Tuesday, May 27, 2014

William Blake Paintings

By Darren Hartley


Ranking among the most original of Romantic visual arts are William Blake paintings. It was at the drawing academy of Henry Pars that William studied art as a boy. James Basire then hired him as a commercial engraver's apprentice for five years. At the age of 22, William entered the Royal Academy School to further develop his engraving skills.

Nature Revolves, but Man Advances was one of the earliest William Blake paintings. It was a resultant from his private studying of medieval and Renaissance art. Raphael, Michaelangelo and Durer were among his idols. He was on the trail of producing timeless, Gothic art, representative of Christian spirituality, done with poetic ingenuity.

By the 1790s, William Blake paintings consisted of a series of large color prints notable for their massive size and iconic designs. They were his most ambitious work as a visual artist. Of the 12 known designs, many of the subjects function as pairs. These subjects were drawn from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and Newton.

Fresco was how the technique used in William Blake paintings was described. It is a form of monotype and a mixture of oil and tempera paints with chalks. It was on a flat surface that the designs were painted. Among the surfaces William used were copperplates and millboards. By finishing the design in ink and watercolour, Blake left a mark of rareness and uniqueness on each impression.

There were about 50 tempera paintings and more than 80 watercolors completed from 1799 to 1890. These William Blake paintings from that period were a series of Bible illustrations concentrating on Old Testament prefigurations of Christ, the life of Christ and apocalyptic subjects from the Book of Revelation.

The development of William Blake paintings geared towards an inward look on man's imagination. William painted on journeys that the mind took, not the body. Dante's books were another source of ideas for William, other than his own fertile mind, that proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration.




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