Songs of Innocence: The Ecchoing Green (second plate)
[1789] 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
17.10.7
Tags
Art Historical Context
William Blake's *Songs of Innocence: Ecchoing Green ( plate)*, originally composed in 1789 and printed around 1825, captures joyful exuberance of childhood play. This illuminated print from Blake's seminal collection *Songs of Innocence* boys and girls, men and women gathered on a vibrant green, echoing the poem's theme of communal merriment under the sun. As a Romantic visionary, Blake celebrated unspoiled human innocence against the encroaching shadows of industrialization and experience, making this work a poignant emblem of 18th-century poetic idealism. Blake's revolutionary relief etchin...
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...