Richard Hamilton, “He Foresaw His Pale Body”, 1990, Photo Etching, Aquatint and Engraving on Paper, 51.8 x 37.5 cm, Tate Museum
Richard Hamilton’s project to illustrate “Ulysses” began in the late 1940′s and to date comprises seven etchings and a digital print “The Heaventree of Stars”. In 1981 he made the decision to create one illustration for each of the novel’s eighteen chapters and a nineteenth image of Leopold Bloom destined as a frontispiece.
In this version, which was to form the basis for the final heliogravure print owned by the Tate Museum, the Richard Hamilton inverted and foreshortened Bloom’s body in a pose reminiscent of Andrea Mantegna’s famous image of the “Dead Christ” painted in 1480. As Hamilton explained: ‘The key word “foresaw” demands an interior perspective, foreshortened as though seen from an inner eye’.
‘He foresaw his pale body reclined in it at full, naked, in a womb of warmth, oiled by scented melting soap, softly laved’ -Joyce, “Ulusses”
The image shows a bath viewed from above and behind, so that the taps are at the top of the page, partially cropped out of the image. Bloom lies in the bath, his naked body extending down the page from his feet, just below the taps, to his upper body and shoulders filling the bath at the bottom of the picture, crowned by an aerial view of his bald head. The area around the bath is dark and empty; the colour is all in the flesh tones of Bloom’s body and the brass yellow of the taps. A round yellow object, half concealed under Bloom’s right knee, recalls the yellow flower with no scent that Bloom receives in the letter from his erotic correspondent Martha Clifford, as described in the ‘Lotus Eaters’ episode of Joyce’s novel.
For this etching, a few adjustments were made to the original composition: a greater part of Bloom’s right hand was raised out of the water; the alignment of the bath taps was reversed and the chain of the bathplug was lengthened so that a section appears to sit on the floor of the bath. By cropping the top of the taps, Hamilton creates a sense of the intimacy of internal contemplation; at the same time the viewer looks down at Bloom’s body from an external position, evoking an out-of-body experience.