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He was born in Soho, London, where he lived most of his life, and was son to a hosier and his wife, both Dissenters. Blake's early ambitions lay not with poetry but with painting and at the age of ...
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 11 October 2024. English poet and artist (1757–1827) For other people named William Blake, see William Blake (disambiguation). William Blake Portrait by Thomas Phillips (1807) Born (1757-11-28) 28 November 1757 Soho, London, England Died 12 August 1827 (1827-08-12) (aged 69) Charing Cross, London ...
- Overview
- Visions of eternity
William Blake is considered to be one of the greatest visionaries of the early Romantic era. In addition to writing such poems as “The Lamb” and “The Tyger,” Blake was primarily occupied as an engraver and watercolour artist. Today Blake’s poetic genius has largely outstripped his visual artistic renown.
What was William Blake’s career like as a visual artist?
Although William Blake’s principal occupation was engraver, he transitioned to watercolour illustrations after an ambitious 1794 engraving commission floundered when published three years later. He painted watercolours for his patrons illustrating works by Dante, William Shakespeare, and John Milton, although much of his art focused on biblical subjects.
What is William Blake’s poetry about?
Songs of Innocence and of Experience: Shewing the Two Contrary States of the Human Soul (1794) is arguably William Blake’s most well-known poetic composition. The Lamb and the Tyger function as complementary symbols of the protection and corruption of innocence, respectively. Much of Blake’s other poetry concerns his politics, visions, and self-invented mythology.
What was William Blake’s reputation during his lifetime?
Visions were commonplaces to Blake, and his life and works were intensely spiritual. His friend the journalist Henry Crabb Robinson wrote that when Blake was four years old he saw God’s head appear in a window. While still a child he also saw the Prophet Ezekiel under a tree in the fields and had a vision, according to his first biographer, Alexander Gilchrist (1828–61), of “a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars.” Robinson reported in his diary that Blake spoke of visions “in the ordinary unemphatic tone in which we speak of trivial matters.…Of the faculty of Vision he spoke as One he had had from early infancy—He thinks all men partake of it—but it is lost by not being cultiv[ate]d.” In his essay “A Vision of the Last Judgment,” Blake wrote:
I assert for My Self that I do not behold the outward Creation… ‘What’ it will be Questiond ‘When the Sun rises, do you not See a round Disk of fire somewhat like a Guinea?’ O no no I see an Innumerable company of the Heavenly host crying ‘Holy Holy Holy is the Lord God Almighty!’
Blake wrote to his patron William Hayley in 1802, “I am under the direction of Messengers from Heaven Daily & Nightly.” These visions were the source of many of his poems and drawings. As he wrote in his “Auguries of Innocence,” his purpose was
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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
- G.E. Bentley
One day in 1801, when William Blake was living on the Sussex coast, he went on a long country walk when he got into an argument with a thistle. The artist, poet and musician, who experienced ...
Sep 10, 2019 · The Romantic painter and poet William Blake created some of the most iconic images in British cultural history – from a strange sidelong portrait of Isaac Newton, bent over naked at the bottom ...
Apr 2, 2014 · William Blake was a 19th-century writer and artist who is regarded as a seminal figure of the Romantic Age. His writings have influenced countless writers and artists through the ages.
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1757—1827. World History Archive / Alamy Stock Photo. Poet, painter, engraver, and visionary William Blake worked to bring about a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Though in his lifetime his work was largely neglected or dismissed, he is now considered one of the leading lights of English poetry, and his work has only ...
