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Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BER-BLA |
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BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827) , English poet and painter, was born in London, on the 28th of November 1757. His father, James Blake, kept a hosier's shop in Broad Street, Golden Square; and from the scanty education which the young artist received, it may be judged that the circumstances of the family were not very prosperous. For the facts of William Blake's early life the world is indebted to a little book, called A Father's Memoirs on a Child, written by Dr Malkin in 1806. Here we learn that young Blake quickly developed a taste for design, which his father appears to have had sufficient intelligence to recognize and assist by every means in his power. At the age of ten the boy was sent to a drawing school kept by Henry Pars in the Strand, and at the same time he was already cultivating his own taste by constant attendance at the different art sale rooms, where he was known as the " little connoisseur " Here he began to collect prints after Michelangelo, and Raphael, Direr and Heemskerk, while at the school in the Strand he had the opportunity of drawing from the antique. After four years of this preliminary instruction Blake entered upon another branch of art study. In 1777 he was apprenticed to James Basire, an engraver of repute, and with him he remained seven years. His apprenticeship had an important bearing on Blake's artistic education, and marks the department of art in which he was made technically proficient. In 1778, at the end of his apprenticeship, he proceeded to the school of the Royal Academy, where he continued his early study from the antique, and had for the first time an opportunity of drawing from the living model. This is in brief all that is known of Blake's artistic education. That he ever, at the academy or elsewhere, systematically studied painting we do not know; but that he had already begun the practice of water colour for himself is ascertained. So far, however, the course of his training in art schools; and under Basire, was calculated to render him proficient only as a draughtsman and an engraver. He had learned how to draw, and he had mastered besides the practical difficulties of engraving, and with these qualifications he entered upon his career. In 1780 he exhibited a picture in the Royal Academy Exhibition, conjectured to have been executed in water colours, and he continued to contribute to the annual exhibitions up to the year 1808. In 1782 he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market-gardener at Battersea, with whom he lived always on affectionate terms, and the young couple after their marriage established themselves in Green Street, Leicester Fields. Blake had already become acquainted with some of the rising artists of his time, amongst them Stothard, Flaxman and Fuseli, and he now began to see something of literary society. At the house
gentleman
talent, he was pledged to the life of a painter, and these Poetical Sketches, though they are often no more than the utterances of a boy, are no less decisive in marking Blake as a future poet. For a while the two gifts are exhibited in association. To the close of his life Blake continued to print and publish, after a manner of his own, the inventions of his verse illustrated by original
house
Notwithstanding the distinct and precious qualities of this volume, it attracted but slight attention, a fact perhaps not very wonderful, when the system of publication is taken into account. Blake, however, proceeded with other work of the same kind. The same year he published The Book of Thel, more decidedly mystic in its poetry, but scarcely less beautiful as a piece of illumination; The Marriage of Heaven and Hell followed in 1i90; and in 1793 there are added The Gates of Paradise, The Vision of the Daughters of Albion, and some other " Prophetic Books." It becomes abundantly clear on reaching this point in his career that Blake's utterances cannot be judged by ordinary rules. The Songs of Experience, put forth in 1794 as a companion to the earlier Songs of Innocence, are for the most part intelligible and coherent, but in these intervening works of prophecy, as they were called by the author, we get the first public expression of that phase of his character and of his genius upon which a charge of insanity has been founded. The question whether Blake was or was not mad seems likely to remain in dispute, but there can be no doubt whatever that he was at different periods of his life under the influence of illusions for which there are no outward facts to account, and that much of what he wrote is so far wanting in the quality of sanity as to be without a logical coherence. On the other hand, it is equally clear that no madness imputed to Blake could equal that which would be involved in the rejection of his work on this ground. The greatness of Blake's mind is even better established than its frailty, and in considering the work that he has left we must remember that it is by the sublimity of his genius, and not by any mental defect, that he is most clearly distinguished from his fellows. With the publication of the Songs of Experience Blake's poetic career,so far at least as ordinary readers are concerned, may be said to close. A writer of prophecy he continued for many years, but the works by which he is best known in poetry are those earlier and simpler efforts, supplemented by a few pieces taken from various sources, some of which were of later production. But althdugh Blake the poet ceases in a general sense at this date, Blake the artist is only just entering upon his career. In the Songs of Innocence and Experience, and even in some of the earlier Books of Prophecy, the two gifts worked together in perfect balance and harmony; but at this point the supremacy of the artistic faculty asserts itself, and for the remainder of his life Blake was pre-eminently a designer and engraver. The labour of poetical composition continues, but the product passes beyond the range of general comprehension; while, with apparent inconsistency, the work of the artist gains steadily ip. strength and coherence, and never to the last loses its hold upon the understanding. It may almost be said without exaggeration that his earliest poetic work, The Songs of Innocence, and nearly his latest effort in design, the illustrations to The Book of Job, take rank among the sanest and most admirable products of his genius. Nor is the fact, astonishing enough at first sight, quite beyond a possible explanation. As Blake advanced in his poetic career, he was gradually hindered and finally overpowered by a tendency that was most serviceable to him in design. His inclination to substitute a symbol for a conception, to make an image do duty for an idea, became an insuperable obstacle to literary success. He endeavoured constantly to treat the intellectual material of verse as if it could be moulded into sensuous form, with the inevitable result that as the ideas to be expressed advanced in complexity and depth of meaning, his poetic gifts became gradually more inadequate to the task of interpretation. The earlier poems dealing with simpler themes, and put forward at a time when the bent of the artist's mind was not strictly determined, do not suffer from this difficulty; the symbolism then only enriches an idea of no intellectual intricacy; but when Blake began to concern himself with profounder problems the want of a more logical understanding of language made itself strikingly apparent. If his ways of thought and modes of workmanship had not been developed with an intensity almost morbid, he would probably have been able to distinguish and keep separate the double functions of art and literature. As it is, however, he remains as an extreme illustration
In 1796 Blake was actively employed in the work of illustration
series , and these drawings, 537 in number, form one of the most interesting records of Blake's genius. Gilchrist, the painter's biographer, in commenting upon the engraved plates, regrets the absence of colour, " the use of which Blake so well understood, to relieve his simple design and give it significance," and an examination of the original water-colour drawings fully supports the justice of his criticism. Soon after the publication of this work Blake was introduced by Flaxman to the poet Hayley, and in the year 18or he accepted the suggestion of the latter, that he should take up his residence at Felpham in Sussex. The mild andamiable poet had planned to write a life of Cowper, and for the illustration of this and other works he sought Blake's help and companionship. The residence at Felpham continued for three years, partly pleasant and partly irksome to Blake, but apparently not very profitable to the progress of his art. One of the annoyances of his stay was a malicious prosecution for treason set on foot by a common soldier whom Blake had summarily ejected from his garden; but a more serious drawback was the increasing irritation which the painter seems to have experienced from association with Hayley. In 1804 Blake returned to London, to take up his residence in South Moulton
In the years 18041805 Blake executed a series of designs in illustration of Robert Blair's The Grave, of much beauty and grandeur, though showing stronger traces of imitation of Italian art than any earlier production. These designs were purchased from the artist by an adventurous and unscrupulous publisher, Cromek, for the paltry sum of 21, and afterwards published in a series of engravings by Schiavonetti. Despite the ill treatment Blake received in the matter, and the other evils, including a quarrel with his friend Stothard as to priority of invention of a design illustrating the Canterbury Pilgrims, which his association with Cromek involved, the book gained for him a larger amount of popularity than he at any other time secured. Stothard's picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims was exhibited in 1807, and in 18o9 Blake, in emulation of his' rival's success, having himself painted in water-colour a picture of the same subject, opened an exhibition, and drew up a Descriptive Catalogue, curious and interesting, and containing a very valuable criticism of Chaucer.The remainder of the artist's life is not outwardly eventful. In 1813 he formed, through the introduction of George Cumber-land of Bristol, a valuable friendship with John Linnell and other rising water-colour painters. Amongst the group Blake seems to have found special
gift of inspired vision; and it is probably to this influence that we are indebted for several curious drawings made from visions, especially the celebrated "ghost of a flea " and the very humorous portrait of the builder of the Pyramids. In 1821 Blake removed to Fountain Court; in the Strand, where he died on the 12th of August 1827. The chief
A life of Blake, with selections from his works, by Alexander Gilchrist, was published in 1863 (new edition by W. G. Robertson, 1906); in 1868 A. C. Swinburne published a critical essay on his genius, remarkable for a full examination of the Prophetic Books, and in 1874 William Michael Rossetti published a memoir prefixed to an edition of the poems. In 1893 appeared The Works of William Blake, edited by E. J. Ellis and W. B. Yeats. But for a long time all the editors paid too little attention to a correct following of Blake's own MSS. The text of the poems was finally edited with exemplary care and thoroughness by John Sampson
William Blake, together, with a Life by Frederick Tatham; edited by A. G. B. Russell (1906); and Basil de Selincourt, William Blake (1909). (J. C. C.) End of Article: BLAKE, WILLIAM (1757-1827) If you wish, you can link directly to this article.
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