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William
Blake
Birth Year :
1757
Death Year :
1827
Country : United
Kingdom
William Blake,
poet, engraver,
painter, and
mystic, was born
and lived almost
his entire life in
London. He was
apprenticed to an
engraver at the age
of fourteen and
began to write and
publish his own
books when he was
twenty-six. His
most famous book of
poems, "Songs of
Innocence",
appeared in 1789.
It was written,
printed, engraved,
and bound by the
artist himself,
with the aid of his
wife. Although
Blake never left
England, he studied
the work of
Michelangelo and
the Italian
Mannerists from a
large collection of
engravings, and he
was one of several
artists influenced
by John Henry
Fuseli, an
Anglo-Swiss painter
who worshiped
Shakespeare and
Michelangelo,.
Blake, for his
part, was devoted
to the Bible, to
Dante, and to
Milton. He also
admired the
medieval period and
conceived of his
own books as
eighteenth-century
successors to the
illuminated
manuscripts of the
medieval monks.
His work is
religious or
mystical in
expression and
romantic in spirit.
It is full of
movement,
flickering or
glaring light,
medieval symbols,
and mannerist
musculature and
arrangement. Blake
was noted for his
scrupulous honesty
and resisted all
offers of patronage
by the rich,
preferring to work
in poverty and
independence. He
was comparatively
unknown in England
until 1818, when
one of his
disciples, John
Linnell, organized
a group who bought
Blake's drawings
and helped secure
commissions for The
Book of Job and The
Devine Comedy.
Blake died before
the latter was
completed, having
engraved only seven
of the one hundred
watercolours he had
made for the
book. |
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