The Paintings of William Blake

This is the most accessible introduction available to one of the greatest British artists. The art of William Blake unites visionary simplicity with profound complexity of thought. In this illuminating new study, illustrated throughout in colour, Raymond Lister provides an engaging and lucid approach to Blake's paintings, fully alive to their infinite power of suggestion and refreshingly unfettered by polemic. The biographical introduction, making extensive use of Blake's writings and of contemporary accounts of him, traces the vicissitudes of this absolutely individual artist's life; his very human nature is revealed, no less than his boundless creative energies. The seventy-five colour plates represent the whole span of Blake's working life and all the major areas of his art: his biblical pictures, his allegorical subjects and his illuminated books, which he wrote, engraved and decorated himself. The detailed commentary to each plate explores as much of his symbolism as is readily comprehensible, and explains his often idiosyncratic techniques.