Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
William Blake (1757-1827)
At the age of four, Blake saw the face of God. A few years later, he ran across a flock of
angels swinging in a tree. Twenty years later, he was living in a run-down London flat with
an illiterate wife, scratching out a thin existence as an engraver. But even in this squalor,
ignored by all but a few fellow artists, he still had his heavenly visions, and he described
them in poems, paintings, drawings, and prints.
One of the original space cowboys, Blake also was a unique artist, often classed with
the Romantics because he painted in a fit of ecstatic inspiration rather than by studied
technique. He painted angels, not the dull material world. While Britain was conquer-
ing the world with guns and nature with machines, and while his fellow Londoners were
growing rich, fat, and self-important, Blake turned his gaze inward, illustrating the glori-
ous visions of the soul.
Blake's work hangs in a darkened room to protect his watercolors from deterioration.
Enter his mysterious world and let your pupils dilate opium-wide.
His pen and watercolor sketches glow with an unearthly aura. In visions of the Chris-
tian heaven or Dante's hell, his figures have superhero musculature. The colors are almost
translucent.
