BLAKE IN 1820

Wikipedia Commons Mrs Q 1820

Description from British Museum:

"Mrs.Q is probably the best known decorative print executed by William Blake, primarily due to the large number of facsimile reproduction impressions which were printed of this image in 1806. William Blake’s engraving is based upon a portrait by Francois Huet Villiers. The subject of Mrs.Q is Harriet Quentin, the wife of colonel Quentin and mistress to George IV when Prince Regent. The view in the background is thought to be the Thames at Eton, with the college chapel beyond. The miniature portraitist Villiers had died in 1813, thus this portrait must have had been drawn or painted at least seven years prior to the publication of this plate."

Blake was dependent on commercial engraving for earning a living. There was too little market for his output of creative books to sustain him economically. In 1821 he and Catherine moved to smaller and cheaper flat and he was forced to sell his collection of prints which he had been accumulating since his childhood.

A welcome source of income was the commission in 1820 to engrave a painting which had been created by a popular court painter Francois Villers-Huet. The subject of the portrait was Mrs Q, Harriet Quentin, who had been mistress of George IV when he was Prince Regent. The painter had died seven years previously and George IV had ascended to the throne in 1820 on his father's death.

The publication and circulation of this print was part of the campaign of radical dissent focused on the new king because of his reputation for extravagance and dissolution.

From The Stranger from Paradise: A biography of William Blake By G. E. Bentley Jr:
"One of the ways to plague the Prince Regent was to publicize his infidelities. Another of his mistresses was Mrs Harriet Quentin, often referred to as 'Mrs Q'. The radical print-seller Isaac Barrow commissioned Blake to engrave a portrait by H Villiers of the pretty Mrs Q, and his print was published on 1 June 1820 at the height of the agitation concerning Caroline' attempts (vain, as it turned out) to attend the coronation and assume her title as Queen. Blake was on the fringe of the sensational event and acting as the agent of a notoriously radical print-seller." (Page 365)

In Blake, Politics, and History, edited by Jackie DiSalvo, G. A. Rosso, Christopher Z. Hobson we read:

"While Blake has often been pictured as mellowing as he grew older, the context of his Mrs Q plate suggests that the sixty-two year old artist was caught up, willy-nilly, in the latest phase of English radical activism." 

Jerusalem, Plate 9, (E 152) 
"His hammer of gold he siezd; and his anvil of adamant.

He siez'd the bars of condens'd thoughts, to forge them:
Into the sword of war: into the bow and arrow:                   
Into the thundering cannon and into the murdering gun
I saw the limbs form'd for exercise, contemn'd: & the beauty of
Eternity, look'd upon as deformity & loveliness as a dry tree:
I saw disease forming a Body of Death around the Lamb
Of God, to destroy Jerusalem, & to devour the body of Albion     
By war and stratagem to win the labour of the husbandman:
Awkwardness arm'd in steel: folly in a helmet of gold:
Weakness with horns & talons: ignorance with a rav'ning beak!
Every Emanative joy forbidden as a Crime:
And the Emanations buried alive in the earth with pomp of religion:          
Inspiration deny'd; Genius forbidden by laws of punishment:
I saw terrified; I took the sighs & tears, & bitter groans:
I lifted them into my Furnaces; to form the spiritual sword.
That lays open the hidden heart: I drew forth the pang
Of sorrow red hot: I workd it on my resolute anvil:              
I heated it in the flames of Hand, & Hyle, & Coban
Nine times; Gwendolen & Cambel & Gwineverra
Are melted into the gold, the silver, the liquid ruby,
The crysolite, the topaz, the jacinth, & every precious stone,
Loud roar my Furnaces and loud my hammer is heard:               
I labour day and night, I behold the soft affections
Condense beneath my hammer into forms of cruelty
But still I labour in hope, tho' still my tears flow down.
That he who will not defend Truth, may be compelld to defend
A Lie: that he may be snared and caught and snared and taken     
That Enthusiasm and Life may not cease: arise Spectre arise!"