Newton is amonotype by the Englishpoet,painter andprintmakerWilliam Blake first completed in 1795,[1] but reworked and reprinted in 1805.[2] It is one of the 12 "Large Colour Prints" or "Large Colour Printed Drawings" created between 1795 and 1805, which also include his series of images on the biblical rulerNebuchadnezzar.
Isaac Newton is shown sitting naked and crouched on a rocky outcropping covered with algae, apparently at the bottom of the sea. His attention is focused upon diagrams he draws with a compass upon a scroll.[3] The compass is a smaller version of that held byUrizen in Blake'sThe Ancient of Days.
Blake's opposition to theEnlightenment was deeply rooted. In his annotation to hisown engraving of the classical characterLaocoön, Blake wrote "Art is the Tree of Life. Science is the Tree of Death."[4] Newton's theory of optics was especially offensive to Blake, who made a clear distinction between the vision of the "vegetative eye" and spiritual vision. Thedeistic view of God as a distant creator who played no role in daily affairs was anathema to Blake, who claimed to regularly experience visions of a spiritual nature. He contrasts his "four-fold vision" to the "single vision" of Newton, whose "natural religion" ofscientific materialism he characterized as sterile.
Newton was incorporated into Blake's infernal trinity along with the philosophersFrancis Bacon andJohn Locke.[5]
Blake's print would later serve as the basis forEduardo Paolozzi's 1995 bronze sculptureNewton, after William Blake, which resides in the piazza of theBritish Library.
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