“Young, blond, [and] curly-headed,” the nude of Newton “in some respects . . . resembles a Blakean hero” (fig. 1). His musculature tense, he stares intently at the diagram that is inscribed—in this second state of the scene, printed c. 1805—on the pale scroll still part-unfurled at his feet. As W. T. J. Mitchell notes, “[t]he figure of Newton is a perfect example of what Blake means by linear form,” something prized by his aesthetics: “the body is a clear, distinct, almost enamel-like entity, frontally composed (that is, placed parallel to the picture plane, not at an angle), and cleanly demarcated from its surroundings.” Yet there is a deafening quietness to this scene on the ocean’s floor, a stillness, if also a muffled flow, as those two, frond-like anemones posed beneath Newton’s seat appear to billow out, caught perhaps in some deep-sea current. Indeed there is a notable dynamism in the depiction of Newton’s environment, or at least, of the coralline mass on which he sits. This is manifest in the skilled and felicitous mottling of color and tacky surface generated by Blake’s unusual technique of planographic color printing with watercolor additions. Pen and ink point natural historical detail: rock or reef and sea floor; mineral and animal mixed with vegetable. The “coiled spiral” of the scroll might augur some movement yet to come—the slump of its material outwards, or its retraction inwards; it is hard to decide. Whether this dynamism also touches Newton is unclear. As our eyes rove, his focus is intense and exclusive; his torso crunches, bundling forwards, and his gaze is directed downwards, his entire attention engaged by the diagram at his foot.