Christ Blessing the Little Children

Christ Blessing the Little Children painting by William Blake contains artworks from the Bible. William extracts the content to put in this drawing from St Mark's Gospel. Christ is seated below a spreading tree from the art and can be seen blessing kids brought to him as he was delivering the gospel.

In this drawing, a disciple seems to send the kids away, but Christ asks him to let the children come to him. In this photo, Christ holds two toddlers in his arms while others play beside him. To the left, a woman is kneeling as she presents her kids to Christ, while on the right, a woman stands holding her child in her arms.

Blake's Inspiration

The Bible, both New and Old Testament, were Blake's primary inspiration source. In less than 10 years, he designed over 130 paintings and watercolours based on Bible themes, which made him stand out amongst his fellow painters. For William Blake, the Bible was a personification of humanity's entire history, past, present and future. He didn’t see the Bible as a mere spiritual document comprising record historical occurrences in his world.

Various sources influenced Blake to produce his paintings and watercolours. Looking at some of his art, William designed a glue-based art named ‘tempera’ as he tried to match some strategies used by earlier painters before the oil invention. To Blake, this drawing evoked the genuine spirituality and methods used before the modern era.

William inclined towards the biblical subjects and regularly presented his symbolism into famous scenes as depicted in this drawing of Christ blessing the little children. The painting also shows Christ’s synthesis of imagination and reason. The other thing is that William Blake attended various sermons that enticed him to continue his art career. Still, his wife, Catherine Blake, is perhaps the most extraordinary backbone all through his life. Catherine was a constant and valuable helpmate who sat for long hours with his husband as he wrote and painted from his world.

An Overview of William Blake Books

He started his mythology for his books by inventing a cast of characters that would reappear and interact with one another. The relationship and nature of these characters revealed his hopes, fears and beliefs. Some of these characters like Los, Urizen and Albion may seem incomprehensible and provide a considerable challenge to those undertaking William's art. In general, the idea behind his characters comes from a wide range of mysterious sources. Regardless, some of the names, such as Urizen, means your reason.