William Blake is one of the great figures in British art and literature. His visionary art and poetry explored the metaphysical realm, giving rise to some of the most powerful and original work of his time. Imagination was of supreme importance to Blake, who believed that art must proceed from inner visions and not the empirical observation of nature. He made watercolours of great expressive beauty as well as drawings, prints, tempera paintings and hand-printed books of prophetic poetry in which he presented his highly personal and apocalyptic mythology. Blake’s independence of mind not only fuelled his own inventions but also made him a highly original illustrator of the Bible and the poetry of Milton and Dante, among others.
Blake was born in 1757 to a Soho hosier who recognised his son’s early artistic talents and sent him at the age of ten to the drawing school of Henry Pars. He was then apprenticed in 1772 to James Basire, the well-known but conservative engraver to the Society of Antiquaries, where he spent seven years learning the techniques of reproductive engraving. This would provide him with the means of earning a modest living throughout his life, executing book illustrations and engravings after other artists’ designs. Following his apprenticeship he briefly attended the schools of the Royal Academy, where he formed important friendships with other young artists, such as John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland, who shared his interest in Classical art and his radical political sympathies. Blake had begun writing poetry at an early age, and with Flaxman’s assistance found patrons who helped to privately publish his first collection of poems in 1783. This followed his marriage in August 1782 to Catherine Boucher, the illiterate daughter of a market gardener. Their relationship was to prove a long and happy one, with Catherine a devoted wife and assistant in Blake’s printing operations.
In the late 1780s Blake began designing hand-printed books that brought together the twin aspects of his immense talent – his poetry and his art. In order to integrate the two elements on the page, he invented the new technique of relief etching with which he achieved a unity of text and illustration that was unprecedented in the history of the printed book. Blake and Boucher hand-coloured copies of the books so that no two were identical; this, however, meant editions were small and the books reached only a limited audience during Blake’s lifetime. Songs of Innocence, 1789, was one of the earliest examples, and Blake went on to produce a further eleven illuminated books in a period of intense productivity that lasted until the mid 1790s.
The later illuminated books became more complex and increasingly began to reflect Blake’s religious and political ideas. His family background was of a dissenting form of Protestantism, which challenged the hierarchical structures of official religion, and this influenced Blake’s fierce independence, throughout his life, from orthodoxies of all kinds. Around 1787 the artist was briefly drawn to the doctrines of the influential Swedish visionary Emanuel Swedenborg, although he never joined the Swedenborgian Church and soon became disillusioned with it. At this time Blake was also in contact with the circle of radical thinkers and writers associated with the publisher Joseph Johnson that included Thomas Paine, William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft and others. He sympathised with their ideals, in particular their support of the American and French Revolutions, which he saw as overturning social and religious restrictions. The upheaval of these times was reflected in the series of epic prophetic books that Blake began in 1793 in which revolution is posited as an apocalyptic stage in the history and redemption of mankind. Parallels with contemporary political events appear in America A Prophecy and Europe A Prophecy (both 1793), while later books became increasingly prophetic and gave expression to Blake’s own personal mythology. The First Book of Urizen (1794) and other illuminated books use his invented cast of characters to explore the troubled state of mankind through complex creation and redemption narratives.
By the end of the 1790s Blake was receiving little commercial engraving work and was becoming increasingly dependent upon private patronage. In 1799 he received a commission for fifty biblical paintings from the civil servant Thomas Butts, who went on to become his most significant patron and main form of support over the next decade and a half. Butts commissioned further biblical subjects and several important series illustrating Milton and other authors, eventually paying Blake a regular stipend in return for more than 135 watercolour and tempera paintings. From 1800 to 1803 Blake lived in the seaside village of Felpham, Sussex, at the behest of Flaxman’s wealthy patron William Hayley. This period was crucial for the later development of his work – it was here he began conceiving his last two epic illuminated books, Milton (c. 1804–1810/11) and Jerusalem (c. 1804–c. 1820) – although Blake increasingly resented Hayley’s discouragement of his creative work and the menial tasks his patron set him. Upon his return to London, Blake was keen to seek a broader public for his work and embarked upon ambitious projects. The first, a series of designs and engravings for an edition of the popular poem, ‘The Grave’ by Robert Blair (1808), ended in bitter dispute with the publisher, who was also involved in Blake’s next unsuccessful venture, his large engraving of Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims (1810), which failed to sell. In his final bid for public recognition Blake mounted a one-man exhibition at his brother’s house in London in 1809, but this was scarcely noticed, receiving only one hostile review.
Following the failure of this exhibition Blake retired from public view for nearly a decade, taking on only minor reproductive work and continuing his series of illustrations to Milton for Butts. The isolation of these years was eased in 1818 when Blake was befriended by the landscape painter John Linnell. He introduced Blake to a wider circle of patrons and artists, including the young group known as ‘The Ancients’ (Samuel Palmer, George Richmond and Edward Calvert), who had real sympathy for Blake’s visionary style of art. Linnell also secured commissions for the elder artists such as the wood engravings for Thornton’s Virgil (1821) and provided him with a series of creative projects that occupied his final years. , seen in watercolours, prints and late impressions of his illuminated books. Blake died, aged sixty-nine, on 12 August 1827.
illustrations for the Book of Job (1823–25) and Dante’s The Divine Comedy (1824–27). Despite ongoing poverty and illness, these final years were marked by renewed creative energy and a flowering of Blake’s art, seen in watercolours, prints and late impressions of his illuminated books. He died aged sixty-nine on 12 August 1827.
‘They are visions of little dells and nooks, and corners of Paradise; models of the exquisitest pitch of intense poetry.’
– Samuel Palmer
Thornton’s Virgil
The first major commission that John Linnell helped Blake secure was for a set of wood-engraved illustrations to Thornton’s Virgil. In 1819 Linnell recommended Blake to Dr Robert John Thornton (the Linnell family’s physician), who was about to publish a third edition, newly illustrated, of his school text The Pastorals of Virgil that was first published in 1812. The second and third editions included Virgil’s Latin verses together with ‘imitations’ of the poetry by various English authors. Blake was commissioned to illustrate the imitation of Eclogue I by Ambrose Philips, for which he executed seventeen wood engravings that were published in 1821; fourteen of these are in the NGV Collection.
Blake had not previously worked in wood engraving but his long use of relief etching on copper and white-line engraving determined his approach to the medium. Unlike the conventional wood engraver, who would incise meticulously carved fine lines into the block, Blake worked in a much freer and more rugged fashion. He cut his blocks using the white-line technique, so that the design is carried by the white lines that are cut away to contrast with the printed black background. This technique, and the expressive qualities of these white lines, which directly convey the energy of the artist’s hand, accounts for the highly atmospheric nature of the works. Their departure from the standard wood-engraving conventions was little appreciated by Dr Thornton, however, who apparently was only dissuaded from rejecting the blocks because they were so highly regarded by a small circle of artists. This explains the disclaimer he published in the book:
The Illustrations … are by the famous Blake … who designed and engraved them himself. This is mentioned, as they display less of art than genius, and are much admired by some eminent painters.
These tiny works are unusual in Blake’s oeuvre for their landscape subjects and their pastoral qualities, which were greatly admired by contemporary artists such as Samuel Palmer and Edward Calvert. The vision the works present is not as idyllic as Palmer’s ‘corners of Paradise’ would suggest, however, as they are pervaded by a melancholy air that matches the mood and details of Philips’s poetry.
The despondency of the young poet-shepherd Colinet and the harshness of nature described by Philips, with its riven tree and blighted crops, are brilliantly conveyed in Blake’s evocative wood engravings. The predominantly black backgrounds in particular provide the works with a sombre moodiness that enhances their power of poetic suggestion.
The NGV’s (incomplete) set is a composite group that may have been compiled from a dismembered copy (or copies) of the book or from later printings from the blocks (Linnell had bought these from Thornton in 1825 and many later impressions were pulled). The final work, Unyoked heifers loitering homeward, low is an unusual and very lightly printed impression that has been sensitively finished with watercolour; it has been suggested that this may have been done by Edward Calvert.
‘Why is the Bible more Entertaining & Instructive than any other Book? Is it because [it is] addressed to the Imagination, which is spiritual sensation …?’
– Blake, letter to Dr Trusler, 23 August 1799
The Book of Job
Another of John Linnell’s major commissions from Blake was for a series of engraved illustrations to the Book of Job. Blake had executed a set of watercolours on this subject for Thomas Butts in c. 1805–06, and in 1821 Linnell commissioned a second series for his own collection, tracing the designs himself which Blake subsequently coloured. This in turn led to the plan for the engravings, for which a contract was drawn up in March 1823 stipulating that Linnell would pay Blake £5 per plate or £100 for the set, plus a further £100 from the profits. Blake worked for two years on the twenty-two plates, which were published in early 1826 in an edition of 315 sets on varying papers. The NGV’s set is one of eighteen that had remained in the Linnell family collection and it comprises exceptionally fine, early proof impressions. These have been carefully printed and reveal the great subtlety and sophistication of Blake’s burin work.
Blake had long admired the engravings of the early masters of the medium, such as Marcantonio Raimondi and, in particular, Albrecht Dürer. He renewed his study of these artists in the 1820s and this is reflected in the new technical mastery and complexity of the Job plates. He dispensed with his earlier method of laying in the composition with preliminary etching, thereby more closely aligning his work with the pure engraving of his esteemed masters. He also introduced an extraordinary new diversity of burin work in the plates, from long sinuous lines to those of varying length, width and strength as well as crosshatching and staccato flicks of the tool. With these he overturned the mechanically repetitive patterns that had long dominated reproductive engraving and substantially increased the medium’s capacity to describe surfaces, textures and different light effects.
The Book of Job is Blake’s final work in which text and images are integrated into the one design. The engravings give primacy to the images, but the series’ most unusual feature is the way in which the borders are used to carry quotes and adaptations from biblical texts to emphasise points of meaning in the narrative. Blake’s series is a complex, personal interpretation of the Book of Job that has parallels with his own mythology, particularly as expressed in his epic poem Jerusalem (1804–c. 1820). He presents Job as a fallen man who is cut off from the true spiritual dimension of existence and who must endure suffering before achieving redemption. Job’s spiritual awakening is paralleled in Blake’s narrative with his belief in the centrality of the poetic vision, or inspiration. Job’s mistaken focus on the material world and the outward observance of religion is referred to in the opening plate in the family’s conventional, pious poses and the musical instruments (symbols of inspiration) hanging unused on the tree. It is only after suffering torments that Job realises the false nature of his faith and is finally restored to prosperity and a new existence, as seen in the final plate, where he and his family are depicted in joyful activity, singing and making music.
‘On Saturday, 9 October, 1824, Mr Linnell called and went with me to Mr Blake. We found him lame in bed, of a scalded foot (or leg). There, not inactive, though sixty-seven years old, but hardworking on a bed covered with books sat he up like one of the Antique patriarchs, or a dying Michel Angelo. Thus and there was he making in the leaves of a great book (folio) the sublimest design from his (not superior) Dante.’
– Samuel Palmer
Dante’s The Divine Comedy
Blake was commissioned by John Linnell in 1824 to execute a series of illustrations to The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. The series remained unfinished at the time of Blake’s death in August 1827; he left 102 sheets in varying stages of completion, ranging from finished watercolours to rough pencil sketches, as well as seven unfinished engravings. Dante’s epic poem narrates the story of his journey, guided by the Roman poet Virgil, through Hell and Purgatory, to Paradise, where he is reunited with his idealised love, Beatrice. The imaginative vision of Dante’s masterpiece clearly impressed Blake, in particular the description of Hell and its torments: to this he dedicated seventy-two of his illustrations, illustrating Purgatory with only twenty sheets and Paradise with ten. Although unfinished, this series is the crowning achievement of Blake’s career, his mature creative genius giving powerful visual form to Dante’s literary masterpiece.
Although Blake had long been aware of the work of Dante, by the time he embarked upon his series of illustrations in 1824 The Divine Comedy was only just becoming more widely read in England. The first full English translation, by Henry Cary, had been published in 1814 and was reaching new audiences and inspiring poets such as Coleridge and Shelley as well as artists. We know that Blake used Cary’s translation but that he also taught himself Italian in order to be able to read the original (some inscriptions in Italian are found on the drawings). Despite Blake’s great admiration for the poet and his imaginative vision of Hell, there were elements of Dante’s theology of which he disapproved, in particular his notion of retributive justice and salvation. Blake’s belief in redemption through forgiveness was fundamentally opposed to the retribution and punishment inherent in Dante’s conception of Hell. Blake voiced his criticism of this aspect of Dante’s text in scribbled notes on one of the drawings: ‘Whatever Book is for Vengeance for Sin & whatever Book is Against the Forgiveness of Sins is not of the Father, but of Satan the Accuser & Father of Hell’. He also accused Dante of being too engaged with the material world, as yet another inscription revealed: ‘Dante’s Commedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of All, & the Goddess Nature is his Inspirer and not Imagination’. These and other criticisms Blake made have engendered much scholarly debate concerning the extent to which Blake’s cycle went beyond literal illustration to form a commentary on Dante’s poem. While some commentators have read individual illustrations and the cycle as a whole as a coded presentation of Blake’s visionary universe, others have argued for a more direct illustration of the text. Although it seems that Blake’s engagement with Dante went beyond mere literal illustration, he clearly respected Dante’s text, reading it carefully and faithfully recording many of its details.
The Dante watercolours of 1824–27 have an expressive force that is realised as much through their imaginative conception as through the great subtlety and richness of Blake’s technique. In finished watercolours, such as Dante running from the Three Beasts, flowing washes are combined with point-of-brush work to create sonorous jewel-like colour and variegated textures. These are used to underscore Blake’s evocation of the material world in this opening scene, but are equally as powerful in rendering the murky gloom and sombre atmosphere of the underworld in The Vestibule of Hell and the Souls mustering to cross the Acheron. The density of the technique in these works contrasts markedly with the translucent rainbow colours and limpid washes Blake uses to evoke the ethereal world of Paradise at the end of the cycle.
Cathy Leahy is NGV Senior Curator, Prints and Drawings.
The NGV warmly thanks the Felton Bequest for gifting the William Blake works discussed.
This article first appeared in NGV Magazine, Jan–Feb 2025