Blake, William

Blake, William (1757–1827). Artist, engraver, philosopher, visionary, and poet, Blake regarded art, imagination, and religion as one and aimed to create, through poetry and painting, a ‘visual symbolism’ to express his ‘spiritual vision’ and ‘mystical philosophy’. After drawing school and apprenticeship to an engraver, Blake briefly attended the Royal Academy where he was at odds with Joshua Reynolds. Returning to engraving, he became engrossed in what he called ‘illuminated painting’, an attempt to produce books in the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts. His first major work was Songs of Innocence in 1789, and Songs of Experience was published in 1794. Blake longed for fame and an enthusiastic audience, to build a New Jerusalem, but refused to compromise to make his work more accessible. He spent many years in poverty, saved only by the patronage of artist John Linnell and others. He spent his later years drawing rather than writing, surrounded by admirers, who included Samuel Palmer. Individual, nonconformist, experimental, Blake's work still challenges and mystifies, yet it includes two of the best-known poems in the English language, ‘Tyger, tyger’ and ‘Jerusalem’.

June Cochrane