William Blake · 1794

The Ancient of Days

Posters from $15.00 CAD · Canvas from $39.00 CAD

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Blake's white-bearded Urizen kneeling on the edge of the sun, measuring the cosmos with a golden compass. The frontispiece to Blake's prophetic book Europe, shown here in the hand-coloured impression (copy K) in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.

Up to 8 × 11.1 in · portrait

Size

Larger sizes are unavailable for this painting because the source scan's resolution wouldn't print at gallery quality.

Format & finish

Archival cotton canvas stretched over a wooden frame. Ready to hang as-is. No external frame.

Scale next to a 5'10" person

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Hand-printed in Ottawa

Free shipping on prints over $50 CAD

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Materials & quality

›Canvas & inks

Giclée-printed on archival cotton canvas with fade-resistant pigment inks, hand-stretched over wooden bars. Gallery-wrapped — ready to hang with no extra frame needed.

›Floater frame

Hand-finished solid wood floater frame in five finishes. The canvas sits inside with a clean shadow gap — the way galleries hang contemporary canvas.

›Posters

Premium archival paper — 200 gsm soft matte or 230 gsm vibrant glossy. Ships flat or rolled, ready for your own frame.

›Faithful to the source

Printed from the highest-resolution museum and archive scans available. Each painting's maximum size is capped at what its source scan can support at gallery quality.

About this painting

The story of The Ancient of Days

Ancient of Days is a name for God in the Book of Daniel. The title "Ancient of Days" has been used as a source of inspiration in art and music, denoting the creator's aspects of eternity combined with perfection. William Blake's watercolour and relief etching entitled The Ancient of Days is one such example.

Adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

About the artist

William Blake

William Blake was an English poet, painter and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake has become a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by the 20th-century critic Northrop Frye to form "what is in proportion to its merits the least read body of poetry in the English language". While he lived in London his entire life, except for three years spent in Felpham, he produced a diverse and symbolically rich collection of works, which embraced the imagination as "the body of God", or "human existence itself".

All William Blake prints →

Biography adapted from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Frequently asked

The Ancient of Days— questions & answers

›What does The Ancient of Days represent?

Created in 1794 as the frontispiece to Blake's prophetic book Europe, it shows Urizen — Blake's white-bearded embodiment of reason and law — kneeling on the edge of the sun, measuring the cosmos with a golden compass.

›Can I buy an Ancient of Days canvas print in Canada?

Yes — Chromora prints The Ancient of Days on museum-quality archival cotton canvas, hand-finished in Ottawa and shipped across Canada. A single print over $50 CAD ships free.

›Where is the original Ancient of Days?

This celebrated version is held at the British Museum in London.

Pairs well with