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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

William Blake Paintings

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.

Nature Revolves, but Man Advances was one of the earliest romantic 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.

The 1790s saw William take on his most ambitious work as a visual artist in a series of 12 large color prints. These William Blake paintings of iconic designs were distinguished by their massive size. Many of the print subjects function in pairs and drawn from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and Newton.

The technique used in William Blake paintings was described as fresco. It is form of monotype, using oil and tempera paints mixed with chalks. The designs are painted on a flat surface, that is, a copperplate or millboard and finished in ink and watercolour. This made each impression, rare and unique.

From 1799 to 1809, William Blake paintings consisted of a series of Bible illustrations that included about 50 tempera paintings and more than 80 watercolors. The focus of these illustrations was 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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