William Blake

William Blake was English artist, draftsman, engraver, philosopher, and poet, one of the most remarkable figures of the Romantic period. In art as in life Blake was an individualist who made a principle of nonconformity. He had a prejudice against painting in oils on canvas and experimented with a variety of techniques in color printing, illustration, and tempera. His work as an artist is almost impossible to separate from the complex philosophy expressed also through his poetry. He believed that the visible world of the senses is an unreal envelope behind which the spiritual reality is concealed. He refused the easy path of abstraction and misty suggestion, remaining content with nothing less than the maximum of clarity and precision. His output was enormous; there are important collections in the British Museum, the Tate Gallery, the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, and several American museums.