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William Blakes love and mystic art

William Blakes love and mystic art

The Ghost of a Flea, 1819–1820. William Blakes love and mystic art

William Blakes love and mystic art
English poet, painter, and print-maker William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) married Catherine Boucher in 1782. William and Catherine had no children. Writers who knew the couple in their later years describe a very happy relationship, their marriage lasted 45 years until his death. On that day Blake working on illustrations to Dante, turned to his wife, who was sitting on the bed next to him, unable to hold back her tears, he exclaimed “Oh, Kate, please, remain immovable, I’ll draw your portrait now. You have always been an Angel to me”. At 6 pm of the same day, after promising his wife to be with her always, William Blake went into another world. Catherine said: “I have been at the death, not of a man, but of a blessed angel.” After his death she believed Blake’s spirit regularly visited her.

William Blakes love

William Blake

On her own last day, in October 1831, she was as calm and cheerful as her husband, and called out to him as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him, and it would not be long now.

William Blakes love

Catherine Blake, by William Blake

Catherine appears as a model wife in William Hayley’s writings on ideal marriages. In more recent literature she is the central character in Janet Adele Warner’s novel Other Sorrows, Other Joys: The Marriage of Catherine Sophia Boucher and William Blake (2001) and also features in Tracy Chevalier’s novel Burning Bright (2007).

William Blakes love

The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy, 1795. Blake’s vision of Hecate, Greek goddess of black magic and the underworld

The Song of Los is the third in a series of illuminated books painted by Blake and his wife, collectively known as the Continental Prophecies.

William Blakes love and mystic art

Catherine Blake, c. 1805, by William Blake

Portrait of Catherine Blake, c. 1805, by William Blake

The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake's work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged

The archetype of the Creator is a familiar image in Blake’s work. Here, the demiurgic figure Urizen prays before the world he has forged

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1786)

Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing (1786)

Newton (1795)

Newton (1795)

William Blake

Songs of Innocence and of Experience: The Tyger (Plate 42), 1794/ca. 1825

William Blake

Pity, second impression, ca. 1795

William Blake

Blake’s Ancient of Days. The ‘Ancient of Days’ is described in Chapter 7 of the Book of Daniel

William Blake

Blake’s The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with Sun (1805) is one of a series of illustrations of Revelation 12

William Blake

Blake’s The Lovers’ Whirlwind illustrates Hell in Canto V of Dante’s Inferno

William Blake

Cover of the Book about William Blake’s love

William Blake

Cradle Song

William Blake

The Angel Gabriel Appearing to Zacharias, ca. 1799–1800

William Blake

The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy, 1795. Blake’s vision of Hecate, Greek goddess of black magic and the underworld

William Blake

Blake’s image of the Minotaur to illustrate Inferno, Canto XII,12–28, The Minotaur XII

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