Illustrations to Milton's "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity"

The poetry of John Milton was important to Blake as both poet and artist from his earliest years. As he told John Flaxman in a letter of 12 September 1800, "Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face" (Erdman page 707). Several early drawings, such as the Satan, Sin, and Death of c. 1780 (Butlin 101), were probably inspired by Milton. In 1790-92, Blake loosely sketched several illustrations to Paradise Lost in his Notebook (Butlin 201). He composed his first series of water colors illustrating one of Milton's poems in 1801 when the Rev. Joseph Thomas commissioned eight designs for Comus (Butlin 527). Thomas later acquired (very probably on commission) a set of twelve water color illustrations to Paradise Lost in 1807 (Butlin 529) and, in 1809, the six water colors illustrating "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity" presented here (Butlin 538). Between 1808 and 1815, Blake produced similar (but not in every respect identical) sets of the Paradise Lost and "Nativity" designs for Thomas Butts (Butlin 529, 542). The Butts set of the "Nativity Ode" water colors is now in the Huntington Library and Art Gallery.

Blake's interest in the "Nativity Ode" began some years before his execution of these water colors. His illuminated book, Europe a Prophecy (1794), clearly shows the influence of Milton's ode. By 1809, Blake may have taken a renewed interest in the poem because of his increasingly Christocentric theological views. His harsh criticism of classical civilization resonates with two of the "Nativity" designs, "The Old Dragon" and "The Overthrow of Apollo and the Pagan Gods" (objects 3 and 4). Modern critics have been hard pressed to find Blake dissenting from Milton's own iconography and perspectives in the ode.

Blake's literary response to the life and works of John Milton finds its fullest expression in the illuminated book Milton a Poem (c. 1804-10; see Related Works, below).