"Newton"

William Blake created this painting in 1795 to convey Newton’s doubts of God and his obliviousness to God‘s creation of everything. Newton’s strict concepts on science ruled his life. Blake described that through his painting by symbolizing that Newton was stuck in the circle that he drew with his compass. Meaning that he was so wrapped up with his thoughts and ideas, he could not see reason with Blake’s ideas and thoughts about imagination to step outside of his circle. In the painting, Newton, a scientist who studied many things that today would be classified as science, is found at the bottom of the ocean bending over naked to draw a circle with a compass on a scroll that seems to come from his mouth. The compass that Newton uses resembles the shape of the sun rays coming out of God’s hand in one of Blake’s other paintings, “Ancient of days. The compass symbolizes God. In the painting, Newton is surrounded by God‘s beautiful work, Nature, and is wrapped up in his personal bubble of science. Also the fact that Blake placed Newton at the bottom of the ocean speaks a lot about how he felt towards him. Surrounded by no one, Blake conveyed that Newton was alone. At the time, Blake felt very offended towards Newton. Blake believed that nature is imagination, and Newton called his science “natural philosophy”. This made Blake bitter considering his strong disbeliefs in science. Science had everything to do with rationalizing and Blake believed in more of the free thought. Newton also refused to believe that God created everything that is beautiful and is nature, and Newton did not see that, because he is trying to find scientific reasoning for the creation of everything. To me this painting it today’s version of an argument on religion. Every religion is different and people choose to have faith in their own beliefs. Blake was unhappy with Newton’s beliefs so he down graded him. “Newton” is a much deeper painting than most would seem. Blake made all of his work include a deeper meaning. This one painting sent such a huge message; it makes me wonder if there is anything else Blake tried to tell us through his work.