William Blake valuation
Poet, painter and printmaker, whose hand-coloured illuminated books are among the most original works of English art.
William Blake (1757–1827) was born in Soho in London, apprenticed to the engraver James Basire and studied briefly at the Royal Academy Schools.
What a work by William Blake is worth
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Bio
William Blake (1757–1827) was born in Soho in London, apprenticed to the engraver James Basire and studied briefly at the Royal Academy Schools. He earned his living as a reproductive engraver while developing his own method of relief etching, in which words and images were printed together from one copper plate and then coloured by hand, often with the help of his wife Catherine. With it he made his illuminated books, Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Innocence and of Experience in 1794, and the prophetic books that culminated in Jerusalem. He also painted in watercolour and tempera, made the large colour prints of 1795 that include Newton and Nebuchadnezzar, engraved the Illustrations of the Book of Job, published in 1826, and in his last years drew illustrations to Dante for his patron John Linnell. A group of young admirers who called themselves the Ancients included Samuel Palmer.
Blake's illuminated books survive in very few copies, almost all in institutions, and his original works are rare and closely documented, above all in the catalogue of his paintings and drawings by Martin Butlin. The engravings he made for other people's books and the plates of the Book of Job are the accessible end of his work, and impressions of Job vary with the paper and the printing. Facsimiles are the main source of confusion: the hand-coloured Muir facsimiles of the 1880s and the Trianon Press editions published for the William Blake Trust from the 1950s are handsome and collected in their own right, but are often mistaken for originals. Paintings attributed to him need close comparison with documented works.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
