Monday, May 26, 2014

Paintings Of William Blake

By Darren Hartley


Among the art from the Romantic period, William Blake paintings are considered to be among the most original. As a boy, William studied art under the tutelage of Henry Pars. The next five years saw him as an apprentice to a commercial engraver in the person of James Basire. From there, he entered the Royal Academy School for further studies on engraving. William was 22 years old.

The early William Blake paintings, including Nature Revolves, but Man Advances, were a result of his private study of medieval and Renaissance art. William sought to emulate the example of artists such as Raphael, Michaelangelo and Durer. The objective was to produce timeless, Gothic art, infused with Christian spirituality and created with poetic genius.

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.

The description given to the technique used in William Blake paintings was fresco. It is in monotype form. It used a combination of oil and tempera paints with paints. Flat surfaces, such as copperplates and millboards, were where the designs were painted on. The rareness and uniqueness of the impressions were a consummation from finishing the designs in ink and watercolours.

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.

William Blake paintings develop art on an inward-looking, imaginative trajectory. William sought his subjects in journeys of the mind. Other than the Bible, he drew on other texts, most notably Dante, in his painting of Beatrice addressing Dante from the Car, and his own fertile mind, as evidenced by his The Ghost of a Flea.




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