This book is a primer on William Blake and is published in conjunction with a major Blake retrospective to take place at the Getty Center beginning July 2020 (hopefully). While the main attraction of a book like this is a chance to experience or revisit Blake's works--ranging from little-seen sketches to selections from some of the best extant copies of his books--it also serves to commemorate the exhibition (via a catalog), and inform through a series of essays.

I found the essay by Matthew Hargreaves, on Blake's reception in America and the history of purchasing, curating, and collecting Blake's work in America to be especially rewarding. Despite the elements of Blake's art are that are quintessentially English (or even stubbornly insular), he has long appealed to viewers around the world, among them American transcendentalists and magnates of industry with a mania for collection. A good place to begin a deep-dive in Blake's singular way of seeing.

As usually, the Paul Getty publications are of high standards, so is this book about William Blake too. In addition to the biographical knowledge, in the chapters from various authors the reader have the possibility of looking at this artist from different points of view as painter, illustrator, printmaker, creator of myths and so on, receiving information that I think is not possible to achieve in a so complete form from other single resources.

Very cool to see a bunch of Blake's work accompanied by snippets of biography and historical context. Wish I could go see the exhibit!

A fantastic collection of William Blake's work and a broad explanation of his work as well. I'll definitely be getting this one.

An essential art history read! And a walk through multiple legendary museums at once!

William Blake is given great inspection in this Getty Museum publication, with volumes of tidbits you won't find walking around the gallery, and pieces shown herein you won't find easily anywhere. many pieces have never been seen in the US. Here is a remarkable collaboration of the Getty along with Tate in London, and also Yale Center for British Art, the Huntington Library collections, and a Blake scholar (Mr. Robert Essick) -- When will you have a chance to visit all these places in succession *and* catch Blake works on display? (Answer: Never!) This book is a small miracle.

Reading a digital advanced reader review copy (so I cannot comment on paper quality nor size of the color prints of artwork contained, but I expect them to be very good), the artwork appears lush and rich in its full glory. His full life is examined and his trends given full measure. Anecdotes and stories abound alongside the art they inspired. But what is most interesting to me is the probing into his thought process, why he focused on different subject matter, and then incredibly fascinating is the way his work caught its lifeline after his death, in the United States when it had floundered elsewhere, and the spiritualist groups that saved it. This is relayed in detail, and demonstrates the tough road that even masterful art can sometimes be fated to walk.

The most striking wish William Blake declared was his desire that his poetry and art created together should remain together, they were a whole creation. This book reunites what they could, showing some of his work with poetry even literally upon the work itself, not simply alongside. I've wondered if any artist did this in my art ponderings, and my question has been answered beautifully.

Mr. Blake believed that all art students should copy and copy and copy again the masters. He demonstrated that over and over in his work, and the result was a life culmination in advanced age of working on the drawings of Dante's Divine Comedy. He made himself great, even if that was not recognized in his living lifetime, with perhaps that glimmer only at the end with the Dante work and the young artist group that adored him and promoted him. He did have patrons, sometimes only barely, and their gift to us is all these centuries later is that his work can be seen, and here can be seen in a new way, with text and stories and pieces brought together for perhaps the first time since he lived.

So here is a book for historians and art aficionados to treasure, and for artists to now study, drawings to learn to copy, a man made master by his own hand.

I appreciated this book so much that I pre-ordered a print copy. Thank you to NetGalley and to Getty Publishing for the chance to peer into these gorgeous pages and take a walk into many museums at once. I hope for many more museum walks as this from Getty Publishing.

A fantastic work on the life and artistry of William Blake. Not initially too familiar with his artwork, having read the book I'm sold and a new fan.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC of this book.

I really enjoyed this book. I found it very didactic and enjoyable. It is very well and clearly organised with a structure that makes sense, and the explanations that precede the illustrations are concise and informative. I have only studied Blake from a literary perspective, reading his poetry separated from his art, which I've learnt is not as he intended it to be read, so the book's review of Blake's artistic career filled this gap. Learning about Blake's peculiar insight when designing and completing this work was much more useful than a comment from a literary historian on the value of the prints would have been: he used as a reference not the famous works by the best-known artists everybody else was using but their drafts for the same work, thus "deliberately misconstruing the past" (2020:26), or, as I would suggest, challenging the canon and sticking with his artistic principles. Furthermore, I thought the chapter on Blake and the United States was very compelling. It provides a history to the migration (I'm being generous here) of Blake manuscripts/art to the great art collections in America, between the 19-20th centuries, while also providing a very brief but insightful sociohistorical context for this mass "migration" of artistic material from Britain to the US. I would absolutely recommend this book for any art lover and I will similarly be recommending my university's library to purchase it for our students.

I received an advanced reader copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review via netgalley and the publishers.

William Blake's art work is unsettling and often strange but captivating at the same time.
This book is a beautiful display of his work but I found the writing parts quite boring and tedious in many parts.
This book would have been much better with only interesting pieces of knowledge about him and his works of art and in shorter bursts through the book.

I have always been fascinated by Willian Blake's paintings, so I opened this book with great anticipation. Last year I had to make a short trip to London (for work) and a highlight was that I managed to squeeze in a visit to the Tate including the special section Blake's works. The illustrations in the book didn't disappoint, there are a great number of his fascinating etches and water colours. The imagination and general weirdness of Blake is simply amazing and it was a treat to see that revealed here.
I was less enchanted by the text. The chapter on American collectors was downright boring and on several occasions it was irritatingly superficial. The book mentions repeatedly that he had an exceptionally good technique as a printer and in one place described the technique. Unfortunately, rather than actually giving the details, the writer stays on the surface with phrases like 'acid-resistant substance'. Likewise, his 'personal mysticism' is mentioned a number of times, but nowhere does the text go into details of what his actual beliefs were. I would have loved to have had more information on that.
In summary, excellent reproduction of his Blake's wonderful paintings, but the writing was dissapointing.

An expansive introduction to William Blake and his visionary art, with images and information presented in a clear, accessible format.