The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun – click for a larger version.
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun – click for a larger version.
The Great Red Dragon and the Beast from the Sea – click image for a bit larger image.
The Number of the Beast is 666 – click image for a bit larger image.
William Blake was a very unusual artist. While most of his contemporary colleagues were wallowing in Romanticism he dug deeper. A lot of his work is romantic, but there is always a dark background that makes you feel uneasy and intrigued at the same time.
From Wikipedia:
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". His visual artistry has led one modern critic to proclaim him "far and away the greatest artist Britain has ever produced". Although he only once journeyed farther than a day’s walk outside London during his lifetime, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich corpus, which embraced ‘imagination’ as "the body of God", or "Human existence itself".
Considered mad by contemporaries for his idiosyncratic views, Blake is held in high regard by later critics for his expressiveness and creativity, and for the philosophical and mystical undercurrents within his work. His paintings and poetry have been characterized as part of both the Romantic movement and "Pre-Romantic", for its large appearance in the 18th century. Reverent of the Bible but hostile to the Church of England, Blake was influenced by the ideals and ambitions of the French and American revolutions, as well as by such thinkers as Jacob Boehme and Emanuel Swedenborg.
Wikipedia also has a great article about William Blake’s appearances and influence on popular culture.
His Dragon series are some of the most famous classical paintings – also some of the most disturbing.
