Blake William

Blake, William, painter and poet, was born in 1757 in London. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to an engraver for seven years, proceeding in 1778 to the school of the Royal Academy, where he studied from the antique and began to draw from the living model. In 1780 he exhibited his first picture, The Death of Earl Godwin, in the Royal Academy's first exhibition in Somerset House; and after marrying in 1782 Catherine Boucher, who proved of great assistance to him in his work, he opened a printseller's shop in Broad Street in 1784. Meanwhile, in 1783, he had published Poetical Sketches, which marked him as a coming poet. For his Songs of Innocence he was unable to find a publisher, and hit upon a plan of producing them himself, revealed to him in a dream, he used to say, by his dead brother Robert. Besides revealing the poet, this publication exhibited an inventive artist in decorative design. Among Blake's other best known works are: Book of Thel, 1789; Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1790; Gates of Paradise, 1793; Songs of Experience, 1794; The Booh of Urizen, 1794; The Song of Los, 1795; The Book of Ahania, 1795, etc. He illustrated Young's Night's Thoughts, Blair's Grave and The Book of Job. The strength of his genius lay in the vividness of his imagination. Though he commanded the patronage of the public to a very limited extent during his lifetime, his genius did not fail to attract friends whose kindly assistance relieved his declining years, which were passed in poverty. He died in 1827 at No. 3, Fountain Court, Strand, whither he had removed in 1820, and was buried in Bunhill Fields.