Songs of Experience: A Little Girl Lost
[1794] printed ca. 1825
Medium
Relief etching printed in orange-brown ink and hand-colored with watercolor and shell gold
Dimensions
sheet: 6 3/16 x 5 9/16 in. (15.7 x 14.1 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1917
Accession Number
17.10.51
Tags
Art Historical Context
William Blake's *Songs of Experience: A Little Girl Lost*, printed around 1825 from plates dated 1794, is a captivating plate from his illuminated book *Songs of Experience*. This counterpart to his earlier *Songs of Innocence delves into darker themes of lost purity, societal corruption, and forbidden desire through the poignant poem by the same name. Blake, a visionary poet and artist of the Romantic era, crafted these works as profound critiques of industrialization, rigid religion, and human repression, blending mysticism with radical social commentary. The artwork exemplifies Blake's rev...
About the Artist
William Blake · 1757–1827
William Blake (1757–1827) stands as one of the most visionary and unconventional artists in British history, a poet-painter-printmaker whose mystical imagination and radical vision profoundly shaped the Romantic movement. Born in London's Soho district, Blake experienced visions from childhood—claiming to see angels in trees at age eight—and these spiritual encounters would guide his art throughou...