The Analysis of William Blake’s “Newton”
Newton is one of works created in 1795 by William Blake, a famous poet and artist. The painting (color print, ink and watercolor on paper) represents a naked man, who sits on a rock and traces or measures something on a white fabric that previously could be a piece of his clothing. They are the only objects on the painting; the background is in darkness. The name and descriptions of the work show the man is Isaac Newton; so the picture can be treated as a portrait. However, it was not drawn from life; Blake represented an image of the scientist that developed in his mind. Like Blunt mentioned in his book, Blake treated art and poetry in similar ways; he believed they should focus more on the imaginative world, rather than on the imitation of a real life (23).
The work combines sculptural and painterly approaches. Newton reminds of Auguste Rodin’s work The Thinker, which character arrived at an idea and started to work on it. A man on the rock is a sculptural part; Blake painted all possible shadows and details, creating a feeling of a three-dimensional structure. The background is a painterly part; it is blurred and does not have any distinct object. The composition helps viewers to focus on the foreground and does not make painting to look overloaded. Such sculptural approaches with elements of Greek or Roman statues’ style appeared in many of Blake’s like his illustrations for The Gates of Paradise. Works showed in the catalogue of