William Blake, a 19th Century writer and artist, was regarded as a seminal figure of the romantic age. His writings influenced many writers and artists through the decades, and he has been reckoned both a major poet and an original thinker. William Blake wasn’t an artist who wrote for the many, rather for children and angels, but focused still on bringing out a change both in the social order and in the minds of men. Blake was born in 28A Broad Street, Golden Square, London, to James, hosier, and his wife Catherine Wright Armitage, on November 28th, 1757. He was the third of seven children, two of whom died in infancy. Blake never attended school, being educated by his mother at home. She also helped teach William and his siblings about The Bible which became a very early source of …show more content…
While Blake's education came at no cost he was still expected to supply his own materials throughout his 6-year period. Blake soon rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as Rubens, championed by the school's first president, Joshua Reynolds. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude and outlook towards art. Reynolds wrote in his Discourses that the "disposition to abstractions, to generalizing and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake responded in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particular is the Alone Distinction of Merit". In 1782, married Catherine Boucher and also met John Flaxman, who would become his patron. At the time, Blake was in the process of recovering from a relationship that had peaked in a refusal of his marriage proposal. On August 18th, 1782 Blake and Catherine got married. He taught Catherine how to read and write and would later go as far as to teach her how to engrave. His marriage to Catherine remained very close and devoted all the way up to his