Night Startled by the Lark - William Blake
Archival giclée
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Description
A visionary watercolour by William Blake illustrating the transition from night to day, featuring a winged figure ascending into the morning sky.
William Blake produced this watercolour as part of his series illustrating John Milton's poem, L'Allegro. The composition depicts the transition from night to day, a recurring theme in Blake's visionary work. A central, winged figure representing the personified Night ascends into the sky, reacting to the arrival of the morning lark. Below, a reclining female figure, often interpreted as a personification of the earth or a mortal observer, looks upward as the darkness recedes.
Blake employs his characteristic linear style, using fine ink outlines to define the musculature and drapery before applying washes of watercolour. The palette shifts from the deep, nocturnal blues of the upper left to the lighter, ethereal tones associated with the dawn. The presence of a bearded, elderly figure emerging from a cloud formation adds a layer of classical allegory, typical of Blake's idiosyncratic mythological vocabulary. The work demonstrates his ability to translate literary concepts into visual form, maintaining a balance between human anatomy and symbolic abstraction.
This piece reflects the artist's interest in the interplay between the physical world and the spiritual realm. The figures are rendered with a sense of weightlessness, typical of Blake's figures who often appear to float within the pictorial space. The contrast between the active, ascending Night and the grounded, passive figure below creates a dynamic tension. This print captures the delicate colour transitions and the precise ink work of the original, preserving the atmospheric quality of the scene. It remains a clear example of Blake's approach to narrative illustration, where the text serves as a starting point for his own imaginative interpretation of cosmic events.
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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.
Care and materials
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
- Multiple sizes and framing options available
- Frames in black, natural wood, dark wood or white
- Framed prints arrive ready to hang
Care & Cleaning
To keep your artwork looking its best:
- 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
- Handle prints with clean, dry hands
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
Night Startled by the Lark - 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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