His pen was soaked in a liquid waterproof

His first job was to run surveys of funeral monuments in Westminster Abbey. Revelation or premonition Is that the melancholic imagination of William Blake (1757-1827) will be marked forever and that it will be one of the major English romantic talents. Poet, Illustrator, engraver, it is animated to an early verve which led him to create his designs a universe near what is today called "science fiction".

The small Palace organizes June 28, a retrospective of the artist. No doubt about the fact that he expressed with more than a century in advance a fantastic universe out of the ordinary. But the exposure is too documentary nature. A multitude of small formats, all small leaves... The strength of Blake is slightly dimmed by the laborious nature of the statement, which was not sufficiently developed stage.

Mystical emotion

Today, William Blake would certainly treated to "lit". His era, indeed, are often mocked and he has the habit of taking refuge in his imagination. The son of a London bonnetier, Blake is a small, stocky, strong, while hypochondriac, artisan of his own isolation, defying the academicism and rationalism. But artisan of his own success. October 10, 1793, he who lives through its work of engraving at the service of other artists publishes a prospectus on an invention he calls the revolutionary: "the works of the artist, poet, musician, accompanied proverbially poverty and darkness (...).". This difficulty is avoided by the author of the productions presented to the public, who invented a method of printing for typography and printmaking together, in a more decorative, homogeneous and noble style than all those that it had discovered previously, a four times less expense.

Blake creates books, inspired by the books for children, in which the text and image are shown side by side. This is what he calls "print enluminé". He no longer uses the typography but written backwards (as in a mirror), next to drawings that will be etched. The whole is reproduced on a copper plate, applied then on paper. His pen was soaked in a liquid "waterproof". the chemical reaction with copper will allow the formation of the image that will appear in place, for the reader.

William Blake not only of technical creativity, it is work of artist dramatizing his staged on paper. In the preparatory drawing engraving "The death of the wife of Ezekiel" 1785, the decor is a set of draped learned draped of the bed, the garment which covers the deceased, the gown of Ezekiel and the dress of the woman crying by his side... However all these folds of tissue are in fact the case of two faces: in the dead of profile, the widower whose shot look is for the sky.

In 1794, he made an etching it colour, probably one of its strongest fantastic images: "Europe: a prophecy". It shows a man with great white beard that represents the male divine order. Almighty, it is installed in the stars, in a red Sun surrounded by clouds and tends his arm down to create a Flash. Is the famous fresco in the Sistine Chapel by Michelangelo but also to medieval miniatures. William Blake married a noble art, and popular creation. Transported by his desire to move the mystical emotion, he breaks the categories and announces the modernity.