These Tiny Doodles May Be William Blake’s Earliest Engravings, Overlooked for Nearly 250 Years

Experts have discovered that doodles engraved on the reverse side of 18th-century printing plates may be the work of a young William Blake.

The British writer and artist is most famous for Songs of Innocence and Experience, a collection of poetry full of vivid illustrations. But long before that, he worked as a teenage apprentice at the studio of master engraver James Basire. Now, research from Oxford University’s Bodleian Libraries shows that the newly discovered scribbles may be the earliest engravings from Blake as he began to master the craft.

The markings have gone overlooked until now because they are hard to see—some are even invisible to the naked eye. Mark Crosby, a literary scholar at Kansas State University, discovered them using RCHiOx technology, which scans the surfaces of objects at over one million pixels per square inch. 

“These doodles reveal personal, intimate moments that were not intended to be seen by anyone other than the artist,” says Crosby, whose research will be published in the journals Print Quarterly and Blake Illustrated Quarterly, in a statement. “For the first time since they were made, we can now see the practice work and doodling of the young apprentice.”

The copper plates were originally made to illustrate the book Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain by antiquarian Richard Gough. After Gough’s death in 1809, they were gifted to the Bodleian Libraries.

Blake began working as an apprentice in 1772, when he was 15. He used the newly discovered plates as a sketch pad, filling them with “hatching, cross hatching, semi-circles and motifs”—building blocks for a young artist learning how to engrave, per the statement.

“Later in his life, in 1801, Blake referred to engraving as ‘drawing on copper,’” Crosby tells the London Times’ Jack Blackburn. “We get that sense of him drawing on copper with these doodles.”

Some etchings are more detailed, while others still appear to be the wandering doodles of a teenager. In one, the apprentice wrote the word “LONDON” with the “O” completely hatched in. Another reveals a tiny face made of two eyes, a partial nose and lips.

“When I first saw the face, it was a staggering moment. I almost fell off my chair,” Crosby tells Reuters’ Sachin Ravikumar and Marissa Davison. “I was looking back at something that had been made 250-odd years ago that hadn’t been seen before.”

After examining the plates alongside other materials at the Bodleian Libraries, Crosby concluded that the etchings were likely made by Blake. One plate contains a short-shafted arrow etching, a motif that often appears in Blake’s work. Similar arrows appear in watercolor paintings Blake created of John Milton’s Paradise Lost.

“I think he’s like any teenager, who possibly gets somewhat bored easily with doing this sort of very repetitious work, so he’s doodling away,” Crosby tells Reuters.

The new research is helping experts understand more about Basire’s studio and the young apprentice who worked there.

As the Bodleian Libraries write in the statement, “If it is indeed the work of William Blake, these engravings reveal previously unknown insights into the artistic and technical development of the artist at the very outset of his career.”

Julia Binswanger | READ MORE

Julia Binswanger is a freelance arts and culture reporter based in Chicago. Her work has been featured in WBEZ, Chicago magazine, Rebellious magazine and PC magazine.