Stlukesguild

Blake did have a small group of admirers late during his life who were known as "The Ancients". This group included the painter/print-maker Samuel Palmer (something of a visionary artist in his own right):





... and the print-maker, Edward Calvert:



Through them Blake's influence continued on into the 20th century in British art in a strain known as "Neo-Romanticism". Practitioners would include the print-maker Robin Tanner:



the great painter, Stanley Spencer:



... and even the sculptor/print-maker, Eric Gil:



Blake's reputation truly began to grow toward the end of the 19th century thanks to the admiration of poets/artists such as William Butler Yeats, William Morris, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Through Rossetti and William Morris, Blake would prove to be an influential model upon the Pre-Raphaelites. Edward Burne-Jones' paintings show a clear awareness of the design sense of Blake:



Certainly William Morris/Burne-Jones' famous Kelscott Chaucer looked to Blake as a worthy source of inspiration in the development of the notion of the book as an art object:



Blake was also recognized as a source of visionary inspiration among the French Symbolists and especially the Surrealists. Andre Breton, the "Pope of Surrealism" clearly saw Blake as a precursor to his own ideas of the embrace of imagination and rejection of the rules of reason and logic.

In spite of this, Blake’s art did not attain a level of recognition equal to that afforded to his poetry until after mid-century with the increased access to color reproduction allowing for his work to be experienced as close as possible to the manner in which he had intended. Since that time Blake’s work has grown greatly in popularity with artists and art lovers (as with lovers of literature)… and especially with those who follow the “book arts”. A recent collection of 19 watercolors were broken up by the owners and 12 sold for more than $7 million US. In spite of the incredibly high price for works on paper, the sale was actually far below what was expected. (A good many buyers opted out of the auction due to anger over the fact that the collection had been quickly broken up by speculators out to make a quick dollar rather than allowing the Tate or another museum time to raise the funds needed to purchase the work as a whole) The recent exhibition of Blake’s work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art drew crowds in numbers usually reserved for the finest painters in oils… not for an artist working in print and watercolor and often regulated to the category of “outsider artist”. It is clear that Blake’s achievements as a visual artist have attained a status that equals his achievements as a poet.