William Blake and His Impact on the Literary, Artistic and Religious Imagination in Australia: Report on a Research Project in Progress

Abstract

William Blake has been connected with Australia since the earliest days of settlement. One of the earliest images of Aboriginals by a European artist was William Blake's engraving 'A Family of New South Wales' (1792), based on a sketch by Governor King. As Bernard Smith has pointed out, Blake's interest in this subject was no doubt part of his larger interest in natives, particularly such dispossessed groups as Negro slaves. The sense of freedom and nobility that Blake expresses in this family gains depth when seen in the context of his anger against slavery expressed in Visions of lite Daughters of Albion (1793), where he writes of 'the voice of slaves beneath the sun, and children bought with money', and in such an etching as 'A Negro Hung Alive by the Ribs to a Gallows', painted in the same year as 'A Family of New South Wales' (1792).3 This was the year in which the abolitionists campaigned intensively to abolish the slave trade - without result.