William Blake

William Blake (1757 to 1827) was an English poet, painter and printmaker who lived in London his whole life apart from three years at Felpham, and who is now regarded as a seminal figure in the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. Largely unrecognised while he lived, he produced what he called his prophetic works, which treat the imagination as the body of God. He was hostile to the Church of England and to almost all organised religion, yet the Bible was an early and profound influence that stayed with him, and he sold a great number of his Bible illustrations to the patron Thomas Butts. Emanuel Swedenborg was among the thinkers who influenced him, and his wife Catherine Boucher worked with him as printmaker and colourist. His Illustrations of the Book of Job were completed just before his death, and his last work was a series of illustrations to Dante's Inferno.