William Blake (born 1757) ranks among the most original visual artists of the Romantic era and one of the greatest poets in the English language. He was born into a working-class family in London. He first studied art as at the drawing academy of Henry Pars while he was still a boy. Blake served a five-year apprenticeship with James Basire, a commercial engraver before he entered the Royal Academy Schools as an engraver at the age of 22. Blake started studying medieval and Renaissance art privately and this tempered his conventional training. He spent a lot of time trying to emulate the example of artists such as Durer, Michelangelo, and Raphael in producing “Gothic”, timeless art, created with poetic genius and infused with Christian spirituality. For him, the Bible comprised the basis of true art, and was the greatest work of poetry ever written, as opposed to the pagan ideal of Classicism.
In 1782, Blake married Catherine Boucher who agreed to work with him as a studio assistant. This gave him the opportunity to throw his energies into developing his career as an engraver, and he opened a print shop in 1784. But it was not until 1787 when the great advance in his printmaking occurred. He reported discovering a wholly original method of "relief etching" which he used to create single, raised printing surface for both image and text. This allowed him to control all aspects of a book's production. Blake's continuous experiments culminated in a series of large color prints notable for their iconic designs and massive size. They comprise his most ambitious work as a visual artist.
