Biography and Politics

Blake’s artistic life

1779: Mentored by Sir Joshua Reynalds, rebelled against him and became an independent artist.
1780 Elbyian Rose alleged self-portrait
Few readers - obliged to publish his reading himself

Engraving craft - included his radical ideologies within his art
1767 apprenticed as an engraver
1782 - joined the cultural circle hosted by Harriet Mathew and her husband. Blake would sing his own songs, despite no technical music knowledge
1789 - songs of innocence engraved
1794 - songs of experience engraved

Blake’s political and religious beliefs

American revolution = prophecy for the whole world

Imagination is the great force which creates art

Saw humans in chains, echoes Rosseau’s claim, strong motif in Romanticism
1788-89, involved in Swedenborgian New Church, orthodox religion

Blake’s background

Born to a modestly prosperous tradesman, did not belong to the social class that was sent to school. Disapproval of formal education, as he notes in notebook page 42 (“Thank God I never was sent to School/To be Flogd into following the style of a fool.”)

Blake’s mother apart of the Moravian Church during her first marriage, valued powerful emotions in worship. Laid great stress on visual art and the writing and singing of hymns to stimulate religious devotion. Blake’s blending of visual imagery with words and habit of singing his songs derive from his early upbringing

Moravians also believed that children might see visions, and when as a boy Blake had a vision of a tree full of angels, ‘bright through his mother’s intervention.’

Blake’s father wanted him to be trained to work in the family’s business, but recognised his talents and sent him to the drawing school of Henry Pars.

In 1779, enrolled as a student at the royal academy - disagreed with its teaching of the fashionable neo-classical style, preferring the gothic

Blake’s vision and the eighteenth century background

Remained independent in his viewpoint. For Blake, there was an important distinction between various degrees of imaginative insight and a narrowly literal vision of the senses, which he associated with the inhibiting and restrictive use of reason

He called this limited vision ‘single vision’, associating it with the experimental method proposed by Francis Bacon. Experience (a posteriori), denies the possibility of creating images as opposed to copying them. Such a view of the universe, Blake wrote, missed everything he felt to be important:

• Deny a conscience in man and the communion of Saints and Angels cotemning the Divine vision and fruition

“Twofold vision” he associated with creative energy and the ability see deeper meanings beneath the physical appearance of things: outward and inward eye

View on childrens education

Habit of seeing things with the eye of imagination helps to explain his attitude to education, Locke was a major influence on educational theory in the 18th century, saw that the child’s mind as a ‘blank sheet’ on which knowledge and character could be written

Blake’s poems between the relationship of children and adults make clear how strongly opposed he is to the imposition of ideas onto a child’s mind, as implied by Locke’s theory

Rosseau - society separates humans from nature which caused the loss of happiness and virtue, “Man is born free, and is everywhere in chains.” Society imposes people to conform and to disguise their feelings, and alientated them from one another

John Wesley, on a visit to the Moravian Church: “Our little children we instruct chiefly by hymns, whereby we find the most important truths most successfully insinuated into their minds.”

Idea that God’s mind should be ‘copied out’ onto the child’s mind suggest Locke’s view.

Treatment of the poor

Blake lived in the parish of St James, Piccadilly. Every parish was responsible for looking after its own poor, unusual and successful attempts were made in St James’ parish to rduce the high level of infant mortality in the workhouse

It was clear that the industrial revolution, epitomised locally by by the iron foundry, was not going to improve the lot of ordinary people. Introduction of labour-saving machinery vastly increased industrial output, but the loss of employment as manufacturing moved from cottage to factory caused great poverty. In Blake’s lifetime wages rose by no more than half while the cost of living doubled, and between 1790 and 1800 the price of bread tripled