Songs of Innocence: The Ecchoing Green 1820 - 1825

"The Ecchoing Green" was made by William Blake, around 1789, using relief etching and watercolor. It is a print, which of course means that it was made in multiples. But each impression would have been hand-colored by Blake and his wife Catherine. The technique Blake used allowed him to combine text and image on the same plate. But this wasn't exactly mass production. It was more like craft production, with each print getting individualized attention. The result is both intimate and visionary, a protest against the dehumanizing effects of industrial labor. You can see this in the very subject, the communal joy of children playing on a village green. It is as far as you can get from the dark satanic mills that Blake famously decried. Blake's work reminds us that the meanings of art are inseparable from the means of its making, and the social context in which it appears.