Blake, William (1757-1827)

Poet, mystic, painter, and engraver, Blake is one of the most enigmatic yet most significant figures in the history of English literature, and a man who has likewise exerted strong influence on the graphic arts. He was born in London, England, November 28, 1757. Little is known definitely about his family's ancestry, but it seems probable that his parents and other relatives were humble folk.

William Blake manifested his artistic predilections at a very early age, and his father and mother did not discourage him. They offered to place him in the studio of a painter. The young man refused, however, pointing out that the apprenticeship was a costly one and saying that his numerous brothers and sisters should be considered; he held that it was not fair to impoverish his family on his behalf. Then engraving was suggested to him as a profession, because it required less expensive training than painting and was likely to yield a speedier financial return. Accepting this offer, Blake went at the age of 14 to study under James Basire, an engraver not very well known today, but who then enjoyed considerable reputation and was employed officially by the Society of Antiquaries.

Blake worked under Basire for seven years and was engaged mainly in making drawings of Westminster Abbey to illustrate a huge book then in progress, the Sepulchral Monuments of Richard Gough. It is said that Blake was chosen by his master to do these drawings not so much because he showed particular aptitude for drafting, but because he was eternally quarreling with his fellow apprentices; the young artist apparently believed he was superior to his confréres and made enemies by failing to conceal his belief. While at the Westminster Abbey, Blake asserted that he saw many visions.

In 1778 he entered the then recently founded Royal Academy School, where he studied under George Moser, a chaser and enameller who engraved the first great seal of George III. Yet it was not to Moser that the budding visionary looked for instruction; he was far more occupied with studying prints of the old masters, especially Michelangelo and Raphael. A short time later Blake left the Royal Academy and began to work on his own.

He had to work hard, however, for meanwhile his affections had been engaged by a young woman, Catherine Boucher, and he needed funds for the pair to marry. Blake engraved illustrations for magazines and the like, and his marriage was solemnized in 1782. His wife's name indicates that she was of French origin, but it is not known if she was related to François Boucher or to the fine engraver of the French Empire, Boucher-Desnoyers. The marriage proved a singularly happy one.

Regarding Catherine's appearance there still exists a small pencil-drawing by Blake, commonly supposed to be a portrait of his wife. It shows a slim, graceful woman, just the type of woman predominating in Blake's other pictures, so it may be presumed that she frequently acted as his model.

After his marriage Blake took lodgings on Green Street in Leicester Fields, and he opened a print shop on Broad Street. He made many friends at this period; the most favored among them was Flaxman, the sculptor. Flaxman introduced him to Mr. Matthew, a clergyman of artistic tastes who manifested keen interest in the few poems Blake had already written and generously offered to defray the cost of printing them. The writer accepted the offer and brought out a tiny volume, Poetical Sketches.

Thus encouraged, Blake gave up his print-selling business, moved to Poland Street, and soon after published his Songs of Innocence, the letterpress enriched by his own designs. In addition, the whole volume was printed by the author himself by a new method of his own invention.

Blake lived on Poland Street for five years, during which time he achieved and issued The Book of Thel, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and the first book of The French Revolution. In 1792 he moved to the Hercules Buildings in Lambeth, where dire poverty forced him to do much of his commercial work, notably a series of illustrations to Young's Night Thoughts, yet he also found time for original drawing and writing, including the Gates of Paradise and Songs of Experience.

Eventually he tired of London, however, and moved to Felpham, near Bognor in Sussex, taking a cottage close to where Aubrey Beardsley would live at a later date. Here Blake composed Milton, Jerusalem, and a large part of the Prophetic Books, and made a new friend, William Hayley, who repeatedly aided him monetarily. The Sussex scenery—afterward to inspire Whistler and Conder—appealed keenly to Blake, and in one of his lyrics he exclaimed, "Away to sweet Felpham, for Heaven is there," while to Flaxman he wrote: "Felpham is a sweet place for study, because it is more spiritual than London. Heaven opens here on all sides her golden gates; her windows are not obstructed by vapours, voices of celestial inhabitants are more distinctly heard, and their forms more distinctly seen and my cottage is also a shadow of their houses."

Eventually Blake returned to London, taking a house in South Molton Street in 1803. Here again he endured much poverty and was forced into doing illustrations for Virgil and also a series of designs for Blair's Grave; but later his financial horizon was brightened by help from John Linnell, the landscape painter. Shortly afterward Blake did some of his finest work, including his Spiritual Portraits and his drawings for The Book of Job, after which he began illustrating the Divine Comedy of Dante.

In 1821 he again changed his home to Fountain Court in Strand and continued to work at the Dante drawings, but only seven of them were ever published, for Blake's health was beginning to fail, his energies were waning, and he died August 12, 1827.

Sixteen years before his death, Blake held a public exhibition of his drawings, engravings, illustrations, and the like, and only one paper saw fit to print a criticism of it— The Examiner, edited by Leigh Hunt. It is customary for Blake's idolators today to scorn those who then disdained his work, but Blake's work emerged as somewhat of a novelty, especially the mysticism permeating his pictures, which had virtually no parallel in English painting prior to his advent. Also, Blake was still maturing as a technician and still had many grave limitations which are quite evident when placed beside that of his contemporaries.

If Blake the draftsman and illustrator was a fierce iconoclast who turned his back resolutely on the styles current in his time, most assuredly Blake the poet was sublimely contemptuous of the conventions of Augustanism, and thus he prepared the way for Burns, Wordsworth, and Shelley.

Had Blake written only his Poetical Sketches, his Songs of Innocence and the subsequent Songs of Experience, his contemporaries could never have leveled the charge of madness against him. It was his later writings like The Book of Thel and the Prophetic Books that branded him, for in these later poems the writer threw simplicity to the winds. Giving literary form to visions, Blake is so purely spiritual and ethereal, so far beyond the realm of normal human speech, that mysticism frequently devolves into crypticism. His rhythm, too, is often so subtle that it hardly seems rhythm at all.

Yet even in his weirdest flights Blake is still the master. And if, as already observed, the coloring in many of his watercolor drawings is thin, the very reverse is true of the poems written toward the close of his life. Their glowing and gorgeous tones have the barbaric pomp of Gautier's finest prose and the glitter and opulence of Berlioz's or Wagner's orchestration.

Sources:

Digby, George. Symbol and Image in William Blake. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957.

Erdman, David, ed. The Illuminated Blake. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1974.

Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. Blake: Complete Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974.

King, James. William Blake: His Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1991.

Nesfeld-Cookson, Bernard. William Blake: Prophet of Universal Brotherhood. U.K.: Crucible, 1987.

Raine, Kathleen. From Blake to "A Vision." Dublin: Dolman Press, 1979.

——. William Blake. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1971.

Wilke, Joanne. William Blake's Epic: Imagination Unbound. London: Croom Helm, 1986.

Wilson, Mona. The Life of William Blake. London: Oxford University Press, 1971.

Wolf-Gumpold, Kaethe. William Blake: Painter, Poet, Visionary: An Attempt at and Introduction to his Life and Work. London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1969.