Blake later developed the sketch to produce a finished tempera, hanging nearby. 
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Display caption
2011-03-18T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-head-of-the-ghost-of-a-flea-verso-a-profile-and-a-reduced-drawing-of-miltons-n05184" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05184</span></a> [from] <b>Drawings from the Small Blake-Varley Sketchbook</b>
<i>c</i>.1819 [<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-a-figure-standing-in-a-gothic-apse-perhaps-the-empress-maud-verso-detailed-drawings-t01334" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T01334</span></a>-<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-detailed-drawings-for-a-figure-standing-in-a-gothic-apse-t01335" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T01335</span></a>; complete]
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<br/>The Tate Gallery owns three pages from the smaller Blake-Varley Sketchbook, first used by John Varley for <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/l/landscape" title="Glossary definition for 'Landscape'"><span>landscape</span></a> sketches and then by Blake for recording the visions he saw at Varley's house in 1819, the date inscribed on a number of the pages from the Sketchbook including <span>T01334</span>. The Sketchbook seems originally to have contained sixty-six leaves, sixteen of which are now lost. After a number of pages, including <span>N05184</span>, had been removed, the Sketchbook probably passed to Varley's friend the musician William Christian Selle, whose daughter married H. Buxton Forman, who definitely gave it to William Bell Scott in 1870. It remained at Penkhill Castle, the home of Scott's friend Miss Alice Boyd, until it was rediscovered there in 1967 by Mr M.D.E. Clayton-Stamm. It was subsequently broken up and reproduced in facsimile (Martin Butlin, <i>The Blake-Varley Sketchbook of 1819</i>, 1969; the Sketchbook is also fully described and catalogued, but not reproduced, in Butlin 1981, pp.495–506 no.692) and sold page by page at Christie's on 15 June 1971 (141–172, most of the Blakes repr.). On 21 March 1989 a second, larger Blake-Varley sketchbook was sold at Christie's (184, repr. in separate catalogue); this sketchbook had belonged to William Mulready, Varley's brother-in-law, and it was sold with his collection at Christie's 28–30 April 1864 (86).
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<br/><span>N05184</span> <b>The Head of the Ghost of a Flea</b> <i>c</i>.1819 (recto)
<br/><b>A Profile and a Reduced Drawing of Milton's First Wife</b> <i>c</i>.1819 (verso)
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<p>N 05184 / B 692 <i>97–8</i>
<br/>Pencil on paper 189×153 (7 7/16×6)
<br/>Inscribed by Varley on recto ‘Original [? - now practically invisible] W. Blake’ b.l., and on verso with colour-notes on the drawing of Milton's First Wife, ‘Gn velvet’, ‘Bk’ and ‘Eyes Bn’
<br/>Watermarked ‘1806’
<br/>Bequeathed by Miss Alice G.E. Carthew 1940
<br/>PROVENANCE John Linnell, sold Christie's 15 March 1918 (in 164 with nos.65, 66 and 67) £54.12.0 bt Miss Carthew
<br/>EXHIBITED Tate Gallery (69a), Manchester (74), Nottingham (57) and Edinburgh (78) 1913–14; <i>British Drawings from the Tate Gallery</i> CEMA tour 1944 (6); Tate Gallery 1947 (83); Hamburg and Frankfurt 1975 (163, recto repr.); Tate Gallery 1978 (282, recto repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Varley <i>Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy</i> 1828, pp.54–5 (reprinted in Bentley 1969, pp.372–3, and Butlin 1969, p.11); Gilchrist 1863, 1, pp.255–6; Rossetti 1863, p.245 list 2 no.56, and 1880, p.262 list 2 no.65; Richard C. Jackson, ‘William Blake: An unlooked for Discovery’, <i>South London Observer</i> 22 June 1912 (see G.E. Bentley Jr, ‘All the Evidence that's fit to print’, <i>Blake Newsletter</i>, 11, 1968–9, p.12); Keynes <i>Bibliography</i> 1921, p.318; Keynes <i>Drawings</i> 1927, no.49, recto repr.; Blunt in <i>Warburg Journal</i>, VI, 1943, p.203, recto pl.59d; Frye 1947, pp.123–4; Charles Singer, ‘The first English microscopist: Robert Hooke (1635–1703)’, <i>Endeavour</i>, XIV, 1955, p.14; Blunt 1959, p.82; Keynes in <i>Bulletin of the New York Public Library</i>, LXIV, 1960, pp.570–1, recto repr. facing p.567; Butlin 1969, pp.9–11, 28–9, repr.; Erdman 1969, p.106; Roe in Rosenfeld 1969, p.175; Bindman 1977, p.202, recto pl.165; Klonsky 1977, p.124, recto repr.; Paley 1978, p.181, recto pl.87; Butlin 1981, pp.495–6, 503 nos.692 <i>98</i> and <i>97</i>.
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<p>Unlike the other pages from the Small Blake-Varley sketchbook in the Tate Gallery, this leaf and three others that can be identified were removed from the book early on and were until recently regarded as separate entities (for the others see Butlin nos.692 <i>35–6</i> and <i>a-d</i>). In the original sketchbook the profile and reduced <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> of ‘Milton's First Wife’, which is here regarded as the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a>, in fact came first, as page 97. The <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watermark" title="Glossary definition for 'Watermark'"><span>watermark</span></a> ‘1806’ is found on a number of pages in the Blake-Varley Sketchbook. The book itself is oblong in format.
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<br/>The drawing of the head of a flea, accompanied by a larger sketch of its mouth alone, now open, is the subject of a well-known anecdote in Varley's <i>Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy</i>: ‘I felt convinced by his [Blake's] mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him, for he left off, and began on another part of the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/paper" title="Glossary definition for 'Paper'"><span>paper</span></a>, to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch, till he had closed it. During the time occupied in completing the drawing, the Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men, as were by nature blood-thirsty to excess...’
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<br/>Linnell <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraved</span></a> two complete heads, one with mouth shut, one open, for Varley's <i>Trealise</i>. A note written by Varley to Linnell criticizes his engraving of the latter, adding ‘it has been compared with a tracing &amp; these remarks made’ (coll. M. Butlin, repr. Butlin 1969, pl.6); no such tracing is known in this case. According to Gilchrist, Linnell also made a copy in colour; this could be a reference in the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/t/tempera" title="Glossary definition for 'Tempera'"><span>tempera</span></a> <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a>, <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-ghost-of-a-flea-n05889" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05889</span></a>.
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<br/>Blake's drawing may have been influenced by Robert Hooke's <i>Micrographia, or some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies made by Magnifying Glasses, with Observations and Inquiries thereupon</i>, 1665, in which there is a greatly enlarged engraving of a flea on plate 32 (repr. Singer <i>op. cit.</i>, p.15, and Keynes 1960, facing p.567).
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<br/>What is now regarded as the verso of this sheet originally faced page 96 in the Blake-Varley Sketchbook, a drawing of ‘Milton's First Wife’ now in a private collection in Great Britain (repr. Butlin <i>op. cit.</i> 1969 and sale cat., Christie's 1971, lot 145). This shows Milton's wife Mary Powell (b.1615) whom he married in 1643. From a Royalist, anti-Puritan family, she left him after a month and Milton declared that he would never take her back. The incident coincided with, and may have led to, Milton's pamphlet on divorce. In 1645, however, after the ruin of the Royalist cause, Milton did take her back, together with her family, and they had four children before her death in 1652. The reduced-scale drawing in the Tate Gallery, with its various colour-notes, was presumably done so that Varley could record observations without fear of spoiling the original drawing on the facing page. It is accompanied by a crude profile of a thick-lipped figure and also by traces of what may be another head in the lower left-hand corner.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
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Catalogue entry
2004-10-07T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
animal / human animals: fantastic animals: features animals: insects & lower animals body flea ghost head / face magic and occultism people religion and belief tooth