Monday, 2 June 2014

The World Of William Blake Paintings

By Darren Hartley


William Blake paintings rank among the most original visual arts of the Romantic era. William first studied art as boy, at the drawing academy of Henry Pars. He served a five year apprenticeship with the commercial engraver James Basire before entering the Royal Academy School as an engraver at the age of twenty-two.

William's private studying of medieval and Renaissance art resulted to the early William Blake paintings. One of them was Nature Revolves, but Man Advances. Emulating his idols, Raphael, Michaelangelo and Durer, his dream was to product timeless, Gothic art that spoke of Christian spiritualism completed with a stroke of poetic genius.

By the 1790s, William Blake paintings consisted of a series of large color prints notable for their massive size and iconic designs. They were his most ambitious work as a visual artist. Of the 12 known designs, many of the subjects function as pairs. These subjects were drawn from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and Newton.

Fresco was how the technique used in William Blake paintings was described. It is a form of monotype and a mixture of oil and tempera paints with chalks. It was on a flat surface that the designs were painted. Among the surfaces William used were copperplates and millboards. By finishing the design in ink and watercolour, Blake left a mark of rareness and uniqueness on each impression.

Because William believed that the Bible comprised the basis the basis of true art, he concentrated on making a series of Bible illustrations from 1799 to 1809. These William Blake paintings consisted of about 50 tempura paintings and more than 80 watercolor paintings.

The development of William Blake paintings geared towards an inward look on man's imagination. William painted on journeys that the mind took, not the body. Dante's books were another source of ideas for William, other than his own fertile mind, that proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration.




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