ANALYSIS of The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
Denada Permatasari. 9 September 2017.
Fig 1. William Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and The Woman Clothed with the Sun, circa 1803-5.
Fig 2. Under the same title and artist, circa 1800.
In this essay I will talk about just two out of four of Blake’s The Red Dragon series. The first painting (Fig. 1) was done in watercolour, chalk, and pen. Its dimension is 43.5 x 34.5 cm and was made circa 1803-5. The second (Fig. 2) was done in watercolour and its size is 15.75 x 12.75” (40 x 32.4 cm), made circa 1800. Currently, they are exhibited at different museums.
Both paintings are a part of a larger series, namely Apocalypse, commissioned by Thomas Butts. He commissioned Blake to illustrate biblical passages (Rosenblum and Janson 60), and the first Great Red Dragon painting (Fig. 1) in this essay are a representation of Revelations 12 verse 1-4 (qtd. in Lister 89):
1And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars;
2And she being with child cried, travailing in birth, and pained to be delivered.
3And there appeared another wonder in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads.
4And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth; and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born.
I immediately note that Blake painted the dragon not as a conventional, fully-reptilian dragon but instead as a half-human, half-something else. Further research tells me that the winged, impressive figure is the devil, Satan (Hoagwood 3). The woman was painted brightly, as she is clothed with the sun, but oddly, she is in an unusual, unnatural horizontal pose. She looks up at him, shocked, as if she is in the middle of praying (shown by her hands above head) and then got interrupted by Satan’s unexpected presence. The devil also dominates the artwork, taking up two-thirds of the space, his outstretched wings going beyond the canvas.
I interpret this as Blake wanting to exert the power, the utter dominance of Satan against the bright woman below him, a show of good versus evil, and evil is winning. But the story obviously doesn’t end there, as I will get into the second painting and then conclude the paintings as a whole after I analyse them separately beforehand.
The second painting (Fig. 2) shows the devil now hovering above her, as a continuation of Revelations 12, verse 13-16 (New International Version):
13When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child.
14The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach.
15Then from his mouth the serpent spewed water like a river, to overtake the woman and sweep her away with the torrent.
16But the earth helped the woman by opening its mouth and swallowing the river that the dragon had spewed out of his mouth.
Now, the woman is in the possession of new eagle wings, and has her arms outstretched wide open, as if challenging the devil. The zig-zag lines around the woman are the river spewed from his mouth, but obviously it fails to drown to woman as he intended. The devil is still above the woman, but he no longer dominates the canvas, signifying the changed power dynamic between the two forces.
Knowing now that the paintings are chronological (even though Blake made the second painting earlier), I will say that Blake illustrates that at first glance, evil has the upper hand, but at the end, goodness triumphs. While this meaning is okay, I decided to further my research to include the artist and the time period, and my findings give me a deep insight that I didn’t expect.
First, I learned that Blake is “a private rebel who wished to refect virtually the entire system of art, society and religion … in favor of a grandiose private structure of new myths, new moral truths … of what he saw as the corrupt status quo.” (Rosenblum and Janson 59). His use of watercolour indicates that aspect rebellious aspect of Blake, as oil was the standard of creating art in his time era (mid-18th century Romanticism), as explained that Blake “rejected the formal and descriptive formulae of early nineteenth-century painting.” (Maheux 125) and he “vehemently opposed to oils—they did not please him or comport with his style” (Gilchrist 369).
Second, the social and political context during the time both paintings were produced. Blake witnessed and even taken part in the American and French revolutions that happened around 1800. Blake and most artists of his time considered those events as “a scriptural metaphor of what [was happening in that time] –a period of devastating and high-minded revolutions, of radical change …” (Rosenblum and Janson 60). He painted his version of Revelations as a representation of the fundamental shift in worldview that was happening, and this is further compounded by his religious upbringing.
Last but not least, in response of my initial understanding of placement and how it relates to power dynamics: The devil above, and woman below, is actually a recurring motif in Blake’s works, not necessarily a power show. The seer/visionary subject is placed below, with their visions above them (Hoagwood 1). This denounces my first understanding of the positioning choice of the subjects. Blake transformed a literal passage into a mythical one, “[his] vision destroys matter, leaving nothing but bolts of imaginative energy” (Rosenblum and Janson 60).
To finish, I conclude that The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun paintings reveals the historical attitude during the revolution era that was tightly interwoven with religious concerns, and also a novel way of depicting religious morality. The paintings make me realise that our perception of reality is deeply coloured by our upbringing and cultural values. Differences in interpretation will happen no matter what, hence this difference should be celebrated as it enriches my (and to an extension everyone’s) understanding of the world.
Rosenblum, Robert and H.W. Janson. 19th Century Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 1984. Print.
Lister, Raymond. The Paintings of William Blake. Cambridge University Press, 1986. Print.
The Bible. New International Version, 2011.
Hoagwood, Terence Allan. “Pictorial Apocalypse: Blake’s ‘Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun’”. Colby Quarterly 21.1. March 1985. < http://digitalcommons.colby.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2577&context=cq>
Maheux, Anne. “An Analysis of the Watercolor Technique and Materials of William Blake”. Blake/An Illustrated Quarterly 17.4. Spring 1984. < http://bq.blakearchive.org/17.4.maheux>
Gilchrist, Alexander. The Life of William Blake. Volume 1. London: Mac-Millan and Co., 1863. Print.
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