William Blake paintings rank among the most original visual arts of the Romantic era. William first studied art as boy, at the drawing academy of Henry Pars. He served a five year apprenticeship with the commercial engraver James Basire before entering the Royal Academy School as an engraver at the age of twenty-two.

William's private studying of medieval and Renaissance art resulted to the early William Blake paintings. One of them was Nature Revolves, but Man Advances. Emulating his idols, Raphael, Michaelangelo and Durer, his dream was to product timeless, Gothic art that spoke of Christian spiritualism completed with a stroke of poetic genius.

By the 1790s, William Blake paintings consisted of a series of large color prints notable for their massive size and iconic designs. They were his most ambitious work as a visual artist. Of the 12 known designs, many of the subjects function as pairs. These subjects were drawn from the Bible, Shakespeare, Milton and Newton.

The description given to the technique used in William Blake paintings was fresco. It is in monotype form. It used a combination of oil and tempera paints with paints. Flat surfaces, such as copperplates and millboards, were where the designs were painted on. The rareness and uniqueness of the impressions were a consummation from finishing the designs in ink and watercolours.

There were about 50 tempera paintings and more than 80 watercolors completed from 1799 to 1890. These William Blake paintings from that period were a series of Bible illustrations concentrating on Old Testament prefigurations of Christ, the life of Christ and apocalyptic subjects from the Book of Revelation.

The development of William Blake paintings geared towards an inward look on man's imagination. William painted on journeys that the mind took, not the body. Dante's books were another source of ideas for William, other than his own fertile mind, that proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration.