William Blake

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William Blake

William Blake (1807)William Blake (November 28, 1757 â€“ August 12, 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Though largely unrecognised during his lifetime, today Blake's work, produced in partnership with his wife Catherine, is widely known. According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's entire poetic opus, his prophetic poems form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the [English] language". Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, in particular his engravings: "[Blake] is far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced" [1]. In recent years, a memorial was erected for him and his wife.

However, viewing Blake's accomplishments in either poetry or in the visual arts separately is to do him a disservice; Blake himself saw these two disciplines as being companions in a unified spiritual endeavour, and they are inseparable in a proper appreciation of his work. His life is, perhaps, summed up by his statement that "The imagination is not a State: it is the Human existence itself"; though this alone does not do justice to the originality of his thought, nor the determination with which he pursued it.

Early life

Childhood and Family Blake was born at 28a Broad Street, Golden Square, London into a middle-class family. He was one of four children (an older brother died in infancy). His father was a hosier. They were Dissenters and are believed to have belonged to the Moravian sect. The Bible was an early and profound influence on Blake, and would remain a crucial source of inspiration throughout his life.

From a young age Blake saw visions. The earliest certain instance was when he was at the age of about eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, when he saw a tree filled with angels "bespangling every bough like stars." According to Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home and reported this vision, and only escaped a thrashing from his father by the intervention of his mother. Though all the evidence suggests that Blake's parents were supportive and of a broadly liberal bent, his mother seems to have been especially supportive; several of Blake's early drawings and poems decorated the walls of her chamber.

On another occasion, Blake beheld the haymakers at work, and saw angelic figures walking among them. It is possible that other visions occurred before these incidents: in later life, Blake's wife Catherine would recall to him the time he beheld God's head "put to the window". The vision, Catherine reminded her husband, "set you ascreaming" (543, Blake Record, ed. Bentley Jr., Oxford, 1969).

Blake began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father (a further indication of the support they lent their son), a practice that was then preferred to real-life drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms, through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Martin Hemskerck and Albrecht DÃ¼rer (Blake Record, 422). His parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but was instead enrolled in drawing classes. He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake was also making explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser. If nothing else, we can attest of young Blake a rare precocity.

Apprenticeship to Basire

On the 4th August, 1772, Blake became apprenticed to an engraver, James Basire of Great Queen Street, for the term of seven years. At the end of this period, at the age of twenty-one, he was to become a professional engraver.

Basire seems to have been a kind master to Blake: there is no record of any serious disagreement between the two during the period of Blake's apprenticeship. However, Ackroyd's biography notes that Blake was later to add Basire's name to a list of artistic adversaries - and then cross it out (43, Blake, Peter Ackroyd, Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995). This aside, Basire's style of engraving was unfortunately of a kind held to be old-fashioned at the time, and Blake's instruction in this outmoded form may have had a detrimental effect on his struggles to acquire recognition or even work in later life.

After two years Basire sent him to copy images from the Gothic churches in London (it is possible that this task was set in order to break up a quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprentice). It was Blake's experiences in Westminster Abbey in particular that first informed his artistic ideas & style. It must be remembered that the Abbey was a different environment entirely from its more sombre modern aspect: it was festooned with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies and varicoloured waxworks. Ackroyd notes that 'the most immediate [impression] would have been of faded brightness and colour' (44, Blake, Ackroyd). During the many long afternoons Blake spent sketching in the cathedral,he was occasionally interrupted by the boys of Westminster School, one of whom "tormented" Blake so much one afternoon that he knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence." Another, less violent tale may be related; Blake beheld more visions in the Abbey, of a great procession of monks and priests, while he heard "the chant of plain-song and chorale".

The Royal Academy

In 1779, Blake became a student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House, near the Strand. The terms of his study required him to make no payment; he was, however, required to supply his own materials throughout the six-year period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens, championed by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynold's attitude to art, especially his pursuit of 'general truth' and 'general beauty'. During an address given by Reynolds in which he maintained that the tendency to abstraction is "the great glory of the human mind", Blake reportedly responded "to generalise is to be an idiot to particularize is alone the distinction of merit". Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of hypocrisy. Against Reynold's fashionable oil painting, Blake preferred the Classical exactness of his early influences, Michelangelo and Raphael.

In July 1780, Blake was walking towards Basire's shop in Great Queen Street when he was swept up by a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate Prison in London. The mob were wearing blue cockades (ribbons) on their caps, to symbolise solidarity with the insurrection in the American colonies. They attacked the prison gates with shovels and pickaxes, before setting the building ablaze. The rioters then clambered onto the roof of the prison and tore away at it, releasing the prisoners inside. Blake was reportedly in the very front rank of the mob during this attack, though it is unlikely that he was forced into attendance. More likely, according to Ackroyd, he accompanied the crowd impulsively.

These riots were in response to a parliamentary bill designed to advance Roman Catholicism. This disturbance, later known as the Gordon Riots after Lord George Gordon (whose Protestant Association incited the riots) provoked a flurry of legislation from the government of George III, as well as the creation of the first police force.

Marriage

In 1782 Blake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron. In the same year he met Catherine Boucher. At the time, Blake was recovering from an unhappy relationship which had ended with a refusal of his marriage proposal. Telling Catherine and her parents the story, she expressed her sympathy, whereupon Blake asked her 'Do you pity me?'. To Catherine's affirmative response he himself responded 'Then I love you.' Blake married Catherine - who was five years his junior - on 18th August 1782 in St Mary's Church, Battersea. An illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. Later, as well as teaching Catherine to read and write, Blake trained her as an engraver; throughout his life she would prove an invaluable aide to him, helping to print his illuminated works and maintaining his spirits following his numerous misfortunes.

At this time, George Cumberland - one of the founders of the National Gallery - became an admirer of Blake's work. Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches, was also published, circa 1783. After his father's death, William and brother Robert opened a print shop in 1784 and began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson. At Johnson's house he met some of the leading intellectual dissidents of the time in England, including Joseph Priestley, scientist; Richard Price, philosopher; John Henry Fuseli, painter whom he became friends with; Mary Wollstonecraft, an early feminist; and Thomas Paine, American revolutionary. Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin, Blake had great hopes for the American and French revolution and wore a red liberty cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in the French revolution.

Mary Wollstonecraft became a close friend, and Blake illustrated her Original Stories from Real Life (1788). They shared similar views on sexual equality and the institution of marriage. In 1793's Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfillment. In 1788 - at the age of thirty-one - Blake began to experiment with relief etching, which was the method used to produce most of his books of poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and final products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts. He then etched the plates in acid in order to dissolve away the untreated copper and leave the design standing. The pages printed from these plates then had to be hand-colored in water colors and stitched together to make up a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for four of his works: the Songs of Innocence and Experience, The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem.

Blake's Newton is a demonstration of his opposition to the 'single-vision' of scientific materialism: the great philosopher-scientist is shown utterly isolated in the depths of the ocean, his eyes (only one of which is visible) fixed on the compasses with which he draws on a scroll. His concentration is so fierce that he seems almost to become part of the rocks upon which he sits. (1795) Later life and career

Blake's A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a GallowsBlake's marriage to Catherine remained a close and devoted one until his death. There were early problems, however, such as Catherine's illiteracy and the couple's failure to produce children. At one point, in accordance with the beliefs of the Swedenborgian Society, Blake suggested bringing in a concubine. Catherine was distressed at the idea, and Blake promptly withdrew it.

Around the year 1800 Blake moved to a cottage at Felpham in Sussex (now West Sussex) to take up a job illustrating the works of William Hayley, a poet. It was in this cottage that Blake wrote Milton: a Poem (which was published later between 1805 and 1808). Over time, Blake came to dislike the relationship he had with his new patron, whom he saw - with arguable justification - as delivering commissions that were beneath his (Blake's) ability.

Blake returned to London in 1802 and began to write and illustrate Jerusalem (1804-1820). He was introduced by George Cumberland to a young artist named John Linnell. Through Linnell he met Samuel Palmer, who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves the Shoreham Ancients. This group shared Blake's rejection of modern trends and his belief in a spiritual and artistic New Age. At the age of sixty-five Blake began work on illustrations for the Book of Job. These works were later admired by John Ruskin, who compared Blake favourably to Rembrandt.

Blake abhorred slavery and believed in racial and sexual equality. Several of his poems and paintings express a notion of universal humanity: 'As all men are alike (tho' infinitely various)'. He retained an active interest in social and political events for all his life, but was often forced to resort to cloaking social idealism and political statements in protestant mystical allegory. Blake rejected all forms of imposed authority; indeed, he was charged with assault and uttering seditious and treasonable expressions against the King in 1803 but was cleared in the Chichester assizes of the charges. [These charges were brought by a soldier (and his friends) after Blake had bodily removed him from his garden. According to a report in the Sussex county paper, "the invented character of (the evidence) was ... so obvious that an acquittal resulted." (Cited in E.V. Lucas's 'Highways and Byways in Sussex', published in 1904.)] Blake's views on what he saw as oppression and restriction of rightful freedom extended to the Church. Blake was himself a follower of Unitarian philosophy. His spiritual beliefs are evidenced in Songs of Experience (in 1794), in which Blake showed his own distinction between the Old Testament God, whose restrictions he rejected, and the New Testament God (Jesus Christ), whom he saw as a positive influence.

Later in his life Blake began to sell a great number of his works - particularly his Bible illustrations, to Thomas Butts - a patron who saw Blake more as a friend rather than a man whose work held any particular artistic merit; this was almost typical of the opinions held of Blake throughout his life.

Blake's legacy

Blake had been taken severely ill in the spring and summer of 1825, wracked with shivering fits. In March of 1827, his brother James died. In April of the same year, Blake believed himself to "have been very near the Gates of Death"; yet despite this recognition of the coming end, he remained fiery in spirit, stating that "[I am] very weak ... but not in Spirit & in Life, not in The Real Man The Imagination which Liveth for Ever" (Keynes (ed.), The Letters of William Blake, Oxford, 1980). In late June, after an apparent return of good health, he made a journey to Hampstead; soon afterward he suffered a relapse, and John Linnell, who visited him in August, noted in his diary that William was 'not expected to live'.

Dante's Inferno

Even close to death, Blake's greatest mental occupation was in his art. He worked furiously on the illustrations to Dante's Inferno, and one of the very last shillings in his possession was spent on a pencil to allow him to continue sketching (Blake Records, 341).

The commission for Dante's Infero came to Blake in 1826 through John Linnell, with the ultimate aim of producing a series of engravings. However, Blake's death in 1827 would cut short the enterprise, and only a handful of the watercolours are finished, with only seven of the engravings arriving at proof form. Even so, they are considered worthy of praise:

'[T]he Dante watercolours are among Blake's richest achievements, engaging fully with the problem of illustrating a poem of this complexity. The mastery of watercolour has reached an even higher level than before, and is used to extraordinary effect in differentiating the atmosphere of the three states of being in the poem' (Bindman, David, 'Blake as a Painter' in The Cambridge Guide to William Blake, Morris Eaves (ed.), Cambridge, 2003, 106)

As always, it would be incorrect to see Blake's illustration of the poem as simply that: rather, the manner of illustration - as in those to Milton's Paradise Lost - has been utilised in way of critically revising or correcting the spiritual flaws of the text. In the case of Milton, Blake worked to correct Milton's 'mistake' in making Satan the central figure in the epic (this is despite Blake's famous, praiseful assertion when younger that Milton 'was of the Devil's party without knowing it'); for example, in Satan Watching the Endearments of Adam and Eve (1808) Satan occupies an isolated position at the picture's top, with Adam and Eve held separate below. As if to emphasize the effects of the juxtaposition, Blake has shown Adam and Eve caught in an embrace, whereas Satan may only onanistically caress the serpent, whose identity he is close to assuming.

In the case of Dante, the incompleteness of the watercolour series forces the recognition that we may not know exactly the revisions intended for this work by Blake. However, some indicators remain. Pencilled in the margin of Homer Bearing the Sword, and His Companions is: "Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost". This marks Blake's dissent from Dante's admiration for the poetic works of pagan Greeks, and for the apparent pleasurable zeal with which Dante allots punishments in Hell (demonstrated somewhat in the cantos' frequent grim humour). He also appears to be criticising Dante's apparent fealty to the 'fallen' world of feminine Nature as being a hindrance to the acquirement of a perfect imaginative state through creative union between the subject and the world they inhabit, as Frye helps to clarify:

'The material world is feminine to the perceiver; it is the body which receives the seed of [the artist's] imagination, and the works of imagination which are the artist's children are drawn from that body. ... But as the artist develops he becomes more and more interested in the art and more and more impatient of the help he receives from nature. ... Nature, in simpler language, is Mother Nature, and in the perfect imaginative state there is no mother. The fall of man began with the appearance of an independent object-world, [bringing about an eventual] helpless dependence on Mother Nature for our ideas.' (Frye, Northtop, Fearful Symmetry: A Study of William Blake, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1969, 74-75) Yet at the same time, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and the ability of power to corrupt, and clearly relished the challenge of representing the atmosphere and imagery of Dante's work pictorially.

Blake's radical beliefs

Blake was a strong libertarian, with a deep hate of the tyranny that was rife during his lifetime. This is reflected strongly in his poems 'Songs of Innocence and Experience', where he portrays upper class institutions and the Church of England as corrupt and exploiters of the weak in society. He dreamed of an idyllic England, free from corruption, which is mirrored in 'The Echoing Green'. However, the impending tyranny in the poem shows that even he doubted that England would be free.

Blake's death

Blake's grave in LondonOn the day of his death Blake remained relentlessly working on the Dante series. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are - I will draw your portrait - for you have ever been an angel to me." Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses; it is reported also that he spoke to his wife, telling her that he would remain with her always (Ackroyd, Blake, 389). At six that evening, he died. Gilchrist reports that a female lodger in the same house, who had been present at his expiration, said "I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed angel" (Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, London, 1863, 405).

George Richmond gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to Samuel Palmer:

"He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ - Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven" (Grigson, Samuel Palmer, 38). Blake's funeral was paid for by Catherine, using money lent to her by Linnell. The affair was a modest one: he was taken five days after his death - on the eve of his forty-fifth wedding anniversary - to Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill Fields, where his parents were also interred. Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert, George Richmond, Frederick Tatham and John Linnell.

Following Blake's death, Catherine moved in to Tatham's house as a housekeeper; however, Blake would, she said, come and sit with her for two or three hours every day. She continued selling his illuminated works and paintings, but would entertain no business transaction without first "consulting Mr Blake" (Ackroyd, Blake, 390). On the day of her own death, in October 1831, she was as calm and cheerful as her husband, and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him, and it would not be long now" (Blake Records, 410).

Following Catherine's death, Blake's manuscripts were inherited by Frederick Tatham, who is said to have burned several of them in a fit of religious ardour. Tatham had become an Irvingite, one of the many fundamentalist movements of the 19th century, and was severely opposed to any work that smacked of blasphemy (Ackroyd, Blake, 391). This is conjecture however.

Blake is now recognized as a Saint in Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in his honor in Australia in 1949.
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