BLAKE, William, Featured Paintings in Detail (1)

BLAKE, William

Featured Paintings in Detail

(1)

BLAKE, WilliamThe Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (formerly called ‘Hecate’) c. 1795Pen and ink with watercolour, 439 x 581 mmTate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamThe Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (formerly called ‘Hecate’) (detail)c. 1795Pen and ink with watercolour, 439 x 581 mmTate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamIsaac Newton1795Copper engraving with pen and ink and watercolour, 460 x 600 mmTate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamIsaac Newton (detail)1795Copper engraving with pen and ink and watercolour, 460 x 600 mmTate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamThe Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve 1825 Ink, tempera and gold on mahogany wood, 32,5 x 43,3 cm Tate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamThe Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve (detail)1825 Ink, tempera and gold on mahogany wood, 32,5 x 43,3 cm Tate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamThe Lovers' Whirlwind, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta 1824-27Pen and ink and watercolour, 374 x 530 mmBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham

BLAKE, WilliamThe Lovers' Whirlwind, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta (detail)1824-27Pen and ink and watercolour, 374 x 530 mmBirmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Birmingham

BLAKE, WilliamPity 1795 Watercolor colourprint and ink , 42.2 x 53.9 cm Tate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamPity (detail)1795 Watercolor colourprint and ink , 42.2 x 53.9 cm Tate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamBeatrice Addressing Dante from the Car 1824 -1827Ink and watercolour on paper , 37.2 x 52.7cmTate Gallery, London

BLAKE, WilliamBeatrice Addressing Dante from the Car (detail)1824 -1827Ink and watercolour on paper , 37.2 x 52.7cmTate Gallery, London

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BLAKE, WilliamBeatrice Addressing Dante from the Car

In this picture Dante (standing in the right hand corner) finally meets Beatrice, who is the crowned figure on the chariot. Beatrice was the love of Dante’s life, and was the subject of his first collection of poems, Vita Nuova. She died when she was only 25 years old – hence her presence in the afterlife as

the central figure of The Divine Comedy.

Anxious that Dante had gone astray after her death, it was Beatrice who, in the scheme of the poem, arranged for Virgil to guide him through Hell and Purgatory. She is veiled but Dante nonetheless senses who she is and begins to tremble. Beatrice, however, represents more than love. In the scheme

of the poem she is divine revelation and grace.The rich and bright colours used here express Dante’s double delight. He is reunited with his lady-love, and at the same time is experiencing a

revelation of the divine.

BLAKE, WilliamThe Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (formerly called ‘Hecate’)

The dense, dark colour-printing in the sky and the rocks suggests that this was the first of the three known impressions to be printed. Blake has used pen and ink to give strong outlines to the figures, and to draw locks of hair, the bat, and the donkey’s mane and rough

coat. The figures have been given form and roundness by washes of intense but transparent colour. The owl’s eyes are highlighted with a bright, opaque red wash.

Enitharmon is a character in Blake’s mythology. In her ‘night of joy’ she sets out her false religion.

BLAKE, WilliamIsaac Newton

The eighteenth-century poet, Alexander Pope, wrote a satirical epitaph for Newton:Nature and Nature’s laws lay hid in night

God said Let Newton be! And all was light.

This shows just how much the eighteenth century revered the great philosopher. Newton had successfully explained the workings of the physical universe. To Blake, however, this was not enough: Newton had omitted God, as well as all those significant emotional and spiritual elements which cannot be quantified,

from his theories. Blake boasted that he had ‘fourfold vision’ while Newton with his ‘single vision’ was as good as asleep. To Blake, Newton, Bacon and Locke with their emphasis on reason were nothing more than ‘the three great teachers of atheism, or Satan’s Doctrine’.

In this print from 1795 Newton is portrayed drawing with a pair of compasses. Compasses were a traditional symbol of God, ‘architect of the universe’, but notice how the picture progresses from exuberance and colour on the left, to sterility and blackness on the right. In Blake’s view Newton brings not light,

but night.

BLAKE, WilliamThe Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve

This work shows Adam and Eve discovering their dead son. His brother Cain, the murderer, flees the scene. Despite his evil deed, Cain, appears as an ideal male figure. Here, Blake’s approach is in line with that of Lavater, who argued that someone’s appearance is often ‘better than his actions’. However

Lavater also suggested that in performing an evil act the person could become disfigured, perhaps explaining Cain’s contorted body.

Rather than follow Lavater here, Blake’s use of the body to invoke self-loathing, fear and, in the case of Eve, despair may be closer to pathognomy - a way of reading emotions about which Lavater remained sceptical.

BLAKE, WilliamThe Lovers' Whirlwind, Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta

This is the most celebrated of William Blake's illustrations to Dante's 'Divine Comedy' commissioned by John Linnell. Blake followed Dante's narrative, but his interpretation of the story is original. This scene illustrates the scene in the Inferno, the journey through Hell, when Dante and Virgil meet the

adulturous lovers Francesca da Rimini and Paolo.In this circle people guilty of the sin of lust are whirled round and round in an unending storm. The storm, of course, represents irresistible passion.

Among those being blown about are mythic and historical queens such as Helen of Troy and Cleopatra of Egypt. Dante, however, chooses to speak to Paolo and Francesca, famous lovers from Rimini.

Francesca had been married to the brave, but physically deformed Gianciotto. She was reading an Arthurian romance with his better-looking brother, Paolo, when passion got the better of them. Gianciotto, enraged, murdered them both, for which he was consigned to the deepest circle of Hell (where

Dante shall later meet him).Dante is so moved by this romantic tale that he faints, hence his position flat on his back. Notice that above Virgil’s head a sun-like disc contains a sketch

of a couple embracing, while the wind-blown lovers themselves seem to be flying up and out of the picture to freedom. Blake disapproved of Dante for depicting God as a vengeful judge, whose role was to inflict ingenious punishment (similar to his own Urizen), and these

details are his subtle protest. As we can see in poems such as The Garden Of Love, Blake himself believed that suppressing desire was a far worse crime than yielding to it.0

BLAKE, WilliamPity

An image inspired by verses from Macbeth:Pity, like a naked newborn babe

Striding the blast, or heaven’s cherubim horsed Upon the sightless couriers of the air.

William Blake drew on popularly-held associations between a fair complexion and moral purity. These connections are also made by Lavater, who writes that ‘the grey is the tenderest of horses, and, we may here add, that people with light hair, if not effeminate, are yet, it is well known, of tender formation

and constitution’.. The print exists in four versions from two different matrices. The most elaborate and best-known version of the print is in the Tate Gallery, London,

sometimes described as the only finished one.

BLAKE, William

was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His

prophetic works have been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language".

His visual artistry led one contemporary art critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". In 2002, Blake was placed at number 38 in the BBC's poll of the 100

Greatest Britons. Although he lived in London his entire life (except for three years spent in Felpham), he produced a diverse and symbolically rich œuvre, 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 is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for 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". Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of

England (indeed, to almost all forms of organised religion), Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American Revolutions.

Despite these known influences, the singularity of Blake's work makes him difficult to classify.

BLAKE, William, Featured Paintings in Detail (1)

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