Visions of Blake: William Blake in the Art World 1830-1930

How did William Blake achieve classic status? What aspects of his art and personality attracted and repelled critics? How was the story of his afterlife coloured by debates and developments in the British art world? Moving between visual and literary analysis, Visions of Blake: William Blake in the Art World 1830-1930 considers the ways in which different audiences and communities dealt with the issue of describing and evaluating Blake’s images and designs. It ranges widely from the writings of Gilchrist, the Rossetti brothers, Ruskin, Swinburne, Symons, Yeats, Joyce, Chesterton and Fry, through to works by Ford Madox Brown, G. F. Watts, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Crane, C. R. Ashbee, Aubrey Beardsley, E. J. Ellis and J. T. Nettleship. Each chapter of this groundbreaking study deals with its own topic, but between them they build up a multifaceted picture of how a wide range of Victorian and Edwardian commentators connected Blake’s interest in pictorial composition, visual attention and ideas of cultural authority with broader contemporary matters and concerns. Visions of Blake is intended for all students and academics interested in Blake, Romanticism, Victorian culture, cultural politics and modern art.