When you first lay eyes on this print, what catches your eye?
The gloomy black clouds that consume the perimeter of the frame. A man, crouched unnaturally in the centre of a bright, red-hot sun. The compass, protruding from his fingertips and reaching its sharpened points into the void.
The above are all elements of William Blake’s 1794 painting, The Ancient of Days, a depiction of the fictitious sovereign of Blake’s unique faith. The man in the painting is named Urizen (a play on ‘your reason’), and represents the rigid Enlightenment that Blake and other pre-Romantics criticised during their time. While this unfortunately gained Blake little recognition amongst his contemporaries, his work’s controversial themes and highly imaginative nature are perhaps one of the many charms of his artistic works to the modern viewer (such as myself).
Alongside being a print-maker and illustrator, Blake was also well-known for his poetry and story-telling; you may know him from The Tyger, or his anthology titled Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake’s literary ties seemingly bleed into The Ancient of Days in the form of striking visual metaphors, which operate alongside a striking dichotomy of colours to convey his critique of rationalism to the viewer.
The peripheral darkness that surrounds Urizen appears to be an endless void. It is almost menacing, closing in around Urizen’s form and creating a sense of restriction and entrapment. This darkness contrasts with the red-hot sun in the centre of the image, a symbol for the vitality Urizen shuns through his imposition of order on the world. Urizen’s unnaturally constricted pose reflects his character’s oppressive nature; he is fully turned away from the sun, his gaze focussed entirely on the expansive void below, symbolising rationalism diminishing the vibrant light of imagination.
Below Urizen, extending from his outstretched hands, are golden compass prongs that stretch out into the darkness. The sharp prongs contrasting against the dark expanse below represent not only creation, but the imposition of structure on chaos. The miniscule detail of Urizen’s fingers almost fusing with the compass perhaps also indicates the loss of his own humanity in exchange for rigid order.
All this to say, William Blake’s artworks are truly of a unique sort. His passion for both poetry and illustration come together to create a vivid, imaginative, and political theology expressed in the form of otherworldly figures alongside striking visual metaphors. Blake’s works can be found in numerous galleries today, with prints of The Ancient of Days displayed in the British Museum in London and The Whitworth in Manchester.
“Ancient of Days Setting a Compass to the Earth (1794) illustration from Europe: a Prophecy by William Blake (1752-1827).” by Free Public Domain Illustrations by rawpixel is licensed under CC BY 2.0.