 | |  |
Notes
William Blake's Writings, ed. G. E. Bentley, Jr. (1978), 1027 (I have added punctuation); this work is the source of all Blake quotations here.
F. Basan, Supplément au Dictionnaire des Graveurs Anciens et Moderne (1791), 24 — 25, 138 — 139, and P. F. et H. L. Basan. Dictionnaire des Graveurs anciens et modernes, Depuis l'origine de la Gravure (1809), I, 70, report: "PARKER, (J.) à gravé à Londres, à la manière pointillé divers sujets d'après différens maitres anglois, de formes rondes, &c." The account of Blake is strikingly similar: "BLAKE, (W.), a gravé à Londres en 1784 &c, divers sujets à la manière pointillée, d'après différens artistes Anglais".
The Protestant's Family Bible (1780 — 81), Seally & Lyons, Geographical Dictionary (1784), The Dramatic Works of Shakespeare (1802), The Iliad of Homer Engraved from the Compositions of Iohn Flaxman (1805), and Rees, Cyclopaedia (see 1804 below).
According to Memoirs and Recollections of the Late of Abraham Raimbach, Esq., Engraver, ed. M. T. S. Raimbach (London: Not Published, 1843), 36 fn: "James Parker, a fellow pupil of the insane genius Blake, at Basire's — not very distinguished as an artist, but greatly respected for his amiable disposition, integrity, and good sense. He died after a short illness, aged about forty-five". This source is subsequently cited as Memoirs of Raimbach.
John Flaxman wrote to William Hayley on 7 November 1804 recommending engravers: "there is another Engraver of distinguished merit who is a punctual honest Man M.r Parker a fellow Student of Blake, by whom You have a beautiful small print of David playing on the harp before Saul . . .". Quoted from the MS in the Pierpont Morgan Library; for more of the letter, see G. E. Bentley, Jr, Blake Records (1969), 155.
British Museum Print Room NN.6.18. Another version of the incident identifies the third figure not as Parkes (or Parker) but as Ogleby (Blake Records, 19). "Ogleby [i.e., Parker] declared that once being taken prisoner was enough for him; he would go out no more on such perilous expeditions".
Northcote too may have favored Parker, for Parker engraved important plates after Northcote in 1785, 1786, 1787 (3), 1789, and 1801 (2).
The Allegation itself is in Lambeth Palace Library; a transcript is at 1, The Sanctuary, Westminster.
J. T. Smith, Nollekens and his Times (1828), quoted in Blake Records, 457. J. T. Smith was a friend both of Blake and of the Mathews' son William Henry and is likely to have had good information.
Westminster Archives Centre, 10 St Anne's Street, London SW1P 2XR. In 1785 "James Parker & Wm Blake [on a rent of £]18 [paid the Golden Square Watch Rate of £] — 7 6" (D.808) and the Paving Rate of 16s 8d (D.1213).
In the Great Marlboro Watch Rate for 28 Poland Street is the notation "W.m Blake Christ[mas] 1785 Empty [first] 2 quarters" (D.849). In 1786 "& Blake" is deleted and "W.m Blake" is inserted at the sixth house in Poland Street East (D.107). Through the inertia of the rate-collectors, "Blake & Parker" continued to be entered as joint tenants for the Paving and Watch Rates in 1786 (D.1214; D.810 — 811) and 1787 (D.1215 ["Blake" is deleted]; D.812 — 813).
Allan Cunningham, Lives of the Most Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1830), quoted in Blake Records, 482. Cunningham's account of Blake is plausible but not reliable in detail.
Paving Rates for 1788 — 94 (D.109 — 115); in 1795 (D.116) Parker is replaced by Mayhew Jr. The details from the rate books were first recorded by Paul Miner, "William Blake's London Residences", Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 62 (1958), 535 — 550.
Westminster Poll Book for 1788. The next entry is for "William Blake St Anns Parish", but no vote is recorded; apparently Blake had simply come in to keep Parker company.
The Westminster Poll Books were examined in Middlesex County Record Office, Queen Anne's Gate Buildings, Dartmouth Street, Westminster S.W.1.
All Parker's plates for the Boydell Shakspeare are reproduced in Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly, 25 (1991).
The "immense prices" derive from Anon., "Monthly Retrospect of the Fine Arts", Monthly Magazine, 11 (1 Feb, 1 March, 1 April 1801), 63 — 64, 155, 246. The plates for "Cymbeline" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" were part of a series of seven "Circle Prints from Shakespeare" after Harding and Stothard (12” in diameter) which sold for 7s 6d and 15s.
Blake had, however, engraved a number of small plates for Macklin in the 1780s for fees similar to those of Parker (Blake Records, 569).
In the Rosenwald Collection of the Library of Congress; with it is the manuscript of the fourth Ballad, "The Dog", presumably added by another hand.
Memoirs of Raimbach, 37. According to the obituary in The Gentleman's Magazine, 75 (June 1805), 586, James Parker contributed much by his zeal to the formation of the Society of Engravers.
Quoted, like the other Du Roveray letters here, from the MS in the Free Public Library of Philadelphia; for the context, see G. E. Bentley, Jr, "F. J. Du Roveray, Illustrated-Book Publisher 1798 — 1806: Part III: Du Roveray's Artists and the Engravers' Strike", Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 12 (1990), 97 — 146.
In his advertisement for "Blake's Chaucer: The Canterbury Pilgrims" (1809), Blake wrote: "No Work of Art, can take longer than a Year" (p. 824).
These are probably "Zephyrus and Flora" and "Calisto" which Parker & Blake published in colours in 1784.
I.e., not counting Blake's works in Illuminated Printing (such as Songs of Innocence and of Experience) or the other plates by Blake which did not have an ordinary commercial publisher.
Clipping of c. 1790 in the Victoria & Albert Museum volume of Press Cuttings from English Newspapers on Matters of Artistic Interest, 583.
Reproduced on p. 75 of The Painted Word: British History Painting: 1750 — 1830, ed. Peter Cannon-Brookes (Woodbridge, Suffolk, & Rochester, N.Y.: The Boydell Press, 1991).
Ambrose Heal Trade Cards, 43. 145. According to the Heal index (24.1) Parker also engraved a card for the Independent Brush Makers Arms, but it could not be found when I asked for it.
Ambrose Heal Trade Cards 69.30; there are new plates for Henshaw (not by Parker) at 69.29 and 69.31.
British Library: Add. MSS. 33,402; note that the account of Parker in the Dictionary of National Biography by Freeman Marius O'Donoghue is largely based upon Dodd's MS.
MS "Memorials of the life of R. H. Cromek, Collected and Edited by his Son" (T. H. Cromek) (c. 1865), 11, quoted by permission of Cromek's descendant (its owner) Mr Wilfrid Warrington. Note the very similar story that T. H. Cromek reports (p. 11) about Blake's engraving for the frontispiece of Malkin's A Father's Memoirs of His Child (1806) which was re-engraved and signed by Cromek for reasons unknown.
Paul Alkon and Robert Folkenflik, Samuel Johnson: Pictures and Words (1984), lists five plates; Shelley Bennett, Thomas Stothard: The Mechanisms of Art Patronage in England circa 1800 (1988), refers to four plates and does not mention the engraver (p. 73).
It is advertised at £1.1.0 in A Catalogue of Prints, Books, and Works, after the Most Celebrated Masters, Ancient and Modern, Engraved by the First Artists, and Published by Boydell and Co. (1807), and the copperplate was offered in the R. H. Evans Catalogue of More than Five Thousand Copper Plates . . . Comprising the Entire Stock of Messrs. John and Josiah Boydell, Deceased, 1 — 6 June 1818, Lot 47.
See G. E. Bentley, Jr, "F. J. Du Roveray, Illustrated-Book Publisher 1798 — 1806: Part IV: A Bibliography of his Publications", Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 12 (1990), 166 — 186.
Blake engraved a plate after Fuseli for "Katherine, Griffiths, & Patience" in Shakspeare, Plays (1805), VII.
For the somewhat intricate details of publishing, see G. E. Bentley, Jr, "F. J. Du Roveray, Illustrated-Book Publisher 1798 — 1806", Bibliographical Society of Australia and New Zealand Bulletin, 12 (1990), 63 — 83, 97 — 146, and especially 166 — 186 ("A Bibliography of his Publications").
The complex details of the publication of Rees's Cyclopaedia are given in G. E. Bentley, Jr, Blake Books (1977), 603 — 605.
| | |