Visionary Heads

The Visionary Heads is a series of black chalk and pencil drawings produced by William Blake after 1818 by request of John Varley, the watercolour artist and astrologer.

The subjects of the sketches, many of whom are famous historical and mythical characters, appeared to Blake in visions during late night meetings with Varley, as if sitting for portraits.

Among the Visionary Heads drawn by Blake are David, Solomon, Uriah and Bathsheba, Nebuchadnezzar, Saul, Lot, Job, Socrates, his wife Xantippe, Julius Caesar, Christ, Muhammad, Merlin, Boadicea, Charlemagne, Ossian, Robin Hood, Caractacus, King Edward I, his Queen Eleanor, Black Prince, King Edward III, William Wallace, Wat Tyler, Roger Bacon, John Milton, Voltaire, as well as Devil, Satan, "Cancer", The Man Who Built the Pyramids, The Portrait of a Man who instructed Mr Blake in Painting &c in his Dreams, etc.

[3] Blake's biographer Alexander Gilchrist describes the meetings in the following manner: Varley would say, "Draw me Moses," or David; or would call for a likeness of Julius Caesar, or Cassibellaunus, or Edward the Third, or some other great historical personage.

At others, in the midst of his portrait, he would suddenly leave off, and, in his ordinary quiet tones and with the same matter-of-fact air another might say "It rains," would remark, "I can't go on,—it is gone!

The devil himself would politely sit in a chair to Blake, and innocently disappear; which obliging conduct one would hardly have anticipated from the spirit of evil, with his well-known character for love of wanton mischief.

"[3] John Varley left his account of these sessions that took place almost nightly, recording some dates and circumstances of the evenings.

To the latter it was a satisfaction to employ his faculty of vivid memory and imagination in the production of interesting characterizations of a variety of people... Blake sometimes drew them with such conviction that Varley seems to have regarded them as actual portraits.

These drawings – less imaginatively inspired, be it said, than Blake's more serious work – have a more-than-lifelike quality which bears witness, at least, to astonishing power of visual fantasy.

Among these lost are the visionary heads of King Alfred, Cleopatra, St. Dunstan, Edward IV; Eleanor (Queen of Edward I), Guy Fawkes, Henry I of England, Henry II of England, Hezekiah, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Founder of the Pyramids, Richard III, David Rizzio, Richard Duke of Normandy, Robert, Duke of Normandy, King Rufus, Semiramis, William Shakespeare and Wild Thyme.

Here see the engraving of Nebuchadnezzar Coin as Seen in a Vision by Mr. Blake (#709) and Head of Cancer (#751) The Sketchbook was sold by Christie's (London) to Mr. Allan Parker.

This was Spoke by My Spectre to Voltaire Bacon &c Did Jesus teach Doubt or did he Give any lessons of Philosophy Charge Visionaries with Deceiving Or call Men wise for not Believing