To W. Blake , the rationality and attention to surfaces of the English social portrait encapsulated deadening Newtonian materialism; true vision is inward rather than empirical. So, in his 60s, Blake painted his riposte to the English face-painters: the portrait of the spirit, or ghost, of a flea.
Blake's flea is evil, gothic, stalking through a starry realm between stage curtains - walking the boards. The ghost's spine is a throbbing, gristly column shooting into his scaly head with its bulging eyes and voracious tongue; his massive muscles are red-toned, as if infused with dried blood, and his loping, crushing walk is that of a colossus come to life. This vastness and mad-eyed bestiality contrasts with the visible form of the spirit's physical embodiment, which can be seen on the floor between his veined legs: a little flea.
Blake's explanation of the spirit he saw accords with the painting's extreme drama of scale, the contrast of the huge invisible monster with its tiny incarnation as insect. The blood-drinking household flea, said Blake, is in fact the physical shape taken by the souls of men who are so bloodthirsty that they are providentially confined to the size and form of insects.
The ghost is gorging on a bowl of blood. This is Blake's ultimate critique of the English portrait.
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