Two days before the 243rd anniversary of William Blake’s birth, this week’s picture is The Ghost of a Flea, one of a number of “visionary portraits” that he drew and painted, late in life, under the encouragement of the watercolourist and astrologer John Varley.

Varley described how the artist came to create this image of bloodthirsty malignity. The “Personified Flea”, he wrote, was a spirit who “visited Blake’s imagination in such a figure as he never anticipated in an insect. As I was anxious to make the most correct investigation in my power of the truth of these visions, on hearing of this spiritual apparition of a Flea, I asked him if he could draw for me the resemblance of what he saw. He instantly said ‘I see him now before me.’ I therefore gave him paper and a pencil, with which he drew the portrait… I felt convinced, by his mode of proceeding, that he had a real image before him; for he left off, and began on another part of the paper to make a separate drawing of the mouth of the Flea, which the spirit having opened, he was prevented from proceeding with the first sketch till he had closed it.”

As Blake worked, he conversed with the being he claimed to see before him, much as any portrait painter might chat with his subject. “The Flea told him that all fleas were inhabited by the souls of such men as were by nature bloodthirsty to excess, and were therefore providentially confined to the size and form of insects; otherwise, were he himself, for instance, the size of a horse, he would depopulate a great portion of the country.” Having imparted this reassuring information to the artist, the vision disappeared. Blake continued to work on...

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