William Blake's Biography(Books)(Photos)

William Blake (November 28, 1757 - august 12, 1827) was an
English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognized

an analogy between this and Newton's particle theory of
light.[84] Accordingly, Blake never used the technique,

during his lifetime, his work is today considered seminal
and significant in the history of both poetry and the visual

opting rather to develop a method of engraving purely in
fluid line, insisting that:

arts. He has often been credited as being the most spiritual
writer of his time.

a Line or Lineament is not formed by Chance a Line is a

According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study of Blake's

Line in its Minutest Subdivision[s] Strait or Crooked It is
Itself & Not Intermeasurable with or by any Thing Else Such

entire poetic corpus, his prophetic poems form "what is in
proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in

the English language." Others have praised Blake's visual
artistry, at least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far

Despite his opposition to Enlightenment principles, Blake
thus arrived at a linear aesthetic that was in many ways

and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced."

more similar to the Neoclassical engravings of John Flaxman
than to the works of the Romantics, with whom he is often

While his visual art and written poetry are usually
considered separately, Blake often employed them in concert

classified.

to create a product that at once defied and superseded
convention. Though he believed himself able to converse

Therefore Blake has also been viewed as an enlightenment
poet and artist, in the sense that he was in accord with

aloud with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work in
illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's affection for the

that movement's rejection of received ideas, systems,
authorities and traditions. On the other hand, he was

Bible was belied by his hostility for the church, his
beliefs modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the

critical of what he perceived as the elevation of reason to
the status of an oppressive authority. In his criticism of

unfolding of the Romantic movement around him. Ultimately,
the difficulty of placing William Blake in any one

reason, law and uniformity Blake has been taken to be
opposed to the enlightenment, but it has also been argued

chronological stage of art history is perhaps the
distinction that best defines him.

that, in a dialectical sense, he used the enlightenment
spirit of rejection of external authority to criticise

Once considered mad for his single-mindedness, Blake is

narrow conceptions of the enlightenment.

highly regarded today for his expressiveness and creativity,
and the philosophical vision that underlies his work. As he

From a young age, William Blake claimed to have seen
visions. The first of these visions may have occurred as

himself once indicated, "The imagination is not a State: it
is the Human existence itself."

early as the age of four when, according to one anecdote,
the young artist "saw God" when God "put his head to the

window", causing Blake to break into screaming. At the age
of eight or ten in Peckham Rye, London, Blake claimed to

philosophy. Due to his visionary religious beliefs, Blake
opposed the Newtonian view of the universe.

have seen "a tree filled with angels, bright angelic wings
bespangling every bough like stars."[87] According to

Blake also believed that the paintings of Sir Joshua

Blake's Victorian biographer Gilchrist, he returned home and
reported this vision, and he only escaped being thrashed by

Reynolds, which depict the naturalistic fall of light upon
objects, were products entirely of the "vegetative eye", and

his father for telling a lie through the intervention of his
mother. Though all evidence suggests that his parents were

he saw Locke and Newton as "the true progenitors of Sir
Joshua Reynolds' aesthetic".[83] The popular taste in the

largely supportive, his mother seems to have been especially
so, and several of Blake's early drawings and poems

England of that time for such paintings was satisfied with
mezzotints, prints produced by a process that created an

decorated the walls of her chamber. On another occasion,
Blake watched haymakers at work, and thought he saw angelic