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according to William Blake (1757–1827), who painted his own version of Death on a Pale Horse around 1800. An engraver by profession, Blake conceived a cryptic cosmology to explain human history and to suggest a strategy for salvation. A lifelong friend of fellow engraver John Flaxman, Blake hoped to make the traditional artist’s pilgrimage WR,WDO\LQWKHVEXWIDLOHGWRUDLVHVXIÀFLHQWIXQGV%ODNH·VLOOXPLQDWHGERRNV

Figure 4.3

Heinrich Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781. Oil on canvas,

101 × 127 cm (40 × 50 in).

Detroit Institute of Arts.

although peopled by characters with unfamiliar names like Urizen and Los, explained that all problems and suffering began with a loss of original unity, a harmony between human and natural realms existing in the Garden of Eden. According to Blake, this fall into division is repeated in every individual as they lose their childhood innocence and become self-conscious adults. He believed this cognitive development led to the erroneous conceptualization of experience and information dialectically and resulted LQFRPSDUWPHQWDOL]DWLRQGLIIHUHQWLDWLRQSULRULWL]DWLRQDQGFRQÁLFW%ODNHEHOLHYHG

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the greatest damage, through egotism and self-righteousness.

Blake practiced the unifying message he preached, and delivered his tidings in a series of illustrated books, which he designed, wrote, decorated, and printed himself.

Beginning with Songs of Innocence (1789) and Songs of Experience (1794), Blake conveyed WKHVHFXULW\KDSSLQHVVDQGIXOÀOOPHQWRI WKH,QQRFHQWUHDOPDQGWKHIHDUSHWWLQHVV

and malevolence of the realm of Experience in hand-lettered poems embellished with illustrated borders that resembled prayer books or illuminated manuscripts. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1789) describes the theological opposition between virtue DQGVLQDVDSDWKHWLFGHVWUXFWLYHÀJPHQWRI DOLPLWHGKXPDQLPDJLQDWLRQZLWKFUXFLDO

political and social implications. Blake considered dualities—good and evil, right and ZURQJ³GDQJHURXVDQGDUWLÀFLDOFRQVWUXFWVWKDWEURXJKWDERXWPLVHU\DQGVXIIHULQJ

Just as harmful were differential privileges accorded to social class and race.

Because Blake believed that imposed limitations impeded freedom, unity, and bliss, he loathed the god who imprisoned individual souls in human bodies.

Freed from the shackles of earthly existence, souls lived in harmony, unfettered by the material, physical, or emotional concerns. In The Ancient of Days (1794, British Museum, London), Blake shows God creating the universe with the aid of a compass.

According to Blake, the god envisioned by humans possessed extreme versions of their own character traits (love, vengeance, desire for power). This limited vision was a destructive force that worsened with age, because the old used their experience to unjustly exercise authority and impose their will on the young and future generations.

Salvation, for Blake, lay with the overthrow of the old order, and for that reason he rejoiced at the onset of revolution in France but, like many others, became disillusioned with its course and the eventual ascension of Napoleon to power. Blake considered destruction of the old and birth of a new order as the only hope for human salvation, an idea conveyed in Jerusalem (1804–20), which would resurface at the end of the century.

The hope which Blake invested in the spiritual reawakening of youth emerged in “And the Angel Which I Saw Lifted Up His Head to Heaven” (Figure 4.4). Here, St John the Evangelist sits on the Greek island of Patmos writing Chapter Ten of the Book of Revelation:

Then I saw another Mighty Angel coming down from heaven. He was robed in a cloud, with a rainbow above his head; his face was like the sun, and his OHJVZHUHOLNHÀHU\SLOODUV+HZDVKROGLQJDOLWWOHVFUROOZKLFKOD\RSHQLQKLV

hand. He planted his right foot on the sea and his left foot on the land, and he gave a loud shout like the roar of a lion. When he shouted, the voices of the seven thunders spoke.

Blake’s angel of hope is connected to earth, sea, and heaven, and surround by an LQÀQLWHO\H[SDQGLQJGLYLQHOLJKW,QDGDUNFORXGDWNQHHOHYHOWKH´VHYHQWKXQGHUVµ³ prophets of apocalyptic doom—are envisioned by Blake as bearded, elderly horsemen.

Consistent with Blake’s rejection of the old order was his embrace of non-traditional artistic practices. For individual works, he preferred watercolor to oil, and developed an experimental painting technique of pigments mixed with wood glue and painted on a surface primed with a glue-plaster base. Although it did not catch on with other artists, this technique proved more stable than the popular practice of adding bitumen to pigment, as Géricault did when painting Raft of the Medusa (Figure 3.11). In his illuminated books, Blake refused to use a commercial letterpress because it detracted from the individuality of his script. While Blake engraved his book pages onto copper plates—a technique developed to facilitate the quick and inexpensive production of numerous copies—he, with the help of his wife, Catherine, hand colored and bound them into books, a laborious, time-consuming process. As a result, few volumes were produced. These were purchased by a small group of patrons, who occasionally favored Blake with commissions for watercolor illustrations to contemporary poets like Edward Young (Night Thoughts) or traditional ones, like Dante (Divine Comedy). Blake regularly exhibited at the Royal Watercolour Society.

Figure 4.4

William Blake, “And the Angel Which I Saw Lifted Up His Head to Heaven,” c. 1803–05.

Watercolor, pen and black ink, over traces of graphite, 39 × 26 cm (15½ × 10¼ in).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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century due to the development and marketing of commercially produced paints.

Watercolor was simpler and tidier than oil painting and it dried faster. Popular among tourists eager to record their travels, artists who wanted to make quick sketches in color, and young ladies, for whom it was considered a desirable skill, watercolor was PDUJLQDOL]HGE\WKHRLOÀ[DWHGDFDGHP\,QUHVSRQVHWRSXEOLFGHPDQGIRUDYHQXH

dedicated to the burgeoning production of watercolors, exhibiting and teaching associations formed, the most prominent of which was the Royal Watercolour Society, established in 1804.