Illustrations to Milton's "Paradise Lost"

The poetry of John Milton was important to Blake as both poet and artist from his earliest years. As he told John Flaxman in a letter of 12 September 1800, "Milton lovd me in childhood & shewd me his face" (Erdman page 707). Several early drawings, such as the Satan, Sin, and Death of c. 1780 (Butlin 101), were probably inspired by Milton. In 1790-92, Blake loosely sketched several illustrations to Paradise Lost in his Notebook (Butlin 201; see Related Works, below). He composed his first series of water colors illustrating one of Milton's poems in 1801 when the Rev. Joseph Thomas commissioned the eight designs for Comus (Butlin 527). In 1807, Blake produced the set of Paradise Lost designs presented here (Butlin 529, sometimes called the "small" set). These were also acquired, and probably commissioned, by Thomas. The date of composition is established by the "1807" date inscribed on five of the designs. Blake executed another series of twelve Paradise Lost designs, with a larger format, in 1808 for his chief patron Thomas Butts (Butlin 536). In this later group, eleven of the designs are variants of those in the Thomas set, but the fourth design of 1807, "Satan Spying on Adam and Eve and Raphael's Descent into Paradise," is replaced with a different subject, "Adam and Eve Asleep." Blake began a third series of Paradise Lost designs for John Linnell in 1822 (Butlin 537), but apparently completed only the three water colors now extant.

Here, as usual in his work as an illustrator of other poets' works, Blake paid close attention to the text, but this disciplined approach did not preclude his own interpretations. For example, Blake's choice of subjects places greater emphasis on Christ's role in Milton's epic than most series of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century illustrations of Paradise Lost.

Blake's literary response to the life and works of John Milton finds its fullest expression in the illuminated book Milton a Poem.