Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of Albion (1773) © Fitzwilliam Museum

At the age of ten, Blake was sent to Mr Pars' drawing school in the Strand, where he copied plaster-casts of ancient sculptures. His father, unable to afford the cost of placing Blake as the pupil of a leading painter, took the prudent decision to apprentice him to an engraver at the age of fourteen. Blake's master, James Basire of Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn, was engraver to the London Society of Antiquaries. As a result, Blake was sent to Westminster Abbey to make drawings of tombs and monuments. Here he learned to love gothic art. He stood on the tombs to view them better and even made sketches when the grave of Edward I was opened.

In his free time, Blake collected prints of then unfashionable artists such as Durer, Raphael, and Michelangelo. In literature too, he rejected eighteenth-century polish, preferring the Elizabethans (Shakespeare, Jonson and Spenser) and ancient ballads, both authentic (such as Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry), and forged (such as Macpherson's Ossian and Chatterton's Poems of Rowley).