BLAKE, William (1757-1827)

William Blake is a unique figure in British art: painter, printmaker, illustrator, poet, and radical thinker. In 1820 the artist John Linnell secured a commission for Blake to illustrate Robert Thornton’s Pastorals of Virgil. The images were made as wood engravings and the results, became a critical influence on the visionary landscapes of Samuel Palmer who was entranced by the ‘visions of little dells, and nooks, and corners of paradise’.