William Blake

William Blake was born in London in 1757. He was a romantic poet and a deeply spiritual man who had visions, mostly of angels, from an early age. He continued to have these hallucinations throughout his life. He did not follow traditional religions and railed against the powers of Church and Crown.

Blake was apprenticed to a master engraver for seven years before enrolling at the Royal Academy, where he started his lifelong process of painting what he imagined, rather than what he saw. He worked as an engraver, trying to get commissions wherever he could. Blake grew tired of the commercial aspects of engraving and by 1788 began to produce his own works. He invented a new and cheap method of combining words and images onto copper plates to be printed and sold. In 1789, using this technique, he produced "Songs of Innocence." Later he added "Songs of Experience" and sold them together as one book. Its subtitle was "The Two Contrary States of the Human Soul"; the first is about the gentle childlike side of life and the second is about the darker, or shadow side. A hand-colored engraving appeared alongside each poem.

Blake was a politcal activist and wore a red cap describing himself as "liberty boy" during the French Revolution. He also participated in the radical clubs that sprang up in Britain and became acquainted with some of the leading radicals of his day. In 1804, he produced his most famous poem, now a popular hymn and anthem of the Women's Institute. In actual fact this "hymn" is part of the preface to one of Blake's epic poems, "Milton" and is a revolutionary message calling on people to rise up and destroy the industrial hell that was destroying their lives.

During this period Blake embarked on his own personal religious philosophy, attempting to explain it in words and painting, intertwined with painting subjects from Shakespeare, Dante and others. Blake's major preoccupation, however, was the fight against oppression, whether political, intellectual or religious, and the majority of his work reflected this. He also opposed the way in which he saw science overtaking the imagination and replacing it with pure reason. Blake continued to produce his own personal view of life and religion in his paintings and engraving, occasionally getting a commission to produce some works which kept him in funds. However, he and his wife lived in near-poverty. William Blake died in 1827. Blake was largely forgotten until 30 years after his death when he was rediscovered by Rossetti and later proclaimed by the Pre-Raphalite Brotherhood as one of the Ancients. Blake is now regarded as one of Britain's greatest poets and artists.