Slapende herder en vliegend figuur - William Blake
Archival giclée
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Description
A striking engraving by William Blake from his illustrations for Edward Young's Night Thoughts, depicting a sleeping shepherd and a descending spectral figure.
This engraving is a plate from William Blake's ambitious project to illustrate Edward Young's poem, Night Thoughts. The work displays Blake's characteristic approach to combining text and image, where the visual elements act as a commentary on the philosophical themes presented in the verse. The composition features a sleeping shepherd resting beside his flock, a motif that suggests pastoral innocence, while a spectral, elongated figure descends from above. This ethereal being holds a pair of shears, a symbolic reference to the fragility of life and the inevitability of mortality, which aligns with the sombre tone of Young's text.
Blake utilised a refined engraving technique to render the figures with a sense of weightlessness and fluidity. The drapery of the descending figure flows upwards, creating a sense of movement that contrasts with the stillness of the shepherd below. The integration of the printed text within a central box allows the image to frame the poem, creating a unified page design that was typical of Blake's illuminated books. The monochromatic palette focuses the viewer on the line work and the anatomical precision of the figures, reflecting the artist's training and his interest in classical forms.
This piece provides a window into the late eighteenth-century British tradition of book illustration, where poets and artists collaborated to create immersive reading experiences. Blake's interpretation of Night Thoughts remains one of his most extensive undertakings in the medium of print. The work captures the tension between the physical world and the spiritual realm, a recurring theme in his broader body of work. By stripping away colour, the artist emphasises the graphic quality of the scene, allowing the stark contrast between the sleeping man and the hovering spirit to convey the poem's meditation on human suffering and the passage of time.
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Each print is produced to order using 12-colour giclée printing on FSC-certified archival paper. Designed in Britain and printed at your nearest production hub to reduce waste and speed up delivery.
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Specific Features
Every Solis piece is made to order with archival, gallery-quality materials built to last.
- Museum-grade giclée printing for rich, fade-resistant colour
- Archival matte fine-art paper, FSC-certified
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- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
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- Dust gently with a soft, dry cloth
- Avoid prolonged direct sunlight
- Never use liquid cleaners on the print or canvas surface
- Keep in a dry, room-temperature space
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Materials & Sizing
Museum-grade giclée on FSC-certified archival matte paper, with framed and canvas options.
- Paper sizes: A4, A3, A2, A1, A0 and B2 (50×70 cm)
- Canvas: XS (20×30 cm) to Large (60×90 cm)
- Frames: black, natural wood, dark wood or white
Slapende herder en vliegend figuur - William Blake
Artist Biography
William Blake
He married Catherine Boucher in 1782. She was illiterate at the time and signed the marriage register with an X. He taught her to read, write, and engrave, and she became his collaborator for the next forty-five years: mixing paint, operating the printing press, hand-colouring plates, and binding the finished pages into covers.
Their working method was Blake's own invention, revealed to him (he said) in a dream by the spirit of his dead brother Robert. Relief etching reversed the standard printmaking process: instead of cutting lines into copper, Blake wrote and drew on the plate in acid-resistant varnish, then dissolved the surrounding metal with acid, leaving text and image raised. This allowed him to compose poetry and illustration simultaneously on a single plate, print them together, then hand-colour each sheet in watercolour. Every copy was therefore unique. Songs of Innocence and of Experience was produced this way. He sold fewer than thirty copies during his lifetime.
In 1803, he physically threw a soldier named John Schofield out of his garden in Felpham. He was charged with assault and with uttering treasonable expressions against the King. He was acquitted at the Chichester assizes in January 1804.
Newton, painted in 1795, shows the scientist as a young man with the body of a Greek god, bent forward at the bottom of a dark ocean, fixing his gaze on a pair of compasses, measuring and drawing on a scroll that appears to project from his own head. It is a painting about the limits of reason: beautiful, precise, and missing everything beyond the edge of the paper. The Ancient of Days, from the same period, depicts his mythological figure Urizen crouching at the edge of a void, reaching down with a compass to measure the darkness below.
He died on 12 August 1827, working on illustrations for Dante's Divine Comedy. He was buried at Bunhill Fields. The wider recognition came decades later.
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