jul 1, 1779 - Blake admitted to the Royal Academy Schools to study art.

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Studies under Sir Joshua Reynolds (though he had very little positive to say about him or his aesthetic theories). Meets Thomas Stothard and John Flaxman, forming, in Akroyd’s phrase, “ a little club or community of shared interests. They were all sons of London tradesmen, all in love with the gothic past, all reading Chatterton and Ossian with profound interest” (71).
The art program at the RAS was structured in a way that would allow its neediest students to work as well. B. worked steadily as an engraver during this time. Ironically, as Akroyd notes, B.’s engraving was “a ‘commercial art’ that obliged him to work within strictly defined limits and … carefully formulated rules” (78). While summarizing B.’s artistic interests and budding career, Akroyd writes: “In his later life he was known only as an engraver, a journeyman with wild notions and a propensity for writing unintelligible verse. He was part of the first great period of commercialism and mass manufacture in English history, and was one of its first casualties” (79).

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