KALEIDOSCOPIC SENSES: LANDSCAPE WRITING AND THE ART OF CHIAROSCURO IN WILLIAM BECKFORD (1760-1844)
The eye that can prefer the Colouring of Titian and Rubens to that of Michael Angelo and Rafael, ought to be modest and to doubt its own powers. (...) Colouring does not depend on where the Colours are put, but on where the lights and darks are put, and all depends on Form or Outline, on where that is put (.../ 1
The illustrations are reproduced with kind permission from The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.
It may seem slightly masochistic, and therefore Beckfordian, to choose William Beckford of Fonthill Abbey to discuss the role and significance of colours. The colours conjured up by the world of Vathek and Fonthill Abbey are few and far between. Vathek, the only work that comes to the mind of those who actually know about Beckford, is lacking in colours, despite its "exactness of [Oriental] costume", as Byron put it. Isaac Taylor's engraved frontispiece for the 1815 edition of Vathek or Richard Westall's print for the 1823 edition are monochrome. One is left wondering why Beckford did not commission colour prints from William Blake (1757-1827) whose patron he was. There is one
1 W. Blake. "Descriptive Catalogue of Pictures, Poetical and Historical Inventions, painted by William Blake in Water-Colours, being the ancient method of fresco painting restored : and drawings, for public inspection". London : J. Blake. 1809 in Complete Writings, ed. G. Keynes, OUP, 1959. 563-564. Beckford owned the F copy of this rare 1809 catalogue which was sold at the Hamilton Place Sale, 1882. (lot 957).
