Weekly Classics Discussions

William Blake

Special thanks to Lavandula09 for the recommendation.

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.”

~ William Blake

William Blake (1757–1827), one of the greatest poets in the English language, as well as the most original visual artists of the Romantic era was born in the Soho district of London on November 28,1757 into a working-class family with strong nonconformist religious beliefs.

The Bible had an early, profound influence on Blake, and it would remain a lifetime source of inspiration, coloring his life and works with intense spirituality.

He briefly attended school, being chiefly educated at home by his mother. Blake's artistic ability also became evident while he was still a child. At age ten he was enrolled in Henry Pars drawing school, where he learned to sketch the human figure by copying from plaster casts of ancient statues. His father encouraged his interest and even bought him some casts of his own. The influence of his early exposure to Greek and Roman sculpture can be seen in Blake's later work.

Blake served a five-year apprenticeship with the commercial engraver James Basire before entering the Royal Academy Schools as an engraver at the age of twenty-two. This conventional training was tempered by private study of medieval and Renaissance art. Blake sought to emulate the example of artists such as Raphael, Michelangelo, and Dürer in producing timeless, “Gothic” art, infused with Christian spirituality and created with poetic genius.

Blake threw his energies into developing his career as an engraver, opening a short-lived print shop with a fellow Basire apprentice (James Parker) in 1784, before striking out on his own.

The great advance in Blake’s printmaking occurred in 1787. Blake discovered his wholly original method of “relief etching”—which creates a single, raised printing surface for both text and image. Relief etching allowed Blake to control all aspects of a book’s production: he composed the verses, designed the illustrations (preparing word and image almost simultaneously on the same copper printing plate), printed the plates, colored each sheet by hand (where necessary), and bound the pages together in covers. The resulting “illuminated books” were written in a range of forms—prophecies, emblems, pastoral verses, biblical satire, and children’s books—and addressed various timely subjects—poverty, child exploitation, racial inequality, tyranny, religious hypocrisy. Not surprisingly, these works rank among Blake’s most celebrated achievements.

Blake’s technical experiments of the 1790s culminated in a series of large color prints notable for their massive size and iconic designs. Unaccompanied by any text, they comprise his most ambitious work as a visual artist. Blake described his technique as “fresco.” It appears to be a form of monotype: using oil and tempera paints mixed with chalks, Blake painted the design onto a flat surface, from which he pulled the prints simply by pressing a sheet of paper against the damp paint. He finished the designs in ink and watercolor, making each—rare—impression unique.

For the rest of his life, Blake continued to develop his art on an inward-looking, imaginative trajectory. Blake sought his subjects in journeys of the mind. In addition to the Bible and his own writings, Blake drew on other texts—most notably, Dante and found a seemingly inexhaustible source of inspiration in his own fertile mind.

Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake's work is today considered seminal and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual arts. Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity, and the philosophical and mystical currents that underlie his work.

Some of his notable works are : Songs of Innocence and of Experience, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Four Zoas, Jerusalem, Milton, "And did those feet in ancient time".

In the final years of his life, Blake suffered from recurring bouts of an undiagnosed disease that he called "that sickness to which there is no name." He died on August 12, 1827, leaving unfinished watercolor illustrations to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress and an illuminated manuscript of the Bible's Book of Genesis.
In death, as in life, Blake received short shrift from observers, and obituaries tended to underscore his personal idiosyncrasies at the expense of his artistic accomplishments.

Discussion Questions :

Which of William Blake's works is your favourite? What do you like about it?

If you compare your creative process to that of Blake's, what all similarities or dissimilarities do you find?

William Blake often compares the point of view of a child to that of an adult, emphasising that children have an innocence that adults have lost.To what extent do you agree or disagree?

Always open to additional comments and discussions on William Blake and his works.

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Resources:
Wikipedia: William Blake 
Goodreads : William Blake
William Blake : The MET