Blake's death
On the day of his death, Blake worked relentlessly. Eventually, it is reported, he ceased working and turned to his wife, who was in tears by his bedside.
Beholding her, Blake is said to have cried, "Stay Kate! Keep just as you are – I will draw your portrait – for you have ever been an angel to me."
Having completed this portrait (now lost), Blake laid down his tools and began to sing hymns and verses.
At six that evening, after promising his wife that he would be with her always, Blake died.
George Richmond (a member of the Blake-influenced group known as "The Ancients")
gives the following account of Blake's death in a letter to Samuel Palmer (an English landscape painter, etcher and printmaker):
"He died ... in a most glorious manner.
He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy,
hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ — Just before he died His Countenance became fair.
His eyes Brightened and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven."
Catherine paid for Blake's funeral with money lent to her by Linnell (an English landscape painter associated with William Blake).
He was buried five days after his death – on the eve of his forty-fifth wedding anniversary – at Dissenter's burial ground in Bunhill Fields,
where his parents were also interred.
Present at the ceremonies were Catherine, Edward Calvert (an English printmaker and painter), George Richmond (a member of
the Blake-influenced group known as "The Ancients"), Frederick Tatham and John Linnell (an English landscape painter associated with William Blake).
Following Blake's death, Catherine moved into Tatham's house as a housekeeper.
During this period, she believed she was regularly visited by Blake's spirit.
She continued selling his illuminated works and paintings, but would entertain no business transaction without first "consulting Mr. Blake".
On the day of her own death, in October 1831,
she was as calm and cheerful as her husband, and called out to him "as if he were only in the next room, to say she was coming to him,
and it would not be long now".
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Upon her death, Blake's manuscrīpts were inherited by Frederick Tatham, who burned several of those which he deemed heretical or too politically radical.
Tatham had become an Irvingite,
one of the many fundamentalist movements of the 19th century, and was severely opposed to any work that smacked of blasphemy.
Sexual imagery in a number of Blake's drawings was also erased by John Linnell.
Blake is now recognized as a saint in the Ecclesia Gnostica Catholica. The Blake Prize for Religious Art was established in his honour in Australia in 1949.
In 1957 a memorial was erected in Westminster Abbey, in memory of him and his wife.
(source)