Graphic Cabinet 6: William Blake's Illustrations of the Book of Job August 31, 2010

The Academy's Graphic Cabinet series continues with an exhibition focusing on William Blake's 'Illustrations of the Book of Job.' Active in London as Europe was being rocked by a succession of revolutions, Blake (1757-1827) was a visionary painter, poet, and printmaker whose work subtly critiques the social upheaval that he witnessed and experienced throughout his long and prolific career. Indeed, Blake was a fanatical individualist and a resolute adversary of oppressive authority, and in an array of paintings and lavishly illustrated books he reinterpreted biblical themes and received mythologies in an intellectual mutiny against political standards and organized religions.