WILLIAM BLAKE: BIOGRAPHY, STYLE AND WORK - ARTE - 2024

William Blake (1757-1827) was a British poet and visual artist. Although he did not enjoy fame and prestige during his life, he has long been considered one of the most prominent exponents in the poetry and visual art of Romanticism.

He has been considered an integral artist, since in his work he combined different techniques and plastic expressions with his verses. That is why many explain that each of the disciplines cannot be analyzed in isolation.

Thomas Phillips via Wikimedia Commons

He created a work full of symbolism. In his works, Blake proposed that the imagination was the body of God or human existence itself. He tried engraving techniques and with it managed to reproduce several illustrated books by himself.

In addition, he worked making engravings for famous texts by other authors. His work had not been so appreciated until thanks to the spread of the printing press his books were massively reproduced. It was then that it was possible to understand that in it the two disciplines were united and fed each other.

From an early age, Blake was attached to the teachings of the Bible and had some visions during childhood that caused a bit of unease in his family. His parents supported the boy's artistic inclinations from the beginning.

Instead of attending college, he entered a drawing school and later began to apprentice to an important printmaker of the time, named James Basire. Since then he has shown an interest in British history.

Then he entered the Royal Academy, where he had differences with Joshua Reynolds, who was the president of the school. Blake argued that painting should be exact, like the classics that he imitated in his childhood, while Reynolds claimed that the tendency to abstraction was laudable.

In the 1780s he began his formal work as an engraver in a shop that he opened with James Parker. Then he began to experiment with etching as a method of engraving.

He was the author of works such as Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794). Blake also embodied his visions in the texts and images of Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), The First Book of Urizen (1794), Milton and, finally, Jerusalem.

Biography

Early years

William Blake was born on November 28, 1757, in Soho, London. He was the third of seven children of James Blake and Catherine Wright. Of the couple's offspring, only five managed to reach adulthood.

James Blake was a stocking maker and his family hailed from Rotherhithe. His mother was descended from vassals of Walkeringham. For a time they had a well-off position but without excessive luxuries.

Catherine Wright had previously been married to a man named Thomas Armitage, together they had been part of the community of the Moravian Brotherhood, a pre-Lutheran Protestant church that had come to Britain from Germany.

However, Blake's mother's first son and first husband died early. A year later Wright met James Blake and they were married under the rite of the Church of England in 1752.

He received the first letters from his mother's hand, as was the custom at the time, and was briefly enrolled in an educational institution.

But later, instead of entering a college to continue his formal education, he preferred to attend a drawing school run by Henry Pars. Then the young William was dedicated to reading texts that he himself selected and that corresponded to his interests.

Artistic beginnings

In addition to being sent by their parents to the Henry Pars School of Drawing between 1767 and 1772, the Blakes also endorsed William's inclinations for drawing in other ways, such as buying the boy the reproductions he made at the time.

William Blake liked to imitate classical artists; in fact, at first he preferred to do that than create his original works. Some of the artists for whom he had the greatest admiration were Raphael and Michelangelo, whom he appreciated for their precision in representation.

In terms of poetry, some of the authors he visited in his readings were Ben Johnson, Edmund Spencer and the Bible, which had a lot of influence on his work.

Apprentice

Although William Blake would have preferred to be an apprentice to one of the English school painters that was in vogue, he had to settle for working together with an engraver, since the costs were much more affordable considering his father's budget..

Finally, after meeting with another engraver, Blake decided to join James Basire's workshop, who maintained a conservative line in his work, mainly related to architectural representation.

Blake lived in Basire's house between 1772 and 1779. During those years he learned everything related to the trade of engraving. So much was his progress that his teacher entrusted him with jobs such as copying the medieval monuments that were in Westminster Abbey.

Those drawings by Blake accompanied Richard Gough's book Sepulchral Monuments in Great Britain (vol. 1, 1786).

While he was studying the abbey, Blake had some of his visions in which he observed Christ along with his apostles in a procession, followed by religious who sang praises.

Royal Academy

From 1779 William Blake began his training at the Royal Academy. He did not have to pay anything in said institution, except his own work materials while he was in the academy.

During his time studying at the Royal Academy, Blake opposed the canon that was gaining momentum, which was that of little-finished works, a custom implemented by artists like Rubens, one of the institution's president's favorites, Joshua Reynolds.

For Reynolds "The disposition for abstraction, generalization and classification was the great glory of the human mind." Thus he thought that general beauty and general truth could be found, concepts that Blake flatly rejected.

Furthermore, it was Blake's view that details such as those used in classical works were what gave the work its true value. Despite this, it is known that William Blake delivered works to the Royal Academy between 1780 and 1808.

There he met other artists such as John Flaxman, George Cumberland or Thomas Stothard, who had radical views about the direction of art and together they joined the Society for Constitutional Information.

Race

Since completing his training as an engraver in 1779, William Blake dedicated himself to working independently. Some booksellers hired him to make copies of other artists' works. His employers included Joseph Johnson.

His first collection of poems, which he titled Poetic Drawings, was published in 1783. Blake also did work for the writer Johann Kasper Lavater, Erasmus Darwin, and John Gabriel Stedman.

William Blake via Wikimedia Commons

After the death of his father, William Blake opened a printing press in 1784. There he worked together with his former apprentice named James Parker. That same year he began the creation of a text called An Island in the Moon, which never finished.

Among the techniques he used was etching, which he began to implement in 1788. Thanks to that, he achieved some prestige and recognition at the time.

In addition, in the 1790s William Blake worked hard on a series of paintings and illustrations, such as one commissioned by John Flaxman for Thomas Gray's poems that comprised 116 designs.

In 1791 he was entrusted with the illustration of Mary Wollstonecraft's work entitled Original Stories from Real Life. That author was one of the most relevant feminists of the time. Although Blake worked on her book, it is not known if the two actually knew each other.

Felpham

In 1800 William Blake moved to Felphan in Sussex, where he stayed for a time, and began work in Milton.

William Blake via Wikimedia Commons

His move was due to the fact that he was invited by William Hayley to live on a small farm and work as his protégé. There, Blake made both prints and illustrations and paintings on different materials.

But Blake returned to London four years later and continued to work on his own prints and works.

Last years

When Blake was 65 he began his illustrations for the Book of Job, which was admired and later inspired other artists. At that time, Blake's illustrations became popular and began to generate some sales and profit.

At that time he was very close to John Linnell and through him he established a business relationship with Robert Thornton. Also in those years he met Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert, who eventually became Blake's disciples.

One of his main patrons of the time was Thomas Butts, who more than an admirer of Blake was his friend.

Additionally, William Blake began work on Dante, which was one of the best-accomplished works of his entire career as a printmaker. However, he was unable to complete the project as he passed away before achieving it.

William Blake via Wikimedia Commons

But some think that this work went beyond an illustration to accompany the text. It has been considered that it serves as annotations or comments on the poem of The Divine Comedy.

To some extent, Blake shared Dante's vision on different issues and so he used that work to create a detailed representation of the atmosphere that he conceived by reading the images described in it. He showed particular interest in making the images of Hell.

Death

William Blake died on August 12, 1827 in Strand, London. It is said that on the day of his death the artist spent much of his last hours working on the drawings for Dante's series.

Moments before he died, Blake asked his wife to pose right next to his bed and took a portrait of her as a thank you for how good she had been to him throughout their marriage. This portrait was lost.

Later he went into a trance state and one of his disciples stated regarding Blake's death that: “Just before he died his gaze became fair, his eyes shone and he burst out singing the things he saw in heaven. In truth, he died as a saint, as a person who was standing next to him watched.

He had his funeral in the Church of England, but was buried in Bunhull Fields, a nonconformist cemetery.

Personal life

William Blake married Catherine Sophia Boucher on August 18, 1782. She was a girl 5 years younger than him whom he met a year before their marriage.

After telling him how he had just been rejected by another girl whom he had asked in marriage, Blake asked Boucher if he felt sorry for him and when she answered yes, the artist replied that he loved her then.

Catherine was illiterate. However, over time she became one of the fundamental people both in the life and in the career of the English engraver. He taught her to read and write, and then showed her his craft as a printmaker, in which Catherine did very well.

William Blake is believed to have been part of a movement supporting free love during the 19th century. However, part of the sexual symbology of his work was later removed so that it could accommodate social canons.

Some say that he tried to have a concubine once, but there is no proof of that and until the moment of his death he maintained a very close and kind relationship with his wife.

The couple could not have children. After Blake's death, his wife claimed that she could see him, since he had taught her to have visions like the ones he had had since childhood.

Style

Engravings

Within the engravings, William Blake used to work with two methods, the first was the most widespread at the time, known as burin engraving. The artist had to excavate the shape on a copper plate.

This was a delicate process that took a long time and was not very profitable for artists, so some thought that this was the reason why Blake did not have great financial success during his life.

William Blake via Wikimedia Commons

His other technique was etching, this method was more innovative and with it he did most of his own work.

With etching, he would draw on metal plates using an acid-resistant material and then bathe the metal in acid and everything that had not been touched by the artist's brush would dissolve, creating a relief in the shape of the drawing.

Painting

If it had been possible for William Blake to dedicate himself solely to art, he probably would have. I used to paint in watercolor on paper. The motives he chose were generally related to the history of Great Britain or the Bible.

Then he began to represent his visions in the drawings he made. He had some great illustration commissions, however he never achieved fame for this work during his lifetime.

Literature

Despite not being his strong suit, William Blake also wrote poetry from a young age. His friends believed that he had a great talent for letters and they prompted him to start publishing some compositions, although he did not escape errors in his texts.

Later, Blake continued to publish his poems, but only with the technique of etching. He claimed that it had been revealed to him in a vision by his brother Robert. His texts are loaded with a mythology that Blake himself created.

Work

Main literary works

- Poetical Sketches (1783).

- An Island in the Moon (c. 1784).

- All Religions Are One (c. 1788).

- Tiriel (c. 1789).

- Songs of Innocence (1789).

- The Book of Thel (1789).

- The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (c. 1790).

- The French Revolution (1791).

- The Gates of Paradise (1793).

- Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793).

- America, A Prophecy (1793).

- Notebook (c. 1793 - 1818).

- Europe, A Prophecy (1794).

- The First Book of Urizen (1794).

- Songs of Innocence and Experience (1794).

William Blake via Wikimedia Commons

- The Book of Ahania (1795).

- The Book of Los (1795).

- The Song of Los (1795).

- Vala or The Four Zoas (c. 1796 - 1807).

- Milton (c. 1804 –1811).

- Jerusalem (c. 1804 –1820).

- The Ballads (1807).

- Descriptive Catalog of Pictures (1809).

- On Homer's Poetry On Virgil (c. 1821).

- The Ghost of Abel (c. 1822).

- "Laocoon" (c. 1826).

- For the Sexes: The Gates of Paradise (c. 1826).

Main series of drawings, watercolors for poetry

- Night Thoughts, Edward Young, 537 watercolors (c. 1794 - 96).

- Poems, Thomas Gray, 116 (1797-98).

- The Bible, 135 temperas (1799–1800) and watercolors (1800–09).

- Comus, John Milton, 8.

- The Grave, Robert Blair, 40 (1805).

- Job, 19 (1805; repeated in 1821 two additions).

- Plays, William Shakespeare, 6 (1806–09).

- Paradise Lost, Milton, 12 (1807 and 1808).

- "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", Milton, 6 (1809 and in 1815).

- "Il Penseroso", Milton, 8 (c. 1816).

- Paradise Regained, Milton, 12 (c. 1816-20).

- "Visionary Heads" (1818 - 25).

- Pilgrim's Progress, John Bunyan, 29 unfinished watercolors (1824–27).

- Manuscript of Genesis etching, 11 (1826–27).

Main series of engravings

- Large color prints, 12 (1795).

- Canterbury Pilgrims, Geoffrey Chaucer, 1 (1810).

- Book of Job, 22 (1826).

- Dante, 7 unfinished (1826–27).

References

1. GE Bentley (2018). William Blake - British writer and artist. Encyclopedia Britannica. Available at: britannica.com.
2. En.wikipedia.org. (2019). William Blake. Available at: en.wikipedia.org.
3. Frances Dias, S. and Thomas, G. (2018). William Blake Biography, Life & Quotes. The Art Story. Available at: theartstory.org.
4. Bbc.co.uk. (2014). BBC - History - William Blake. Available at: bbc.co.uk.
5. Gilchrist, A. and Robertson, W. (1907). The life of William Blake. London: John Lane, The Bodley Head.