Adam Naming the Beasts

William Blake's Adam Naming the Beasts (1810) demonstrates the vitality of nineteenth-century British painting during the tumultuous era of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. William Blake approaches the subject with distinctive artistic vision, producing a work of both technical accomplishment and expressive power. Characteristic of the artist's mature approach, the work displays linear, flame-like figures combining Michelangelesque anatomy with Gothic energy, vivid color in his illuminated books, personal mythological imagery of Albion, Los, Urizen, and the Eternals.

Executed with skilled technique and attention to careful observation, the work reveals William Blake's characteristic approach to composition and surface. The treatment of light and the careful modulation of color create visual richness within a unified pictorial scheme.