Dr james t blake biography of william

His unique style and attention to detail have made his pieces stand out among the works of his contemporaries. His engravings were also highly sought after, and he was commissioned to create illustrations for various books and publications throughout his career. Despite the popularity of his illustrations and engravings, Blake struggled to make a living from his art during his lifetime.

However, his legacy has endured, and his works continue to inspire and captivate audiences today. William Blake was a poet and artist who lived during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. He was known for his unique views on nature and the environment, which were heavily influenced by his spiritual beliefs. Blake believed that nature was a reflection of the divine, and that humans had a responsibility to care for the natural world.

He saw the destruction of the environment as a sin against God, and believed that it was the duty of individuals to protect and preserve the natural world. William Blake was known for his unconventional views on gender and sexuality, which were considered radical for his time. He believed that gender was a social construct and that individuals should be free to express themselves in any way they chose.

Blake also rejected the idea of traditional marriage, arguing that it was a form of slavery that oppressed women. In his poetry and artwork, Blake often depicted gender and sexuality in a fluid and ambiguous way. He frequently portrayed male and female figures in a way that challenged traditional gender roles and expectations. He believed that sexual desire was a natural and healthy part of human experience, and that individuals should be free to explore their desires without shame or guilt.

He also rejected the idea of sexual morality, arguing that it was a form of repression that stifled individual freedom and creativity. He uses a series of paradoxes and contradictions to challenge conventional notions of morality and religion, and to suggest that the true nature of reality is far more complex and mysterious than we can imagine.

Many of his works are filled with images that have multiple meanings and can be interpreted in different ways. He saw the world as a place of infinite possibilities, where the boundaries between the physical and the spiritual were constantly shifting and evolving. For Blake, the true purpose of art was to help us glimpse these hidden dimensions of reality and to awaken us to the deeper mysteries of existence.

Table of contents. Early Life and Education.

Dr james t blake biography of william: Blake, William (–), engraver,

Marriage and Family Life. Religious and Spiritual Beliefs. Political Views and Activism. Blake began engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father, a practice that was then preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms, through the work of Raphael, Michelangelo, Marten Heemskerk and Albrecht Durer.

His parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but was instead enrolled in drawing classes. He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake was also making explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson and Edmund Spenser. At the end of this period, at the age of 21, he was to become a professional engraver.

There is no record of any serious disagreement or conflict between the two during the period of Blake's apprenticeship. However, Peter Ackroyd's biography notes that Blake was later to add Basire's name to a list of artistic adversaries-and then cross it out. This aside, Basire's style of engraving was of a kind held to be old-fashioned at the time, and Blake's instruction in this outmoded form may have been detrimental to his acquiring of work or recognition in later life.

After two years Basire sent him to copy images from the Gothic churches in London it is possible that this task was set in order to break up a quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprenticeand his experiences in Westminster Abbey contributed to the formation of his artistic style and ideas; the Abbey of his day was decorated with suits of armour, painted funeral effigies and varicoloured waxworks.

Ackroyd notes that "the most immediate [impression] would have been of faded brightness and colour". In the long afternoons Blake spent sketching in the Abbey, he was occasionally interrupted by the boys of Westminster School, one of whom "tormented" Blake so much one afternoon that he knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence".

Blake beheld more visions in the Abbey, of a great procession of monks and priests, while he heard "the chant of plain-song and chorale". While the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own materials throughout the six-year period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens, championed by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds.

Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude toward art, especially his pursuit of "general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that the "disposition to abstractions, to generalizing and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake responded, in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit".

Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of hypocrisy. Against Reynolds' fashionable oil painting, Blake preferred the Classical precision of his early influences, Michelangelo and Raphael. Blake's first biographer Alexander Gilchrist records that in JuneBlake was walking towards Basire's shop in Great Queen Street when he was swept up by a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate Prison in London.

They attacked the prison gates with shovels and pickaxes, set the building ablaze, and released the prisoners inside. Blake was reportedly in the front rank of the mob during this attack. These riots, in response to a parliamentary bill revoking sanctions against Roman Catholicism, later came to be known as the Gordon Riots; they provoked a flurry of legislation from the government of George III, as well as the creation of the first police force.

Despite Gilchrist's insistence that Blake was "forced" to accompany the crowd, some biographers have argued that he accompanied it impulsively, or supported it as a revolutionary act. In contrast, Jerome McGann argues that the riots were reactionary, and that events would have provoked "disgust" in Blake. InBlake met John Flaxman, who was to become his patron, and Catherine Boucher, who was to become his wife.

At the time, Blake was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. Telling Catherine and her parents the story, she expressed her sympathy, whereupon Blake asked her, "Do you pity me? Mary's Church, Battersea. Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an 'X'. Like a true seer, he could see beyond the ordinary world and glimpse another possibility.

Dr james t blake biography of william: Dr. James Blake was appointed

This poem from Auguries of Innocence is one of the most loved poems in the English language. Within four short lines, he gives an impression of the infinite in the finite, and the eternal in the transient. This hymn was inspired by the story that Jesus travelled to Glastonbury, England — in the years before his documented life in the Gospels. During his lifetime Blake never made much money.

It was only after his death that his genius was fully appreciated. His engravings and commissioned work drew enough money to survive, but at times he had to rely on the support of some of his close friends. On one occasion he got into trouble with the authorities for forcing a soldier to leave his back garden. It was in the period of the Napoleonic Wars where the government were cracking down on any perceived lack of patriotism.

In this climate, he was arrested for sedition and faced the possibility of jail. Outwardly Blake was a member of the Church of England, where he was christened, married and buried. However, his faith and spiritual experience was much deeper and more unconventional than orthodox religion. He considered himself a sincere Christian but was frequently critical of organised religion.

While he was still an apprentice, he married Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a market gardener who was his landlord and friend.

Dr james t blake biography of william: William Blake was an

He taught her to read and write, and trained her to engrave. She helped him to hand-color his illustrations throughout his life. They remained happily married until his death. Blake had already become acquainted with some of the rising artists of his time, and now he began to meet literary people. At the Rev. Henry Mathew's home in Rathbone Place, he used to recite and sometimes sing poems he had written, and it was through the influence of Rev.

Mathews that his first volume of poetry, called Poetical Sketcheswas published in William Blake had been educated as an engraver, but this book introduced him to the world as an artist who was also a gifted poet. He continued to publish his unique poems with his own original designs for the rest of his life. Inthe Songs of Innocence were published.

This book is remarkable for the beauty of both its verse and design, as well as the way the two were combined and expressed by the artist. Blake became his own printer and publisher. He engraved on copper, using a process he devised himself, and included engravings of both the text of his poems and the surrounding decorative design on the same plate.

After the pages were printed from the copper plates, he colored them in by hand.