BLAKE, WILLIAM English mystic, poet and artist, born in London, Nov. 28, 1757. His father, James of whose family and origin nothing is known, was a hosier, living at 28 Broad Street, Golden Square. His mother's maiden name has not been recorded. The family consisted of four sons and a daughter. William was the second son, and the only one to achieve distinction. The eldest, James, succeeded his father in the hosiery business. The third, John, died young, after a life of dissipation. The youngest, Robert, who skewed considerable capabilities as an artist, was greatly loved by his brother William, and was nursed by him through the illness of which he died at the age of 25.
William began to show his artistic leanings at an early age. His father wisely decided to encourage this side of his nature, and sent him at the age of ten to Par's drawing school in the Strand. He also gave him casts to draw from and allowed him to buy prints after the old masters at the sale rooms. In 1771 he was apprenticed to Basire the engraver and served his time faithfully in learning the conventional style of engraving. He also made drawings of the monuments in Westminster Abbey and these were engraved for Gough's Sepulchral Monuments. His mind was pro foundly influenced by the surroundings in which he worked, and the Gothic style was to him the ideal, the "living form," for ever after. At the same time he was cultivating his mind in other ways and is known to have read Burke, Locke, Bacon and Fuseli's translation of Winckelmann. His creative faculty found its outlet in these early years in poetry, some of which has survived in the thin volume of Poetical Sketches, printed for Blake by his friends in These pieces were composed between his twelfth and twentieth years. Although they show the influence of contem porary poetry, notably Ossian, they owe something too, to the Elizabethans and the poets of the later seventeenth century; yet they have a pure strain of lyrical inspiration which sets them apart as a landmark in English literature. They remained unknown and so had no influence on the poetry of their time, but nevertheless were the forerunners of the freer age in poetry which began some twenty years later.
In 1778 Blake had completed his apprenticeship, and at the age of twenty-one set out to earn his living as a professional engraver. He executed many commissions for the booksellers and publishers, and during the next twenty years supported himself largely by this means. His circle of friends about the year 178o included Stothard, Flaxman and Fuseli, all of whom played a large part in the course of his later life. In this year he first exhibited pictures at the Royal Academy, where they gained the admiration of Romney.
In 1781 he met his future wife, Catherine Boucher, the daughter of a Battersea market-gardener. They were married in August 1782, and lodged at first at 23 Green Street, Leicester Fields. The name of Catherine Blake will go down to posterity as that of an almost perfect wife. She learnt to draw and paint well enough to be able to help Blake in his work. She remained childless, and survived her husband only four years, dying in 1831.
During the years 1783-87 Blake met a number of distinguished people at the house of a Mr. Mathews, who had helped him to print the Poetical Sketches; but this society soon disgusted him, and he ridiculed it in a crude satire, now known as An Island in the Moon, which was written about 1787. The chief interest of the ms. now lies in the fact that it contains early drafts of three of the Songs of Innocence. In 1784 Blake had started a print shop in partnership with a former fellow apprentice, Parker, at 27 Broad Street, but this did not succeed and was soon abandoned. Meanwhile he was earning a livelihood by engraving ordinary cop per-plates for the publishers, and about 1787 he began to experi ment with a new method of printing from etched copper-plates. It is related that the secret of this process was revealed to him in a vision by the spirit of his brother Robert. More probably he had received a hint of it some time before from his friend, George Cumberland of Bristol, who had been working on it as early as 1784. Both words and decorations were drawn on the copper plate with an impervious medium, and the copper was then etched with acid. Text and design remained in relief and could be printed in any tint that pleased the artist. The print could then be left plain or be coloured by hand with water colours or some other medium. The first results of this process were the small dogmatic works, There is No Natural Religion, and All Religions are One. It developed further with the production of the poetical volume, Songs of Innocence, which consisted of lyrical poems etched on copper with decorations coloured by hand. The volume was fin ished in 1789 and was sold for a few shillings. This was the prelude to the remarkable series of books in "illuminated printing" which occupied Blake in some degree for the remainder of his life. Blake was now living in Hercules Road, Lambeth, and here he completed the works entitled The Book of Thel, 1789, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793, Songs of Experience, 1794 (a companion volume to Songs of Innocence), America, 1793, Visions of the Daughters of Albion, 1793, Europe, 1794, Urizen, 1794, The Book of Los, 1795, The Book of Ahania, 1795, and The Song of Los, I 795. In these books his lyrical impulse gradually gave way before a strong mystical tendency which ultimately became the dominant note in his life. In Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience the lyrical and mystical elements were intimately mingled. This book had been preceded by Thel, and by a prose work, The Mar riage of Heaven and Hell, in which mysticism and philosophy began to gain the upper hand. In the succeeding works Blake's visionary powers overwhelmed him, and they were wholly devoted to an elaboration of his mystical and metaphysical systems, which have proved a stumbling block to most of his readers up to the present time. They are written in an irregular verse form which entitles Blake to be regarded as the forerunner of the vers libre of recent times.
Meanwhile Blake's output as an artist was very large. About the year 1795 he produced his stupendous series of large colour prints, which can scarcely be matched in the whole history of art for imaginative content and magnificence of colouring. These include "Nebuchadnezzar," "The Elohim creating Adam," and "Newton." By 1797 he had completed his series of 537 water colour designs for Young's Night Thoughts. He had also made numerous separate water-colour paintings, and engraved copper plates for the publishers.
Blake's circle of friends had widened somewhat, and now in cluded Captain Butts, Muster-master General, who was for thirty years Blake's faithful admirer and customer. It was chiefly Butts' patronage which enabled Blake to earn a livelihood while expending much time and energy on his mystical works, which never produced any adequate return by their sales. He even laboured at a long mystical poem which never was, and was never intended to be, published in its original form. This was Vala or The Four Zoas, a poem of the greatest significance for the under standing of Blake, though the manuscript was not properly tran scribed and edited until 1925, nearly a century after the author's death. The poem was begun about 1795 and was elaborately revised five years later. Some passages from it were used in later works, but none of the drawings in it were ever used again.
During the seven years 1793 to 1800 his creative output was almost greater than can be believed. Periods of mental and physi cal exhaustion were the inevitable result, and it was probably a very fortunate event that in 1800 introduced Blake to the notice of William Hayley in order that he might execute copper-plates for various works on which Hayley was engaged. As a result of this introduction, brought about by Flaxman, Blake paid a visit in the early part of 1800 to Hayley at Felpham in Sussex, and later in the year he rented a cottage in the village, so that he might work under Hayley's eye at the engravings for the projected Life of Cowper. Blake removed to Felpham with his wife and sister, in tending to stay there for an indefinite period. Three years later he returned with a great sense of relief to London. At first he had been able to work happily enough at Felpham, but as time passed he became increasingly irritated by Hayley's patronizing ways and lack of understanding, and his feelings found relief in the scurrilous doggerel and epigrams scribbled in his notebook. At length he realized that the best way of keeping Hayley's friendship was to leave his company, so he returned to London. Part of the three years at Felpham were charged with spiritual discomfort. Blake obtained no respite from the visions which crowded cease lessly upon him. He was forced to lead a double life, pandering on the surface to Hayley's vanities and forced to develop in secret his own mystical and visionary faculties. The Felpham period saw therefore a strangely mixed output of second-rate engravings for Hayley, of fine water-colour paintings, and of mystical poetry of great power, which was mostly embodied in the poem Milton. Thomas Butts bought most of Blake's paintings, and to this faith ful friend he confided his difficulties in his letters. An additional trouble was the well known incident which resulted in his trial at Chichester sessions for treason. This was owing to a misunder standing with a soldier, John Scofield, whom Blake forcibly turned out of the garden of his cottage. Scofield afterwards fabricated evidence against Blake, accusing him of using treasonable words against the King. He was triumphantly acquitted of this charge in Jan. 1804.
After his return to London he lived at 17 South Molton Street, determined to devote his life to art without further hindrance from the outside. He believed that he had learned from Hayley the way to obtain worldly success and riches as a publisher of his own works, but in this he was disappointed, and he found the means of livelihood more precarious than ever. Butts continued to buy his pictures and he was given some work as an engraver, but for his own books he was unable to find a market. He refused, however, to be for long discouraged, and in 1805 he entered with zest into a scheme with the engraver Cromek for the production of a series of engravings for Blair's Grave. Here he was again deceived. Cromek paid him a small sum for the designs, and then contrary to his agreement employed another to engrave them. The book containing them was published in 1808. Blake, already embittered by neglect, became still more embittered by incidents such as this, and suffered from fits of depression. He reacted, how ever, about 1808 when he decided to hold an exhibition of his works at the house of his brother James in Broad Street, Golden Square. Sixteen pictures only were exhibited, including his large painting of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims, and each visitor to the house received for his entrance fee of 2/6 a copy of the now celebrated Descriptive Catalogue. The exhibition was opened in May 1809, and attracted very little notice, the only criticism of it, which appeared in Leigh Hunt's Examiner, being spiteful and unfair. The few visitors included Henry Crabb Robinson, bar rister and diarist, who has left a valuable account of his acquaint anceship with Blake during his later years. Blake was again dis appointed of the recognition which he knew he merited, and was further ruffled by what he believed to be dishonesty on Stothard's part concerning his picture of the Canterbury Pilgrims. Probably the knavery was Cromek's, who, having seen Blake's design, sug gested the idea to Stothard and so made him an innocent plagiar ist. Stothard's commonplace picture was a popular success, and Blake could scarcely recover from this cruel blow to his pride.
During the years following his exhibition Blake sank into an obscurity from which it has been difficult to disinter the bare facts of his existence. For the years 1810-1817 only a few scattered references remain, and it is uncertain how he found the means of earning his living. It has even been suggested that for part of this time he was confined in an asylum. Recent researches, how ever, have shown that there is no foundation for this rumour. Some of Blake's acquaintances, such as Robert Southey, who had visited him in 1811, certainly did regard him as insane. But the testimony of his more intimate friends is of greater value, and they have repeatedly stated their conviction that he was anything but mad. Samuel Palmer, a close friend of his later years, wrote of him as "the most practically sane, steady, frugal and indus trious" man he ever knew. Moreover there are facts enough to show that Blake was living from 1810 to 1817 merely in retire ment, having accepted his fate like the wise man that he was. Throughout this period he was occasionally selling copies of his illuminated books. In 1812 he showed several pictures at the last exhibition of the Associated Artists in Water Colour. In 1815 he called on the Rev. Thomas Dibdin, probably in connection with some illustrations to Milton which he had made. During most of these years he was still executing engravings for various employers, and these included a number of plates for Josiah Wedgwood the younger. Finally it was in the years 18o8-1818 that he was en gaged upon the hundred etched plates of his greatest symbolical poem, Jerusalem. This magnificent work can have brought him very little financial return, as only six copies issued by him are known to exist, and the only one of these that he coloured was still in his possession in 1827.
In the year 1818 Blake entered upon the last phase of his life, and until his death in 1827 was probably happier in his friends and in his work than he had been at any other period. This was due primarily to his friendship with John Linnell, portrait and land scape painter, to whom he was introduced by his old friend, George Cumberland. Blake was still living in South Molton Street, and under Linnell's guidance began to move more freely in society. He was enabled to obtain more work, and became the centre of a circle of young artists who regarded him with affection and venera tion. The chief of these were Palmer, Calvert, Richmond, Finch, Walter and Tatham, some of whose names are still well known. Frederick Tatham is of little note as an artist, but is remembered as the author of a short life of Blake, and as the owner of most, perhaps also the destroyer of some, of his effects after the death of Mrs. Blake in 1831. Another friend introduced by Linnell, was John Varley, the water colourist. He was greatly interested in astrology, and at his instigation Blake drew his Visionary Heads of historical personages, an occupation which was clearly much less serious to him than to Varley.
In 1821 Blake moved from South Molton Street to 3 Fountain Court, Strand, and here he executed his greatest work in creative art, the illustrations to the Book of Job. He had previously made twenty water-colour paintings which had been bought by Thomas Butts. Linnell commissioned a duplicate set, and later suggested that he should make engravings of these subjects. The initial ex pense was borne by Linnell, and the copper-plates were engraved in the years 1823-1825, the book of twenty-one prints being pub lished in March 1826. Though superficially illustrations of the Bible story, the engravings actually form one of the most im portant of Blake's symbolical books. This has been realized only in recent years, and their mystical content has not prevented the designs from being the most widely known and generally appreci ated of Blake's works. From about 1824 Blake had been suffering from symptoms of the gallstones which eventually caused his death. He was a frequent visitor at Linnell's country home at Hampstead, but as time passed he found it increasingly difficult to make the journey thither. He was still, however, to make one more stupendous effort in his art. In October 1825, Linnell com missioned him to make illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy, and to engrave them. He completed a hundred water-colour de signs, of which seven were engraved, and was still at work upon these when he died on Aug. 12, 1827. He was buried in an un marked grave in Bunhill Fields, the approximate place being now indicated by a tablet which was placed there on Aug. 12, 1927.
Blake had lived for nearly seventy years and for more than fifty had worked unremittingly as creative artist and as journey man engraver. His position in the history of the art of this country is peculiar owing to his double achievement as poet and as painter. It is moreover impossible to determine his place in either poetry or painting separately, the two being interdependent both in his own mind and in the forms he used for their expression. His im pulse as a lyrical poet had shown itself before the age of 14 and was not quite exhausted until more than thirty years later. It is seen at its best in the volume of Poetical Sketches, printed in 1783, in the Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience, published in the years 1789 to 1794, and in some of the later poems from manuscripts and letters, and this part of his writings has justly been the chief source of his present popularity. Gradually this faculty gave way, as his mind developed, before a rising tide of mysticism which strove to find expression through an increasingly complex system of symbolism. In the Songs some symbolism and simple pictorial designs were added to lyrical poetry. In his latest poems, Milton and Jerusalem, the symbolism became predom inant and its pictorial representation more elaborate. As a painter he was entirely uninterested in realism, his favourite subjects being taken from the Bible or from writers such as Shakespeare and Milton. He sought to express in a picture the things of the mind as much as in a poem, and it is to the mind of the observer that they appeal. It is useless therefore to look in Blake's pictures for accuracy of detail. He laid great store by firmness of outline, but abhorred copying Nature. His pictures live by their qualities of design, colouring and imaginative content, and his mystical poetry by the vigour of the intellect which produced it.
It cannot be disputed that Blake suffered from the defects of his qualities. His mind was never systematically cultivated, just as his hand was never intensively trained to draw from the living model. He was therefore apt to be intolerant through ignorance, and inaccurate through lack of observation. It is doubtful, how ever, whether he would have achieved more or have had a greater influence at the present time if he had possessed the academic vir tues. His qualities isolated him from his contemporaries and drove his mind in upon itself, so that the precise interpretation of his message to mankind has become a matter of great uncertainty. But through all his mental tutmoil and difficulties in dealings with his fellow men he kept his intellectual integrity, and he never prostituted his art. Throughout his life he sought to exalt the things of the mind, and for him the imagination was man's highest faculty. Ceaselessly he fought against materialism and attempted to gain his own spiritual regeneration through struggles against self. He was deeply religious, though in no conventional sense. In his later years Christ became identified in his mind with Art, and this fact provides many clues for the understanding of his doc trines. In his symbolical writings his own mental experiences were described without regard to the difficulties of his readers. Late in his life he made some attempt to embody his view of Christianity in more direct language, but his poem The Everlast ing Gospel, written about 1818, was never finished, and exists now only in disconnected fragments. Perhaps the most illuminating revelation of his mind for most readers are the aphorisms and didactic statements which he engraved about the year 1820 around a representation of the Laocoon Group.
It is not surprising therefore that Blake was incomprehensible to his contemporaries. He influenced them as little as he was in fluenced by them, and for many years after his death his name was unknown. His first full biography, written by Alexander Gilchrist, was published in 1863, and was reprinted under the supervision of D. G. Rossetti in 1880. Since that time his power and originality, have gained fuller recognition, and he now holds a position as one of the greatest figures in English poetry and art.
The Writings of William Blake (ed. Geoffrey Keynes, 3 vols., 1925) ; Poetry and Prose (Complete in one volume. Ed. Geoffrey Keynes, 1927) ; Prophetic Writings (ed. D. J. Sloss and J. P. R. Wallis, 2 vols., 1926) ; Lyrical Poems (ed. John Sampson, 1906) ; Poetical Works (Ed. John Sampson, 1913) ; Poems and Prophecies (ed. Max Plowman, Everyman edition, 1927) ; Biog raphy S. Criticism: Alexander Gilchrist, Life of William Blake (1863, reprinted 1907) ; A. C. Swinburne, A Critical Essay on William Blake (1868) ; Arthur Symons, William Blake (1907); P. Berger, William Blake, Mysticisme et poesie (19o7, Eng. trans. by D. H. Con ner, 1914) ; Allardyce Nicoll, William Blake and his poetry (1922) ; S. Foster Damon, William Blake, His philosophy and symbols (1924) ; Mona Wilson, Life of Blake (1927) ; J. H. Wicksteed, Blake's Vision of the Book of Job (1910 and 1924), Blake's Innocence and Experience (1928) ; Max Plowman, An Introduction to the Study of Blake (1927) ; Osbert Burdett, William Blake ("English Men of Letters" series 1927).
(G. L. K.) Adiairn AL/SEKT (1847-1919), Ameri can painter, was born in New York city on Oct. 15, 1847. He graduated at the College of the City of New York in 1867. In art he was self-taught, original and, until ill-health necessitated the abandonment of his profession, a prolific worker. His sub jects included pictures of North American Indian life, and land scapes—notably such canvases as "The Indian Fisherman"; "Ta wo-koka, or Circle Dance"; "Silvery Moonlight"; "A Waterfall by Moonlight"; "Solitude"; and "Moonlight on Long Island Sound." In 1916 the Toledo Art Museum paid $2o,000 for his "Brook by Moonlight." Because of insanity he was kept under restraint during the last 18 years of his life. He died near Eliza bethtown (N.Y.), in the Adirondacks, on Aug. 9, 1919.