The watermark in the paper has the date 1804. Blake must have printed this work in 1804-5. The complexity and quality of the colour-printed areas of the rock, and the high degree of hand-finishing applied to Newton’s flesh and hair, show the great technical proficiency he had acquired through his colour-printing experiments from the mid 1790s.

Isaac Newton was the scientist who first understood planetary motion. Blake was critical of such disciplined reasoning. Through the accidental nature of the colours and texture of the rock Blake asserted his belief in the supremacy of the creative imagination.