Editing William Blake (section)

=== Royal Academy ===
On 8 October 1779, Blake became a student at the [[Royal Academy]] in Old Somerset House, near the Strand.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=IwnLCQAAQBAJ&pg=PT103|title=Jerusalem!: The Real Life of William Blake|first=Tobias|last=Churton |author-link=Tobias Churton |date=16 April 2015|publisher=Watkins Media|access-date=18 November 2017|via=[[Google Books]]|isbn=9781780287881}}</ref> While the terms of his study required no payment, he was expected to supply his own materials throughout the six-year period. There, he rebelled against what he regarded as the unfinished style of fashionable painters such as [[Peter Paul Rubens|Rubens]], championed by the school's first president, [[Joshua Reynolds]]. Over time, Blake came to detest Reynolds' attitude towards art, especially his pursuit of "general truth" and "general beauty". Reynolds wrote in his ''Discourses'' that the "disposition to abstractions, to generalising and classification, is the great glory of the human mind"; Blake responded, in marginalia to his personal copy, that "To Generalize is to be an Idiot; To Particularize is the Alone Distinction of Merit".<ref>E691. All quotations from Blake's writings are from {{cite book |author=Erdman, David V |title=The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake |year=1982 |publisher=Knopf Doubleday Publishing |edition=2nd |isbn=0-385-15213-2 |url=https://archive.org/details/completepoetrypr00blak  }} Subsequent references follow the convention of providing plate and line numbers where appropriate, followed by "E" and the page number from Erdman, and correspond to Blake's often unconventional spelling and punctuation.</ref> Blake also disliked Reynolds' apparent humility, which he held to be a form of hypocrisy. Against Reynolds' fashionable [[oil painting]], Blake preferred the Classical precision of his early influences, [[Michelangelo]] and [[Raphael]].

David Bindman suggests that Blake's antagonism towards Reynolds arose not so much from the president's opinions (like Blake, Reynolds held [[history painting]] to be of greater value than landscape and portraiture), but rather "against his hypocrisy in not putting his ideals into practice".<ref>Bindman, D. (2003), "Blake as a Painter" in ''The Cambridge Companion to William Blake'', ed. [[Morris Eaves]]. Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], p. 86.</ref> Certainly Blake was not averse to exhibiting at the Royal Academy, submitting works on six occasions between 1780 and 1808.

Blake became a friend of [[John Flaxman]], [[Thomas Stothard]] and [[George Cumberland]] during his first year at the Royal Academy. They shared radical views, with Stothard and Cumberland joining the [[Society for Constitutional Information]].<ref>Ackroyd (1995), ''Blake'', pp. 69–76.</ref>