William Blake
Celebrated 18th-Century Romantic Painter, Poet, and Visionary
Though shunned and isolated in his own time, today he is celebrated as a revolutionary and mystic with a strong sense of personal vision.
Which artist was named:
The only painter of imaginative pictures, apart from landscape, that England has produced (by D. H. Lawrence)?
William Blake
William Blake (1757-1827) was an 18th-century English Romantic artist and poet significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. He produced work that is profoundly personal, combining poetry and painting in works that express his spiritual and philosophical beliefs.
Romanticism came about during the Industrial Revolution as a rebellion against the artistic movements that preceded it. Artistically, Romanticism stressed strong emotion, imagination, and freedom from classical correctness in art forms. It elevated folk art. It emphasized the raw emotions, even fears, felt when confronting the power of nature. Philosophically, Romanticism was a rebellion against what it viewed as restrictive and stifling social conventions. It was a rejection of the concepts of order, calm, balance, rationality, and the idealization that exemplifies Classicism and the Age of Reason.
William Blake typified the Romantic viewpoint. Blake was a disturbing prophet who desired social change. He believed the repressions of Christianity and Victorian England – which preached against indulgence in hedonistic and physical pleasures – meant a loss of imagination and denial of the joy of life. In effect, to him such teachings preached lack of imagination, repression of the spirit, and death of the soul. He despised attempts to buy eternal redemption in the next world through asceticism and self-denial in this one. He was a man of personal force who, in his artwork, made strong demands on the imaginations of his fellow humans.
His main and most original artworks were prints in which he blended text and imagery in a highly personal and never-to-be-repeated recreation of the art of the medieval illuminated manuscripts. In his mind, he never separated the poetry from the art: text and design are completely integrated into what he called “illuminated” printing. To Blake, all the arts offer insight into the metaphysical world and have the power to show humanity (which he believed had fallen into base materialism and sin) the way to redemption.
He displayed his artwork in hand-printed books that portrayed his highly personalized interpretation of living a life of Christ. For example, in his book "Songs of Innocence" (1789), a series of poems for children also act as meditations on the God-like qualities of the state of childhood. In 1794 he published them along with "Songs of Experience" which are, in contrast, his musings on the fallen state of humanity and the inner struggles of the soul. Each poem has an illustration to accompany the text; Blake also added designs and decorative borders, often with tiny figures and scenes that further explain the text. After printing, Blake delicately enhanced each illustration with watercolor.
Blake’s ideas were taken up in the 20th century by D. H. Lawrence, who was highly inspired by Blake’s art and writing. He made copies of Blake's works and called him "the exception" in what he considered Britain's depressingly bereft art history, further proclaiming him "the only painter of imaginative pictures, apart from landscape, that England has produced."
Today he is acclaimed as a kindred spirit by a wide variety of writers, rock-and-roll musicians, psychologists, devotees of eastern religions: rebels against repressions of all kinds. One of his most famous prints, "The Ancient of Days," can be seen in the British Museum in London.
Sources:
Bailey, Colin J. The Art Quiz Book: 2000+ Questions on Painters and Paintings. Station Press: Scotland, 1995.
Grove Dictionary of Art. Oxford University Press, 2007.
