Ezekiel's Wheels

The prophet Ezekiel's vision of wheels within wheels, one of the most mysterious passages in the Hebrew Bible, provides William Blake with a subject ideally suited to his visionary imagination. Painted around 1800 at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, this watercolor belongs to Blake's series of biblical illustrations that gave visual form to the prophetic visions he considered the deepest truth of Scripture. Blake's radically original interpretation rejects conventional biblical illustration in favor of a personal symbolic language.

Blake's distinctive technique combines precise linear draftsmanship with luminous watercolor washes, creating figures that are simultaneously physically defined and spiritually transcendent. The interlocking wheels and angelic figures are arranged according to Blake's own symbolic geometry rather than naturalistic spatial logic. His palette of golds, blues, and reds creates a celestial luminosity appropriate to the visionary subject.