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William Blake (1757-1827), Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, Copper engraving, hand-colored in watercolor by the artist, Third state, ca. 1810-20, Gift of Charles Ryskamp in memory of Grace Lansing Lambert; 2005.190. |
William Blake's Celestial Visions and Promethean Lives |
William Blake (1757-1827), Fire, ca. 1805, Pen and black and gray ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over traces of graphite, Gift of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, 1971; 1971.18.
Samuel Palmer (1805-1881), Pear Tree in a Walled Garden, Watercolor and tempera, over preliminary, drawing in brush and gray wash, with traces of graphite on gray paper, Thaw Collection, The Morgan Library & Museum; 1980.37.
William Blake (1757-1827), Melancholy from John Milton’s Il Penseroso, no. 1 in the set of 6 drawings created for his patron Thomas Butts, Watercolor, over traces of black chalk, Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows, with the special support of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne and Mr. Paul Mellon, 1949; 1949.4:72 3.
William Blake (1757-1827), The Sun at His Eastern Gate from John Milton’s L’Allegro, no. 3 in the set of 6 drawings, created for his patron Thomas Butts, Watercolor, over traces of black chalk, Purchased with the assistance of the Fellows with the special support of Mrs. Landon K. Thorne, and Mr. Paul Mellon, 1949; 1949.4:3.
William Blake (1757-1827), Behemoth and Leviathan, from Illustrations for the Book of Job, (ca. 1805-1810), no. 15 in the set of 21 drawings for his patron Thomas Butts, Pen and black ink, gray wash, and watercolor, over traces of graphite Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1903; 2001.77. |
The Morgan Library & Museum By STEVE SHAPIRO Of the few artists who are said to live mythic lives, fewer still — Michelangelo, Goya, Picasso, William Blake — can be described as having truly led lives of experience and of the imagination. Goya’s nightmarish etchings represented a private world made public; Picasso, of course, erased the line between his all-encompassing need to make art and possess it body and soul. There may be odder artists than Blake, yet only a handful compare to his immeasurable claim on an imagination that was not only spiritual in the imagination but also acutely religious. Blake the prophetic, who created his own vast cosmography, was entwined with Blake the visionary, who saw Heaven and Hell as living topographies. For an artist who claimed he saw God as a child, when he died, at seventy, in 1827, legend goes that he burst into song: it might have been an angel’s chorus greeting him into the new Jerusalem. That assumes that Blake went to Heaven at his demise; he might have easily gone to Hell. His sense of the paradisiacal was as complex as Tolkien’s Middle-Earth, or the Star Wars universe. Urizen, his famous God-like character for whom the eponymous (and magnificently illustrated) The Book of Urizen was titled, was only one mythological character that he invented (drawing on diverse sources from Swedenborg, the Druids, the Masons, the Bible and other mystic mysteries, like an eighteenth-century Dan Brown). Much like van Gogh, Blake was never a success; unlike van Gogh, the voices Blake heard — like the angel Gabriel, who (Blake told a friend) stopped him when he was having problems completing Urizen’s book and said, “Go to, thou shouldst not be tired” — were not self-destructive, but rather self-illuminating. The exhibition William Blake’s World: A New Heaven is Begun at the Morgan Library & Museum, in New York, which opened in September and runs through January 3, focuses on the artist-poet-prophet’s visionary influence in the still-daring form of the vast images and texts that poured out of Blake for some 50 years. Watercolors, correspondence, self-portraits, illuminated books, the famous etching of Satan, plates from Songs of Innocence, the illustrated poem Tyger and more are gathered from the Morgan’s archives (including a rare complete series of 21 watercolors for The Book of Job). It is curious how low-key the reception has been to the show. Few reviews, most indicative of “old Blake, back again,” have appeared. Blake is not new in an historical sense; but in artistic and poetic — and religious — senses, Blake is always new. To scrutinize this prolific prophet who encountered visions all his life (his wife, Catherine, said, “I see Mr. Blake now and then, but he mostly resides in Paradise”) at this time in history, after Jung’s archetypes, after Gurdjieff, after the wave of conservative evangelism and the Pop religions of the Sixties, would seem to be natural in this new spiritual America; a report in the Times noted twenty-eight per cent of both Catholics and Protestants now believe in reincarnation, and eighteen per cent of all Americans interviewed claim they have seen a ghost — almost twice that commonly affirm they have constant contact with someone dead. Blake always said he was in touch with his late brother Robert, so when he wrote to someone grieving about how Robert had helped him discover a new method of engraving, perhaps the old idea of the eccentric artist will find new purchase with Americans (28 per cent or so) who view spiritual energy emanating through trees, mountains and crystals. The connection between art (or creativity in general) and spirituality has found many adherents. From Kandinsky’s influential philosophy book, Concerning the Spiritual in Art (1911), in which he proposed the different arts as a way to “building…the spiritual pyramid which will some day reach to heaven,” to the Abstract Expressionists’ turning psychoanalytic theory into painting theory, artists have been governed by the greater intent. Rothko’s final paintings, suffused in pure color (like stepping onto the surface of the Sun or disappearing into the cosmic fold), were probably the arc of twentieth-century painting’s attempt to reconcile the tactile with the ethereal. The difference with William Blake’s religiosity was its magnitude. He saw visions throughout his life (indeed, so intense was his spiritualism that his wife was said to communicate with him after his death up to her dying day). It was not at all like the faux dreams created by the Surrealists, and more human than, say, Piranesi’s technical imaginary drawings of The Carceri. A poet like Dante who thought up his own whole universe and system of creation might be a better comparison than any artist. Because Blake was a poet and an artist (engraving onto copper plates; drawing, working in tempera and hand-coloring his illuminated books), his world (and Otherworld) view was complete. Blake accepted commissions from patrons both sympathetic and bemused, yet he invariably worked for himself. What well-meaning benefactor could keep up with Blake’s constant visitations from God and Gabriel and brother Robert, or his intricately conceived universe drawn from myths, Bible stories, occult, and nighttime callings? Blake went to art school but his is an art largely self-taught. Again, who could prepare the young man for Urizen or Los, the fallen son of the founding father Albion, two characters of the dozens out of his own head? He wrote to a dissatisfied patron who was aghast at Blake’s watercolors commissioned for a clergyman’s book, “I know that This World Is a World of IMAGINATION & Vision. I see Every thing I paint In This World, but Every body does not see alike … to the Eyes of the Man of Imagination, Nature is Imagination itself …” Examining his masterpieces Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience, Jerusalem, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (with its haunting plate of Nebuchadnezzar) and The Book of Urizen is a voyage of discovery: some of Blake’s poems (handwritten around the illustrations) reflect his art, while drawings for Chaucer and Dante and the Book of Job offer an alternate, often entirely more powerful conception of what is proffered in words. The closest thing to come to mind to Blake’s enfevered imaginary universe is the recent revelation and publication of Jung’s long-rumored Red Book, a six-hundred-page work in both German and Latin calligraphy and stunning drawings that Jung used to probe his unconscious as he severed his ties to his former disciple Freud. The artwork, plied with color, enumerates Jung’s dreams and fears (there are mandalas and dragons devouring the Sun), much as Blake’s work fed and was fed by his visions. Jung’s statement in his epilogue, “To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness,” reflects backwards to Blake’s assertions that his work was Divine. Divine and divine: Blake lived in the best of both possible worlds.
William Blake (1757-1827), Designs for Robert John Thornton’s third edition of The Pastorals of Virgil, Four wood engravings printed from one block, London: J. McGowan for Rivington [and others], 1821, Purchased by Pierpont Morgan, 1906; PML 9948.24 15.
William Blake (1757-1827), Joseph of Arimathea Among the Rocks of |
John Flaxman (1755-1826), Behold this proud oppressor of my country, Choephora, Pen and brown ink over graphite, Gift of Louise Crane in memory of her mother, Mrs. W. Murray Crane; 1975.40:2. |
William Blake (1757-1827), Satan, after a deisgn by Henry Fuseli, Etching and engraving, First state, ca. 1789, Gift of Charles Ryskamp in memory of, Sir Geoffrey Keynes; 1982.98. |
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William Blake, The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve, c 1826, © Tate 2008. |
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William Blake's Significance as a Metaphysical Reference Point |
Tate Liverpool Revered as an important reference point for British culture and Romanticist Art, Blake’s influence extends far beyond visual arts, inspiring not only artists but writers, poets, musicians and illustrators. He was largely attracted to narratives and themes — including Biblical subjects and classical poetry - that enabled him to express the triumph of innocence and virtue over tyranny and hypocrisy. Blake’s philosophy was underpinned by unorthodox political beliefs, profound anti-materialism and the notion that there existed a more significant spiritual world beyond mere physical existence. This display uses his iconic works to consider the life cycle not as a predetermined journey, but rather as part of a totality within which life, death, resurrection and the afterlife belong to a greater spiritual realm. |
At the end of 2008, Liverpool’s year as European Capital of Culture, Tate Liverpool is presenting a display of major works by William Blake (1757-1827), the renowned painter, printmaker, poet and mystical philosopher, including selected William Blake masterpieces, in a spellbinding display that reconsiders the cycle of life, death and rebirth. Tate has one of the most important and extensive collections of William Blake work in the world. This display includes a special selection of his finest work, including the artist’s celebrated colour prints which have been influential in expanding the creative possibilities of the medium. Key works include a selection of Blake’s famed watercolour illustrations to Dante’s The Divine Comedy, as well as major paintings such as Newton (1795/c.1805), The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve (c.1826) and The Bard, from Gray (1809). |
William Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boil, 1825, reprinted 1874, © Tate 2008. |
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William Blake, Frontispiece to Visions of the Daughters of Albion, Detail, circa 1795, Purchased with the assistance of a special grant from the National Gallery and donations from The Art Fund, Lord Duveen and others, and presented through the The Art Fund 1919, © copyright 2000 Tate, all rights reserved, Colour print finished in ink and watercolour on paper, support: 17 x 12 cm. |
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William Blake and the Abolition of the Slave Trade in England |
An exhibition display regarding William Blake's poem The Little Black Boy. Design for the exhibition 1807: Blake, Slavery and the Radical Mind was created by Objectif with Oliver Klimpel, Silke Klinnert and furniture by Barnaby Tuke.
William Blake, The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan, circa 1805-9, Tempera on canvas, support: 762 x 625 mm frame: 912 x 785 x 75 mm, Purchased 1914, © copyright 2000 Tate, all rights reserved.
William Blake (1757-1827), Europe Supported By Africa and America, 1796. Engraving. Illustration from John Gabriel Stedman, Narrative of a Five Years' Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam in Guiana on the Wild Coast of South America; from the Year 1772 to 1777, 2 vols.
William Blake (1757-1827), Malevolence, 1799, watercolour with pen 11-7/8 x 8-7/8, Philadelphia Museum of Art. |
Tate Britain A special exhibition entitled 1807: Blake, Slavery and the Radical Mind marks the bicentenary of the passing of the 1807 Parliamentary Act which abolished the British Slave Trade. Incorporating historical documents and works of art, and innovative interpretation and commentary, the exhibition focuses on William Blake (1757-1827) and the circle of liberal writers and artists associated with the radical London publisher Joseph Johnson (1738-1809), many of whose publications supported the emergence of socially and politically progressive ideas and causes. In Blake’s prints and poetry, which have inspired generations of artists, writers and religious and political dissenters, we can find some powerful anti-slavery sentiments. This display will evoke the atmosphere of debate to which Blake and many others contributed and which helped shape the ideas that underpinned the introduction of the Act. The display includes Blake’s The Little Black Boy from the Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1794) and two important engravings by Blake which illustrate army officer John Gabriel Stedman’s first hand account of life on the slave plantations, his Narrative of a Five Years’ Expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796). Blake's illustrations to this book, including The Execution of Breaking on the Rack, are among the most powerful and shocking anti-slavery images. The exhibition also features other pieces by Blake such as the tempera, The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan of about 1805-9, and works by Blake’s contemporaries, such as caricatures by James Gillray and two little-known anti-slavery prints after paintings by George Morland. This exhibition includes important historical publications loaned by the British Library and the BritishMuseum and other collections. There are books by contemporary radical thinkers of the day such as John Howard the prison reformer, the poet William Cowper and feminist author Mary Wollstonecraft. The well-known portrait of Wollstonecraft by John Opie of 1790-1 is on display. Visitors can explore the historical and intellectual context for the abolition movement and to consider issues of race, identity and freedom of speech. The books, illustrations, prints and paintings from the period establish the wider philosophical and political setting for abolition. The exhibition was curated by writer and broadcaster, Mike Phillips and Tate Curators, Robin Hamlyn and Martin Myrone.
William Blake (1757-1827), A Negro hung alive by the Ribs to a Gallows, from "Narrative of a Five Years" Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam, in Guiana, on the Wild Coast of South America, from the year 1772, to 177', engraved by William Blake.
William Blake (1757-1827), Flagellation of a Female Samboe Slave, engraved by William Blake.
John Opie, Mary Wollstonecraft (Mrs William Godwin), c. 1790-1, Oil on canvas, support: 759 x 638 mm, frame: 1005 x 875 x 130 mm, Purchased 1884, © 2000 Tate.
Blakes' second plate of The Little Black Boy.
William Blake (1757-1827), Inferno, Canto XIII, 1-45, The Wood of Self-Violators: The Harpies and the Suicides. Detail. |
William Blake (1757-1827), Tiriel, plate 2, Har and Heva bathing, Mnetha looking on, Pen and grey wash over pencil 183x273 mm Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. |
