First Book of Urizen, Plate 18

William Blake

Colour-printed relief etching with hand colouring

Library of Congress

Plate 18 of William Blake's The First Book of Urizen depicts a nude male figure crouching with arms wrapped around himself, hair on end, eyes wide and mouth open in an expression of horror, surrounded by flames — a visceral image of anguish tied to the passage beginning "Los howl'd in a dismal stupor." Created in 1794 using Blake's pioneering technique of colour-printed relief etching with hand colouring, the plate belongs to one of his major Prophetic Books, a mythopoeic creation narrative structured as a dark parody of the Book of Genesis. Blake conceived, etched, printed, and hand-coloured every copy himself at his studio in Lambeth, south London, making each surviving impression a unique artistic object. The work embodies Blake's lifelong critique of Enlightenment rationalism, presenting Urizen — the tyrannical deity of reason and law — as the source of spiritual oppression and the fall of imaginative freedom.