| William Blake Visionary William Blake British poet, illustrator,draughtsman, engraver, writer and visionary. He completed (1779) his 7-year apprenticeshipas an engraver with James Basire, and engraving remained his basic livelihood. Blake also studied for a brief time at the R.A. In 1783 hemarried Catherine Boucher, his beloved andconstant companion. Friends such as the sculptor Flaxman supported the publication of Poetical Sketches (1783) but after Sony of Innocence (1789) Blake printed his own works by a process(duplicated in experiments by Ruthven Todd,S. W. Hayter and Joan Miro) of relief etchingof the text and the surrounding design, printing in coloured inks often with retouching inpaint. Another very successful technique wascolour printing by superimposed impressionsfrom millboard.
Blake lived mainly in London, butbetween 1800 and 1803 worked at Felpham,the estate of William Hayley, for whom Blake was engraving some poems. While he was atFelpham an argument with a soldier brought Blake on trial on a sedition charge, but he was acquitted. The poverty of his last years was relievedby the discipleship of such young painters asPalmer and Calvert, and commissions fromanother young friend, John Linnell, for Blake'sengravings of Illustrations of the Book of Job (1825) and 100-odd watercolours to Dante's Divine Comedy. All Blake's work is infused with hisintense imagination and visionary experiences;he claimed regular visits from heavenly emissaries. The powerful images of his engravingsand paintings display his admiration ofMichelangelo (e.g. in their distorted anatomy),Raphael and Durer; but he rejected the academic traditions represented by Reynolds andthe R.A. and the Venetian colourists, as at oncetoo vague and too material. His rebellionagainst accepted contemporary artistic theoriesparallels his political radicalism and religiousunorthodoxy. He rejoiced in the Frenchand American revolutions and his spiritualexplorations, and his disgust with injustice andhypocrisy strengthened by his contacts with theradical circle of Paine and Godwin, arereflected in the prose satire The Marriage ofHeaven and Hell (1790-3), the poem coll. Songs of Innocence and Experience (1789-94), and suchpoems as The French Revolution and America, aProphecy (1793). In Blake's religious system, God isa vengeful terrible power (Urizen); Jesus theembodiment of humanity (Ore); and thevirtues which derive from the human principlein its fullest and highest manifestation are Los,the male, Enitharmon, the female. Blake's worksinclude the long poems Milton (1840-8) and Jerusalem, The Emanation of the Giant Albion (1804; the verse prophetic books TheEverlasting Gospel (c. 1818), the Book of Thel (1789), The Song of Los and Vala or the Four Zoas (1797-1804). Source: The Thames and Hudson Dictionary of Art and Artists (World of Art) Biog. I BOOK Affiliate/Advertising policy. |
