Fit Audience Tho Many: Pullman’s Blake and the Anxiety of Popularity

Abstract

In 1807 Thomas Phillips’ portrait of William Blake hung in the ‘Anti-Room’ at the Royal Academy exhibition at Somerset House. It portrays a gentleman artist in frilled shirt, with a strangely abstracted look. Although his portrait occupied a central position, Blake’s identities as artist and as writer were scarcely secure within either London or national culture. Less than three years later, however, this portrait was reproduced in a set of twelve silver buttons to mark the Jubilee of George III’s reign. The other eleven buttons make surprising company for the visionary artist: along with ‘William Blake’, the handsome presentation box provides ‘Queen Charlotte and George III’ together on a button, and single buttons for ‘Edmund Burke’, ‘Horace Walpole’, ‘Nelson’, ‘Wellington’, ‘Pitt, Earl of Chatham’, ‘Charles James Fox’, ‘Wilberforce’, ‘Warren Hastings’, ‘James Watt’ and ‘Adam Smith’. The engraved heads are identified on the buttons and come with buckles carrying the words: ‘Britain Grand Jubilee 1809’ (Epstein and Saffro, 60). According to Epstein and Saffro, the eighteenth century is ‘without doubt the golden age of the button’ (24). From the 1730s onwards, buttons provide personal ornament at relatively small expense.