The Easel

William Blake: The greatest visionary in 200 years

Blake was baffling two centuries ago and, it seems, remains so. His poetry is dense, his iconic paintings “small and dark and hard to interpret”. Often considered together, the prevailing view is that Blake was primarily a painter. Perhaps we shouldn’t try too hard at interpretation. Perhaps it’s enough that this “isolated visionary” helped inspire English Romanticism and somehow still has resonance today.