“The dark Religions are departed & sweet Science reigns.“ -Vala, or the Four Zoas
William Blake
“Considered insane and largely disregarded by his peers, the visionary poet and engraver William Blake is now recognised among the greatest contributors to English literature and art.”
He was born in London on November 28, 1757, to James, a hosier, and Catherine Blake over his father’s modest hosiery shop at 28 Broad Street Golden Square, London. Two of his six siblings died in infancy. From early childhood, Blake spoke of having visions-at four he saw God “put his head to the window”; around age nine, while walking thorough the countryside, he saw a tree filled with angles. Although his parents tried to discourage him from “lying”, they did observe that he was different from his peers and did not force him to attend conventional school. He later writing, “Thank God I never was never sen to school/To be Flogd into following the Style of a Fool[.]”
At age ten, Blake expressed a wish to become a painter, so his parents sent him to Henry Pars’ drawing school. Two years later, Blake began writing poetry. At age of 14, he apprenticed with an engraver. Also around this time, Blake began collecting prints of artists who had fallen out of vogue at the time, including Durer, Raphael and Michelangelo.
*The Ancient of Days
Mature Artist
In 1779, at age 21, Blake completed his seven-year apprenticeship and became a journeyman copy engraver, working on projects for book and print publishers. Also preparing himself for a career as a painter, that same year, he was admitted to Royal Academy of Art’s Schools of Design, where he began exhibiting his own works in 1780. Then he privately published his Poetical Sketches(1783), a collection of poems that he had written over the previous 14 years.
Marriage
In August 1782, Blake married Catherine Sophia Boucher, who was illiterate. She believed explicitly in her husband’s visions and his genius, and supported h8m in everything he did, right up to his death 45 years later.
One of the most traumatic events of Blake’s life occurred in 1787, when his beloved brother, Robert, died from tuberculosis at age 24.
The Move to Felpham
In 1800, Blake accepted an invitation from poet William Hayley to move to little seaside village of Felpham and work as his protègè. While the relationship between Hayley and Blake began to sour, Blake ran into trouble of a different stripe: In August 1803, Blake found a soldier, John Schofield, he accused him for claiming that he had damned the king.
*The Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun
Later Years
In 1804, Blake began to write and illustrate Jerusalem, his most ambitious work to date. He also began showing more work at exhibitions. He was devastated by the review and lack of attention to his works, and, subsequently, he withdraw more and more from any attempt at success. From 1809 to 1818, he engraved few plates also sank deeper into poverty.
In 1819, he began sketching a series of “visionary heads”, claiming that historical and imaginary figures that he depicted actually appeared and sat for him. By 1825, Blake had sketched more than 100 of them.
Between 1823 and 1825, Blake engraved 21 designs for an illustrated book of Job(from the Bible) and Dante’s Inferno. In 1824, he began a series of 102 watercolor illustrations which would be cut short by Blake’s death on August 12, 1827 because of recurring bouts of an undiagnosed disease that he called “that sickness to which there is no name”.
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