William Blake
William Blake,
English poet, painter and printer, was born on November 28, 1757.
You may have
read his poems - about the lamb, the tiger, or his sad song about the poor
chimney sweep.
The strange
thing is that in his own time many people thought him mad. Almost a century
passed after his death in 1827 before he began to be recognised as a truly
great poet and artist.
His family
background was obscure. We don't even know his mother's name. But he showed a
talent for drawing early and at 14 he became apprentice to an engraver. When he
was 21 he became an engraver on his own account and later married a girl called
Catherine who learnt to draw and paint so that she could work together with
him.
When he was
young the French Revolution took place and he supported it. Over in England a
different sort of change was taking place, which is called "The Industrial
Revolution".
Blake was horrified at the way life was being changed,
with people young and old obliged to work in "those dark satanic
mills".
He was
particularly angered at the way the new factory owners and employers used child
labour, and in many of his poems he defends the rights of childhood.
From the time
he was thirty he worked more on his paintings, making coloured lithographs by a
method he invented. His pictures are often wild and strange, with very strong
dramatic colours. They expressed the very complex ideas in his poems.
His great
message is freedom for each person to develop. He hated slavery, black slavery
on the plantations. white slavery in the factories.
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