Songs of Experience: The School Boy 1789 - 1825

"The School Boy" is a hand-colored illuminated printing from William Blake's "Songs of Experience," a collection of poems that explores the darker aspects of human experience. This particular image, which features a poem about a young boy forced to attend school instead of enjoying the beauty of nature, uses vivid colors and detailed illustrations to convey the poem's themes of confinement, repression, and the loss of innocence. The work exemplifies Blake's unique style of combining poetry and visual art, which he called "illuminated printing." It is a key example of Romanticism in art.