Excerpt from Six Lectures on Painting: Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, January 1904 I think we may consider that extraordinary genius, William Blake, who was once a student of these schools, to be the real forerunner of the pre-raphaelite movement. Writing in 1809, he draws attention to the clearness and beauty of the early Italian pictures, praising their precision and hardness, which he contrasts with the art of Rubens, Titian, and Rembrandt, whom he calls smudgers, blunderers, and daubers.

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