William Blake was born on November 28, 1757, in the Soho district of
London, England. He only briefly attended school, being chiefly educated at
home by his mother. The Bible had an early, profound influence on Blake, and it
would remain a lifetime source of inspiration, coloring his life and works with
intense spirituality.
At an early age, Blake began experiencing visions, and his friend and
journalist Henry Crabb Robinson wrote that Blake saw God's head appear in a
window when Blake was 4 years old. He also allegedly saw the prophet Ezekiel
under a tree and had a vision of "a tree filled with angels." Blake's
visions would have a lasting effect on the art and writings that he produced.
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The Young Artist
Blake's artistic ability became evident in his youth, and by age 10, he was
enrolled at Henry Pars's drawing school, where he sketched the human figure by
copying from plaster casts of ancient statues. At age 14, his apprenticed him
to an engraver. Blake's master was the engraver to the London Society of Antiquaries,
and Blake was sent to Westminster Abbey to make drawings of tombs and
monuments, where his lifelong love of gothic art was seeded.
Also around this time, Blake
began collecting prints of artists who had fallen out of vogue at the time,
including Durer, Raphael and Michelangelo. In the catalog for an
exhibition of his own work in 1809, nearly 40 years later, in fact, Blake would
lambast artists "who endeavour to raise up a style against Rafael, Mich.
Angelo, and the Antique." He also rejected 18th century literary trends,
preferring the Elizabethans (Shakespeare, Jonson and Spenser) and
ancient ballads instead.
The Maturing Artist
In 1779, at age 21, Blake
completed his seven-year apprenticeship and became a journeyman copy engraver,
working on projects for book and print publishers. Also preparing himself for a career as a painter,
that same year, he was admitted to the Royal Academy of Art's Schools of
Design, where he began exhibiting his own works in 1780. Blake's artistic
energies branched out at this point, and he privately published his Poetical
Sketches (1783), a collection of poems that he had written over
the previous 14 years.
In August 1782, Blake married Catherine Sophia Boucher, who was illiterate.
Blake taught her how to read, write, draw and color (his designs and prints).
He also helped her to experience visions, as he did. Catherine believed
explicitly in her husband's visions and his genius, and supported him in
everything he did, right up to his death 45 years later.
One of the most traumatic events of William Blake's life occurred in 1787,
when his beloved brother, Robert, died from tuberculosis at age 24. At the
moment of Robert's death, Blake allegedly saw his spirit ascend through the
ceiling, joyously; the moment, which entered into Blake's psyche, greatly
influenced his later poetry.
The following year, Robert
appeared to Blake in a vision and presented him with a new method of printing
his works, which Blake called "illuminated printing." Once
incorporated, this method allowed Blake to control every aspect of the
production of his art.
While Blake was an established engraver, soon he began
receiving commissions to paint watercolors, and he painted scenes from the
works of Milton, Dante, Shakespeare and
the Bible.
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The
Move to Felpham and Charges of Sedition
In 1800, Blake
accepted an invitation from poet William Hayley to move to the little seaside
village of Felpham and work as his protégé. While the relationship between
Hayley and Blake began to sour, Blake ran into trouble of a different stripe:
In August 1803, Blake found a soldier, John Schofield, on the property and
demanded that he leave. After Schofield refused and an argument ensued, Blake
removed him by force. Schofield accused Blake of assault and, worse, of
sedition, claiming that he had damned the king.
The punishments
for sedition in England at the time (during the Napoleonic Wars) were severe.
Blake anguished, uncertain of his fate. Hayley hired a lawyer on Blake's
behalf, and he was acquitted in January 1804, by which time Blake and Catherine
had moved back to London.
Later Years
In 1804, Blake began to write and illustrate Jerusalem (1804-20), his most ambitious work to
date. He also began showing more work at exhibitions (including Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims and Satan Calling Up His Legions),
but these works were met with silence, and the one published review was
absurdly negative; the reviewer called the exhibit a display of "nonsense,
unintelligibleness and egregious vanity," and referred to Blake as
"an unfortunate lunatic."
Blake was
devastated by the review and lack of attention to his works, and, subsequently,
he withdrew more and more from any attempt at success. From 1809 to 1818, he
engraved few plates (there is no record of Blake producing any commercial
engravings from 1806 to 1813). He also sank deeper into poverty, obscurity and
paranoia.
In 1819,
however, Blake began sketching a series of "visionary heads,"
claiming that the historical and imaginary figures that he depicted actually
appeared and sat for him. By 1825, Blake had sketched more than 100 of them,
including those of Solomon and Merlin the magician and those included in
"The Man Who Built the Pyramids" and "Harold Killed at the
Battle of Hastings"; along with the most famous visionary head, that
included in Blake's "The Ghost of a Flea."
Remaining artistically busy, between 1823 and 1825,
Blake engraved 21 designs for an illustrated Book of Job (from the Bible) and
Dante's Inferno. In 1824,
he began a series of 102 watercolor illustrations of Dante—a project that would
be cut short by Blake's death in 1827.
In the final years of his life, William Blake suffered
from recurring bouts of an undiagnosed disease that he called "that
sickness to which there is no name." He died on August 12, 1827, leaving
unfinished watercolor illustrations to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progressand an
illuminated manuscript of the Bible's Book of Genesis.
In death, as in life, Blake
received short shrift from observers, and obituaries tended to underscore his
personal idiosyncrasies at the expense of his artistic accomplishments. The Literary
Chronicle, for example, described him as "one of those
ingenious persons ... whose eccentricities were still more remarkable than
their professional abilities."
Unappreciated in life, William Blake has since become a giant in literary
and artistic circles,
and his visionary approach to art and writing have not only spawned
countless, spellbound speculations about Blake, they have inspired a vast array
of artists and writers.
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