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79-513: A video was made for the song "Little Fly". The song is a poem by William Blake set to music by Spalding. A vinyl version of the album was released in February 2011. This version of the album included a bonus track titled "Morning" which was to be included on her Radio Music Society album. Chamber Music Society was the best-selling contemporary jazz album of 2011. Bill Friskics-Warren of The Washington Post noted "The mood throughout

158-528: A cottage at Felpham , in Sussex (now West Sussex ), to take up a job illustrating the works of William Hayley , a minor poet. It was in this cottage that Blake began Milton (the title page is dated 1804, but Blake continued to work on it until 1808). The preface to this work includes a poem beginning " And did those feet in ancient time ", which became the words for the anthem " Jerusalem ". Over time, Blake began to resent his new patron, believing that Hayley

237-517: A Christian element to his mythic world. In the revised version of Vala , Blake added Christian and Hebrew images and describes how Los experiences a vision of the Lamb of God that regenerates Los's spirit. In opposition to Christ is Urizen and the Synagogue of Satan , who later crucifies Christ. It is from them that Deism is born. Broadwick Street Broadwick Street (formerly Broad Street)

316-406: A distinctive vision of a humanity redeemed by self-sacrifice and forgiveness, while retaining his earlier negative attitude towards what he felt was the rigid and morbid authoritarianism of traditional religion. Not all readers of Blake agree upon how much continuity exists between Blake's earlier and later works. Psychoanalyst June Singer has written that Blake's late work displayed a development of

395-438: A fan would expect –sinuous singing, a flexible, modern, acoustic jazz trio at the center, Latin rhythms that shift through funk, swing, and Brazilian grooves, but always in service of tuneful soul — while adding some daring new elements as well." Zachary Sniderman of Paste Magazine wrote "Spalding’s voice is the warm heart of Chamber Music Society . Her best songs are anchored by that core, despite some experimental slips into

474-519: A gesture of equality, as the barren earth blooms beneath their feet. Europe wears a string of pearls, while her sisters Africa and America are depicted wearing slave bracelets. Some scholars have speculated that the bracelets represent the "historical fact" of slavery in Africa and the Americas while the handclasp refer to Stedman's "ardent wish": "we only differ in color, but are certainly all created by

553-406: A great number of his works, particularly his Bible illustrations, to Thomas Butts , a patron who saw Blake more as a friend than a man whose work held artistic merit; this was typical of the opinions held of Blake throughout his life. The commission for Dante 's Divine Comedy came to Blake in 1826 through Linnell, with the aim of producing a series of engravings. Blake's death in 1827 cut short

632-610: A housekeeper. She believed she was regularly visited by Blake's spirit. She continued selling his illuminated works and paintings, but entertained no business transaction without first "consulting Mr. Blake". On the day of her death, in October 1831, she was as calm and cheerful as her husband, and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him, and it would not be long now." On her death, longtime acquaintance Frederick Tatham took possession of Blake's works and continued selling them. Tatham later joined

711-700: A memorial to Blake and his wife was erected in Westminster Abbey. Another memorial lies in St James's Church, Piccadilly , where he was baptised. At the time of Blake's death, he had sold fewer than 30 copies of Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Blake was not active in any well-established political party. His poetry consistently embodies an attitude of rebellion against the abuse of class power as documented in David Erdman's major study Blake: Prophet Against Empire: A Poet's Interpretation of

790-435: A method he used to produce most of his books, paintings, pamphlets and poems. The process is also referred to as illuminated printing, and the finished products as illuminated books or prints. Illuminated printing involved writing the text of the poems on copper plates with pens and brushes, using an acid-resistant medium. Illustrations could appear alongside words in the manner of earlier illuminated manuscripts . He then etched

869-427: A noted Chinese restaurant. Nos. 48 & 50, Padgett & Braham Ltd. and Wakely & Wheeler Ltd, goldsmiths & silversmiths. Also at the same premises were T & A Wise Ltd. engravers, and The Flutemakers Guild, makers of flutes in precious metals. 51°30′49″N 00°08′09″W  /  51.51361°N 0.13583°W  / 51.51361; -0.13583 This London road or road transport-related article

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948-489: A number of Blake's drawings. At the same time, some works not intended for publication were preserved by friends, such as his notebook and An Island in the Moon . Blake's grave is commemorated by two stones. The first was a stone that reads "Near by lie the remains of the poet-painter William Blake 1757–1827 and his wife Catherine Sophia 1762–1831". The memorial stone is situated approximately 20 metres (66 ft) away from

1027-410: A plate that Blake employed for his relief etching, and indicates why the engravings took so long to complete. Blake's marriage to Catherine was close and devoted until his death. Blake taught Catherine to write, and she helped him colour his printed poems. Gilchrist refers to "stormy times" in the early years of the marriage. Some biographers have suggested that Blake tried to bring a concubine into

1106-460: A practice that was preferred to actual drawing. Within these drawings Blake found his first exposure to classical forms through the work of Raphael , Michelangelo , Maarten van Heemskerck and Albrecht Dürer . The number of prints and bound books that James and Catherine were able to purchase for young William suggests that the Blakes enjoyed, at least for a time, a comfortable wealth. When William

1185-584: A process invented in 1725, consisted of making a metal cast from a wood engraving, but Blake's innovation was, as described above, very different. The pages printed from these plates were hand-coloured in watercolours and stitched together to form a volume. Blake used illuminated printing for most of his well-known works, including Songs of Innocence and of Experience , The Book of Thel , The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and Jerusalem . Although Blake has become better known for his relief etching, his commercial work largely consisted of intaglio engraving ,

1264-601: A result, he wrote his Descriptive Catalogue (1809), which contains what Anthony Blunt called a "brilliant analysis" of Chaucer and is regularly anthologised as a classic of Chaucer criticism. It also contained detailed explanations of his other paintings. The exhibition was very poorly attended, selling none of the temperas or watercolours. Its only review, in The Examiner , was hostile. Also around this time (circa 1808), Blake gave vigorous expression of his views on art in an extensive series of polemical annotations to

1343-724: A student at the Royal Academy in Old Somerset House, near the Strand. 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 towards art, especially his pursuit of "general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that

1422-412: A total of 700 people and only twelve escaped. Physician John Snow traced the outbreak to a public water pump on the street, and disabled the pump. Before this time, the disease was widely thought to be caused by air-borne ' miasma '; Snow's findings showed it to be water-borne . A replica pump, together with an explanatory plaque, was erected close to the original location in 1992. The original pump

1501-462: Is a street in Soho , City of Westminster , London . It runs for 0.18 miles (0.29 km) approximately west–east between Marshall Street and Wardour Street , crossing Berwick Street . The street extends across four separate estates, Colman Hedge Close, Little Gelding's, Pawlett's Garden and Pesthouse. Broad Street was notorious as the centre of an 1854 outbreak of cholera . This outbreak killed

1580-472: Is an accepted version of this page William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age . What he called his " prophetic works " were said by 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits

1659-417: Is at last fulfilled." John Middleton Murry notes discontinuity between Marriage and the late works, in that while the early Blake focused on a "sheer negative opposition between Energy and Reason", the later Blake emphasised the notions of self-sacrifice and forgiveness as the road to interior wholeness. This renunciation of the sharper dualism of Marriage of Heaven and Hell is evidenced in particular by

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1738-425: Is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me." Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses. At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always, Blake died. Gilchrist reports that a female lodger in the house, present at his expiration, said, "I have been at

1817-459: Is the first work to mention them. In particular, Blake's God/Man union is broken down into the bodily components of Urizen (head), Urthona (loins), Luvah (heart), and Tharmas (unity of the body) with paired Emanations being Ahania (wisdom, from the head), Enitharmon (what can't be attained in nature, from the loins), Vala (nature, from the heart), and Enion (earth mother, from the separation of unity). As connected to Blake's understanding of

1896-487: Is the most innovative aspect of his art, but a 2009 study drew attention to Blake's surviving plates, including those for the Book of Job : they demonstrate that he made frequent use of a technique known as " repoussage ", a means of obliterating mistakes by hammering them out by hitting the back of the plate. Such techniques, typical of engraving work of the time, are very different from the much faster and fluid way of drawing on

1975-477: The Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds , denouncing the Royal Academy as a fraud and proclaiming, "To Generalize is to be an Idiot". In 1818, he was introduced by George Cumberland's son to a young artist named John Linnell . A blue plaque commemorates Blake and Linnell at Old Wyldes' at North End, Hampstead. Through Linnell he met Samuel Palmer , who belonged to a group of artists who called themselves

2054-663: The French and American revolutions and wore a Phrygian cap in solidarity with the French revolutionaries, but despaired with the rise of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror in France. That same year, Blake composed his unfinished manuscript An Island in the Moon (1784). Blake illustrated Original Stories from Real Life (2nd edition, 1791) by Mary Wollstonecraft. Although they seem to have shared some views on sexual equality and

2133-538: The Shoreham Ancients . The group shared Blake's rejection of modern trends and his belief in a spiritual and artistic New Age. Aged 65, Blake began work on illustrations for the Book of Job , later admired by Ruskin , who compared Blake favourably to Rembrandt , and by Vaughan Williams , who based his ballet Job: A Masque for Dancing on a selection of the illustrations. In later life Blake began to sell

2212-474: The "disposition to abstractions, to generalising 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

2291-535: The Abbey. They teased him and one tormented him so much that Blake knocked the boy off a scaffold to the ground, "upon which he fell with terrific Violence". After Blake complained to the Dean, the schoolboys' privilege was withdrawn. Blake claimed that he experienced visions in the Abbey. He saw Christ with his Apostles and a great procession of monks and priests, and heard their chant. On 8 October 1779, Blake became

2370-656: The Beast: William Blake and the Moral Law (1993), claims to show how far he was inspired by dissident religious ideas rooted in the thinking of the most radical opponents of the monarchy during the English Civil War . Because Blake's later poetry contains a private mythology with complex symbolism, his late work has been less published than his earlier more accessible work. The Vintage anthology of Blake edited by Patti Smith focuses heavily on

2449-476: The Classical precision of his early influences, Michelangelo and Raphael . David Bindman suggests that Blake's antagonism towards Reynolds arose not so much from the president's opinions (like Blake, Reynolds held history painting to be of greater value than landscape and portraiture), but rather "against his hypocrisy in not putting his ideals into practice." Certainly Blake was not averse to exhibiting at

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2528-550: The History of His Own Times (1954). Blake was concerned about senseless wars and the blighting effects of the Industrial Revolution . Much of his poetry recounts in symbolic allegory the effects of the French and American revolutions. Erdman claims Blake was disillusioned with the political outcomes of the conflicts, believing they had simply replaced monarchy with irresponsible mercantilism. Erdman also notes Blake

2607-699: The Royal Academy, submitting works on six occasions between 1780 and 1808. Blake became a friend of John Flaxman , Thomas Stothard and George Cumberland during his first year at the Royal Academy. They shared radical views, with Stothard and Cumberland joining the Society for Constitutional Information . Blake's first biographer, Alexander Gilchrist , records that in June 1780 Blake was walking towards Basire's shop in Great Queen Street when he

2686-745: The Tate Gallery, Catherine mixed and applied his paint colors. One of Catherine Blake's most noted works is the coloring of the cover of the book Europe: A Prophecy . William Blake's 1863 biographer, Alexander Gilchrist , wrote, "The poet and his wife did everything in making the book - writing, designing, printing, engraving - everything except manufacturing the paper: the very ink, or colour rather, they did make." In 2019 Tate Britain 's Blake exhibition gave particular focus to Catherine Boucher's role in William Blake's work. Around 1783, Blake's first collection of poems, Poetical Sketches ,

2765-506: The actual grave, which was not marked until 12 August 2018. For years since 1965, the exact location of William Blake's grave had been lost and forgotten. The area had been damaged in the Second World War ; gravestones were removed and a garden was created. The memorial stone, indicating that the burial sites are "nearby", was listed as a Grade II listed structure in 2011. A Portuguese couple, Carol and Luís Garrido, rediscovered

2844-529: The album's 11 tracks is languid and improvisatory, with Spalding and members of her chamber ensemble weaving in and out of roomy arrangements that afford them as much chance to linger on a note as to take off on flights of melodic or rhythmic fancy. Their fusion of jazz, contemporary classical and other sources, including some understated funk, is as lively as it is original". Will Layman of PopMatters commented, "2010 brings Spalding’s most ambitious and complex music yet. Chamber Music Society delivers more of what

2923-420: The atmosphere of the three states of being in the poem. Blake's illustrations of the poem are not merely accompanying works, but rather seem to critically revise, or furnish commentary on, certain spiritual or moral aspects of the text. Because the project was never completed, Blake's intent may be obscured. Some indicators bolster the impression that Blake's illustrations in their totality would take issue with

3002-643: The book are the Four Zoas ( Urthona , Urizen , Luvah and Tharmas ), who were created by the fall of Albion in Blake's mythology . It consists of nine books, referred to as "nights". These outline the interactions of the Zoas, their fallen forms and their Emanations . Blake intended the book to be a summation of his mythic universe . Blake's Four Zoas, which represent four aspects of the Almighty God and Vala

3081-437: The death, not of a man, but of a blessed angel." George Richmond gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to Samuel Palmer : He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ – Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of

3160-619: The divine, the Zoas are the God the Father (Tharmas, sense), the Son of God (Luvah, love), the Holy Ghost (Urthona, imagination), and Satan who was originally of the divine substance (Urizen, reason) and their Emanations represent Sexual Urges (Enion), Nature (Vala), Inspiration (Enitharmon), and Pleasure (Ahania). Blake believed that each person had a twofold identity with one half being good and

3239-496: The earlier work, as do many critical studies such as William Blake by D. G. Gillham. The earlier work is primarily rebellious in character and can be seen as a protest against dogmatic religion especially notable in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , in which the figure represented by the "Devil" is virtually a hero rebelling against an imposter authoritarian deity. In later works, such as Milton and Jerusalem , Blake carves

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3318-558: The end of the 18th century. Europe Supported by Africa and America is an engraving by Blake held in the collection of the University of Arizona Museum of Art . The engraving was for a book written by Blake's friend John Gabriel Stedman called The Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796). It depicts three women embracing one another. Black Africa and White Europe hold hands in

3397-428: The enterprise, and only a handful of watercolours were completed, with only seven of the engravings arriving at proof form. Even so, they have earned praise: [T]he Dante watercolours are among Blake's richest achievements, engaging fully with the problem of illustrating a poem of this complexity. The mastery of watercolour has reached an even higher level than before, and is used to extraordinary effect in differentiating

3476-539: The exact burial location after 14 years of investigatory work, and the Blake Society organised a permanent memorial slab, which was unveiled at a public ceremony at the site on 12 August 2018. The new stone is inscribed "Here lies William Blake 1757–1827 Poet Artist Prophet" above a verse from his poem Jerusalem . The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in his honour in Australia in 1949. In 1957

3555-490: The fundamentalist Irvingite church and under the influence of conservative members of that church burned manuscripts that he deemed heretical. The exact number of destroyed manuscripts is unknown, but shortly before his death Blake told a friend he had written "twenty tragedies as long as Macbeth ", none of which survive. Another acquaintance, William Michael Rossetti, also burned works by Blake that he considered lacking in quality, and John Linnell erased sexual imagery from

3634-440: The government of George III , and the creation of the first police force. In 1781 William met Catherine Boucher when he was recovering from a relationship that had culminated in a refusal of his marriage proposal. He recounted the story of his heartbreak for Catherine and her parents, after which he asked Catherine: "Do you pity me?" When she responded affirmatively, he declared: "Then I love you". William married Catherine, who

3713-405: The grim humour of the cantos ). At the same time, Blake shared Dante's distrust of materialism and the corruptive nature of power, and clearly relished the opportunity to represent the atmosphere and imagery of Dante's work pictorially. Even as he seemed to be near death, Blake's central preoccupation was his feverish work on the illustrations to Dante's Inferno ; he is said to have spent one of

3792-444: The humanisation of the character of Urizen in the later works. Murry characterises the later Blake as having found "mutual understanding" and "mutual forgiveness". Regarding conventional religion, Blake was a satirist and ironist in his viewpoints which are illustrated and summarized in his poem Vala, or The Four Zoas , one of his uncompleted prophetic books begun in 1797. The demi-mythological and demi-religious main characters of

3871-439: The ideas first introduced in his earlier works, namely, the humanitarian goal of achieving personal wholeness of body and spirit. The final section of the expanded edition of her Blake study The Unholy Bible suggests the later works are the "Bible of Hell" promised in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell . Regarding Blake's final poem, Jerusalem , she writes: "The promise of the divine in man, made in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell ,

3950-526: The institution of marriage, no evidence is known that would prove that they had met. In Visions of the Daughters of Albion (1793), Blake condemned the cruel absurdity of enforced chastity and marriage without love and defended the right of women to complete self-fulfilment. From 1790 to 1800, William Blake lived in North Lambeth , London, at 13 Hercules Buildings, Hercules Road . The property

4029-481: The jazz deep-end. Spalding does better carving out a soundscape than acting like a sonic bulldozer. Still, Chamber Music Society is a fresh, slender album that shows both Spalding’s immense talent and the heart within it". Mark Kemp of Rolling Stone added, " Chamber Music Society finds Spalding stretching herself a bit too thin... But her talent is undeniable." All songs written and composed by Esperanza Spalding , except where noted. William Blake This

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4108-591: The last shillings he possessed on a pencil to continue sketching. Blake's last years were spent at Fountain Court off the Strand (the property was demolished in the 1880s, when the Savoy Hotel was built). On the day of his death (12 August 1827), Blake worked relentlessly on his Dante series. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside. Beholding her, Blake

4187-645: The least read body of poetry in the English language". While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham , he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "human existence itself". Although Blake was considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, he came to be highly regarded by later critics and readers for his expressiveness and creativity, and for

4266-552: The marriage bed in accordance with the beliefs of the more radical branches of the Swedenborgian Society , but other scholars have dismissed these theories as conjecture. In his Dictionary, Samuel Foster Damon suggests that Catherine may have had a stillborn daughter for which The Book of Thel is an elegy. That is how he rationalizes the Book's unusual ending, but notes that he is speculating. In 1800, Blake moved to

4345-411: The other evil. In Vala , both the character Orc and The Eternal Man discuss their selves as divided. By the time he was working on his later works, including Vala , Blake felt that he was able to overcome his inner battle but he was concerned about losing his artistic abilities. These thoughts carried over into Vala as the character Los (imagination) is connected to the image of Christ, and he added

4424-633: The philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterised as part of the Romantic movement and as "Pre-Romantic". A theist who preferred his own Marcionite style of theology, he was hostile to the Church of England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), and was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions . Although later he rejected many of these political beliefs, he maintained an amicable relationship with

4503-507: The plates in acid to dissolve the untreated copper and leave the design standing in relief (hence the name). This is a reversal of the usual method of etching, where the lines of the design are exposed to the acid, and the plate printed by the intaglio method. Relief etching (which Blake referred to as " stereotype " in The Ghost of Abel ) was intended as a means for producing his illuminated books more quickly than via intaglio. Stereotype,

4582-497: The political activist Thomas Paine ; he was also influenced by thinkers such as Emanuel Swedenborg . Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify. The 19th-century scholar William Michael Rossetti characterised him as a "glorious luminary", and "a man not forestalled by predecessors, nor to be classed with contemporaries, nor to be replaced by known or readily surmisable successors". Collaboration with his wife, Catherine Boucher ,

4661-418: The same Hand." Others have said it "expresses the climate of opinion in which the questions of color and slavery were, at that time, being considered, and which Blake's writings reflect." Blake employed intaglio engraving in his own work, such as for his Illustrations of the Book of Job , completed just before his death. Most critical work has concentrated on Blake's relief etching as a technique because it

4740-399: The standard process of engraving in the 18th century in which the artist incised an image into the copper plate, a complex and laborious process, with plates taking months or years to complete, but as Blake's contemporary, John Boydell , realised, such engraving offered a "missing link with commerce", enabling artists to connect with a mass audience and became an immensely important activity by

4819-790: The text they accompany: in the margin of Homer Bearing the Sword and His Companions , Blake notes, "Every thing in Dantes Comedia shews That for Tyrannical Purposes he has made This World the Foundation of All & the Goddess Nature & not the Holy Ghost." Blake seems to dissent from Dante's admiration of the poetic works of ancient Greece , and from the apparent glee with which Dante allots punishments in Hell (as evidenced by

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4898-802: The things he saw in Heaven. Catherine paid for Blake's funeral with money lent to her by Linnell. Blake's body was buried in a plot shared with others, five days after his death – on the eve of his 45th wedding anniversary – at the Dissenter 's burial ground in Bunhill Fields , that became the London Borough of Islington . His parents' bodies were buried in the same graveyard. Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert , George Richmond , Frederick Tatham and John Linnell. Following Blake's death, Catherine moved into Tatham's house as

4977-501: Was an early and profound influence on Blake, and remained a source of inspiration throughout his life. Blake's childhood, according to him, included mystical religious experiences such as "beholding God's face pressed against his window, seeing angels among the haystacks, and being visited by the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel ." Blake started engraving copies of drawings of Greek antiquities purchased for him by his father,

5056-488: Was apprenticed to engraver James Basire of Great Queen Street , at the sum of £52.10, for a term of seven years. At the end of the term, aged 21, he became a professional engraver. No record survives of any serious disagreement or conflict between the two during the period of Blake's apprenticeship, but Peter Ackroyd 's biography notes that Blake later added Basire's name to a list of artistic adversaries; and then crossed it out. This aside, Basire's style of line-engraving

5135-611: Was at the junction of Broad Street and Cambridge Street (today Lexington Street), close to the back wall of what today is the ' John Snow ' pub . The site is subtly marked with a pink granite kerbstone in front of the small wall plaque. A house on the corner of Broadwick and Marshall streets was the birthplace and childhood home of William Blake . The street crosses, or meets, Wardour Street, Duck Lane, Berwick Street, Hopkins Street, Ingestre Place, Poland Street, Lexington Street, Dufours Place, Marshall Street and Carnaby Street . Current businesses on Broadwick Street include Yauatcha ,

5214-473: Was charged not only with assault, but with uttering seditious and treasonable expressions against the king. Schofield claimed that Blake had exclaimed "Damn the king. The soldiers are all slaves." Blake was cleared in the Chichester assizes of the charges. According to a report in the Sussex county paper, "[T]he invented character of [the evidence] was ... so obvious that an acquittal resulted". Schofield

5293-491: 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". This close study of the Gothic (which he saw as the "living form") left clear traces in his style. In the long afternoons Blake spent sketching in the Abbey, he was occasionally interrupted by boys from Westminster School , who were allowed in

5372-421: Was deeply opposed to slavery and believes some of his poems, read primarily as championing " free love ", had their anti-slavery implications short-changed. A more recent study, William Blake: Visionary Anarchist by Peter Marshall (1988), classified Blake and his contemporary William Godwin as forerunners of modern anarchism . British Marxist historian E. P. Thompson 's last finished work, Witness Against

5451-409: Was demolished in 1918, but the site is marked with a plaque. A series of 70 mosaics commemorates Blake in the nearby railway tunnels of Waterloo Station . The mosaics largely reproduce illustrations from Blake's illuminated books, The Songs of Innocence and of Experience , The Marriage of Heaven and Hell , and the prophetic books . In 1788, aged 31, Blake experimented with relief etching ,

5530-499: Was five years his junior, on 18 August 1782 in St Mary's Church, Battersea . Illiterate, Catherine signed her wedding contract with an X. The original wedding certificate may be viewed at the church, where a commemorative stained-glass window was installed between 1976 and 1982. The marriage was successful and Catherine became William's "partner in both life and work", undertaking important roles as an engraver and colourist. According to

5609-493: Was instrumental in the creation of many of his books. Boucher worked as a printmaker and colorist for his works. "For almost forty-five years she was the person who lived and worked most closely with Blake, enabling him to realize numerous projects, impossible without her assistance. Catherine was an artist and printer in her own right", writes literary scholar Angus Whitehead. William Blake was born on 28 November 1757 at 28 Broad Street (now Broadwick Street ) in Soho , London. He

5688-545: Was later depicted wearing "mind forged manacles" in an illustration to Jerusalem The Emanation of the Giant Albion . Blake returned to London in 1804 and began to write and illustrate Jerusalem (1804–20), his most ambitious work. Having conceived the idea of portraying the characters in Chaucer 's Canterbury Tales , Blake approached the dealer Robert Cromek , with a view to marketing an engraving. Knowing Blake

5767-718: Was of a kind held at the time to be old-fashioned compared to the flashier stipple or mezzotint styles. It has been speculated that 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 his apprentice to copy images from the Gothic churches in London (perhaps to settle a quarrel between Blake and James Parker, his fellow apprentice). His experiences in Westminster Abbey helped form his artistic style and ideas. The Abbey of his day

5846-550: Was printed. In 1784, after his father's death, Blake and former fellow apprentice James Parker opened a print shop. They began working with radical publisher Joseph Johnson . Johnson's house was a meeting-place for some leading English intellectual dissidents of the time: theologian and scientist Joseph Priestley ; philosopher Richard Price ; artist John Henry Fuseli ; early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft ; and English-American revolutionary Thomas Paine . Along with William Wordsworth and William Godwin , Blake had great hopes for

5925-483: Was swept up by a rampaging mob that stormed Newgate Prison . The mob 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 the attack. The riots, in response to a parliamentary bill revoking sanctions against Roman Catholicism, became known as the Gordon Riots and provoked a flurry of legislation from

6004-461: Was ten years old, his parents knew enough of his headstrong temperament that he was not sent to school but instead enrolled in drawing classes at Henry Pars' drawing school in the Strand . He read avidly on subjects of his own choosing. During this period, Blake made explorations into poetry; his early work displays knowledge of Ben Jonson , Edmund Spenser , and the Psalms . On 4 August 1772, Blake

6083-445: Was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blake's father, James, was a hosier , who had lived in London. He attended school only long enough to learn reading and writing, leaving at the age of 10, and was otherwise educated at home by his mother Catherine Blake ( née Wright). Even though the Blakes were English Dissenters , William was baptised on 11 December at St James's Church , Piccadilly, London. The Bible

6162-514: Was too eccentric to produce a popular work, Cromek promptly commissioned Blake's friend Thomas Stothard to execute the concept. When Blake learned he had been cheated, he broke off contact with Stothard. He set up an independent exhibition in his brother's haberdashery shop at 27 Broad Street in Soho . The exhibition was designed to market his own version of the Canterbury illustration (titled The Canterbury Pilgrims ), along with other works. As

6241-471: Was uninterested in true artistry, and preoccupied with "the meer drudgery of business" (E724). Blake's disenchantment with Hayley has been speculated to have influenced Milton: a Poem , in which Blake wrote that "Corporeal Friends are Spiritual Enemies". (4:26, E98) Blake's trouble with authority came to a head in August 1803, when he was involved in a physical altercation with a soldier, John Schofield. Blake

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