LAMBETH MOSAICS

In the neighborhood where Blake once lived and worked can now be seen reproductions of some of his work in the medium of mosaic. As a tribute to Blake's importance as a London artist, a series of mosaics have been installed in tunnels in Lambeth on the southbank of the Thames. 

Blake created the original designs. The individual artists have used their imaginations to recreate Blake's work in another media and at an enlarged scale. The impression is that Blake's vision has been given new life through the artists who interpreted anew what he had seen. The image from Gates of Paradise, titled I Want, was enhanced by the influence of Van Gogh's Starry Night.

British Museum

Gates of Paradise 

I want

Gates of Paradise 

Air

 Descriptive Catalog, (E 531)
"The Artist has endeavoured to emulate the grandeur of
those seen in his vision, and to apply it to modern Heroes, on a
smaller scale.
  No man can believe that either Homer's Mythology, or Ovid's,
were the production of Greece, or of Latium; neither will any one
believe, that the Greek statues, as they are called, were
the invention of Greek Artists; perhaps the Torso is the only
original work remaining; all the rest are evidently copies,
though fine ones, from greater works of the Asiatic Patriarchs.
The Greek Muses are daughters of Mnemosyne, or Memory, and not of
Inspiration or Imagination, therefore not authors of such sublime
conceptions.  Those wonderful originals seen in my visions, were
some of them one hundred feet in height; some were painted as
pictures, and some carved as basso relievos, and some as groupes
of statues, all containing mythological and recondite meaning,
where more is meant than meets the eye.  The Artist wishes it was
now the fashion to make such monuments, and then he should not
doubt of having a national commission to execute these two
Pictures on a scale that is suitable to the grandeur of the
nation, who is the parent of his heroes, in high finished
fresco, where the colours would be as pure and as permanent as
precious stones though the figures were one hundred feet in
height.
  All Frescos are as high finished as miniatures or enamels,
and they are known to be unchangeable;"

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