Photo: Christoph Irrgang, Hamburg.
Blake and Exhibitions, 2024
Luisa Calè (l.cale@bbk.ac.uk) is professor of Romantic and nineteenth-century literature and visual culture in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Birkbeck, University of London. She writes about practices of reading, viewing, and collecting in the Romantic period. Her monograph, entitled The Book Unbound: Material Cultures of Reading and Collecting, 1750–1850, funded by the Leverhulme Trust, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. She is the exhibitions editor for Blake.
In 2024 Blake’s work was exposed in British, European, and global settings. His role as a foundational artist in the British School was explored in two different directions in London. The rehang of Tate Britain included a recentering and reenvisioning of British art, including the commissioning of a mural by Chris Ofili and his dialogue with Blake (17 April 2023–2 June 2024).Reviewed in Luisa Calè, “Blake and Exhibitions, 2023,” Blake, vol. 58, no. 1, summer 2024, https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.366. For a contrast with Blake’s previous location, adjacent to Turner, see Michael Glover, “William Blake, Our Contemporary,” Hyperallergic, 26 Sept. 2023, hyperallergic.com/847018/william-blake-our-contemporary-tate-britain. While the Fitzwilliam copy of Blake’s life mask was on display in the British and German instantiations of William Blake’s Universe, the National Portrait Gallery copy marked his role among Old Master precedents and inspirations in Francis Bacon: Human Presence.
Blake’s European dimensions were tested through two major initiatives: William Blake’s Universe explored the European roots and resonances of his work through a dialogue with German art, thanks to a partnership between the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The exhibitions in Cambridge and Hamburg identified European traditions in academic training underpinning neoclassical art as an approach to the past, set Blake’s continental prophecies in the revolutionary present, and captured understandings of the future by tracing a mystical vein in European Romantic art with shared roots in the work of Jacob Böhme. The Tate partnered with the Reggia di Venaria outside Turin and chose the theme of dreams to present its collection of Blakes and British Romantic art in a grandiose European palace setting.
A focus on the underworld featured Blake within domestic and grand-tour settings in which the geological imagination is informed by folk, religious, and scientific lore. At the Reggia di Venaria, a section titled “Satan and the Underworld” displayed a range of works by Blake and his contemporaries, including James Barry’s Miltonic “Satan, Sin, and Death.” However, the exhibition could not include Blake’s two watercolors specifically depicting that subject from Paradise Lost, since all loans were from the Tate, which does not own Blake’s versions. By contrast, Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels, illustrating Paradise Lost book 1, was loaned from the Victoria and Albert Museum to document interest in the vertical axis of travel to the underworld in the Louvre-Lens exhibition about subterranean worlds.
Blake’s illustrations to John Gabriel Stedman’s Narrative, of a Five Years’ Expedition, against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam (1796) continued to exercise creative, critical, and curatorial practice in 2024. After his representations of the inhuman treatment of slaves were included in Reinventing the Américas: Construct. Erase. Repeat at the Getty Center, Los Angeles (23 August 2022–8 January 2023) as part of a colonial archive of European encounters with America, this corpus was on view in the UK and Germany, where approaches ranged from the use of a trigger warning about the book at the Fitzwilliam to the decolonial aesthetics of self-reflection informing the display in Hamburg. Shanghai-born artist Hu Yun widened the scope of Blake’s Stedman compositions within the global legacies of colonial exploration in his retrospective at Rockbund Art Museum, in a building that had formerly housed the natural history collection of the Royal Asiatic Society.
William Blake’s Universe
Curated by David Bindman and Esther Chadwick
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge
23 February–19 May 2024
Catalogue: Bindman, David, and Esther Chadwick, editors. William Blake’s Universe. Fitzwilliam Museum/Philip Wilson Publishers, 2024.
This exhibition brought the Fitzwilliam Blake collection into dialogue with German mysticism, documenting a shared mystical source in the corpus of Jacob Böhme—evidenced by Cambridge copies of the Law edition illustrated by Dionysius Andreas Freher—and the parallel development of British and German millenarian Romantic visions in the corpuses of Blake, Caspar David Friedrich, and Philipp Otto Runge. This comparative European approach brought into view a classical idiom rooted in the artists’ academic training in London, Copenhagen, and Dresden.See cat. no. 15, p. 43, for Runge’s studying in Copenhagen; p. 44, no. 18, for the academy in Dresden. Comparisons between individual works and shared themes produced bold and illuminating juxtapositions. Blake’s mediated encounter with Michelangelo was evidenced by a wall hang bringing together three versions of the subject of Joseph of Arimathea (an engraving attributed to Nicolas Beatrizet, and two by Blake, dated 1773 and 1810–25). On the wall at the other end of the room were versions of the Laocoön as an encyclopædia plate, an engraving surrounded by Blake’s aphoristic marginalia, and a drawing. The exhibition featured two copies of “Albion Rose,” one placed next to Jacques-Louis Perée’s “Droits de l’homme” (“Rights of Man”) (1795–96) and another in dialogue with Friedrich’s Lebensalter (Ages of Life, but translated as The Ages of Man in the exhibition) (c. 1826).For a full review, see Luisa Calè, “William Blake’s Universe, Fitzwilliam Museum, 23 February–19 May 2024; William Blake’s Universe, edited by David Bindman and Esther Chadwick,” Blake, vol. 58, no. 3, winter 2024–25, https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.376.
James S. Deville, Head of William Blake, 1823
Fitzwilliam Museum, M.7-1947
Catherine Blake, Portrait of the Young William Blake, c. 1830? (Butlin #C3)
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.14-1953
John Flaxman, Portrait of William Blake, 1804
Fitzwilliam Museum, 828.f.37
John Linnell, William Blake, 1821
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.61-1950
John Linnell, Head and Shoulders of William Blake, 1820
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.57-1950
John Linnell, Portrait of Blake at Hampstead, c. 1825
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.58-1950
The Past: Antiquity and the Gothic
“Joseph of Arimathea among the Rocks of Albion”:
First state, 1773
Second state, c. 1810–25
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.391-1985, P.392-1985
Aminadab, Called “The Reposing Traveller,” after Michelangelo and Adamo Scultori, c. 1785 (Butlin #170 verso) British Museum, 1867,1012.205
The Apotheosis of Bacchus, after d’Hancarville, c. 1779–85 (Butlin #174) British Museum, 1867,1012.207
Joseph’s Brethren Bowing Down before Him, c. 1784–85 (Butlin #155)
Fitzwilliam Museum, 456A
Joseph Ordering Simeon to Be Bound, c. 1784–85 (Butlin #156)
Fitzwilliam Museum, 456B
Joseph Making Himself Known to His Brethren, c. 1784–85 (Butlin #157)
Fitzwilliam Museum, 456C
“Homer Invoking the Muse,” after Flaxman, for Flaxman, Iliad, 1805
Fitzwilliam Museum
“Head of a Damned Soul,” after Fuseli, c. 1789–90
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.423-1985
“Tornado,” after Fuseli, for Darwin, The Botanic Garden, 1795
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.546-1985
Hyperion (“The Bowman” ), late 1790s (Butlin #336)
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.167-1985
Ugolino and His Sons in Prison, wash drawing, c. 1780–85 (Butlin #208)
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1980-128
Ugolino and His Sons in Prison, tempera, 1826–27 (Butlin #805)
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.5-1978
Engravings for the Divine Comedy, 1826–27:
“The Circle of the Corrupt Officials: The Devils Mauling Each Other”
“The Circle of the Lustful: Paolo and Francesca”
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.812-R, P.810-R
On Homer’s Poetry [and] On Virgil, c. 1822
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.711-1985
יה & his two Sons Satan & Adam (Laocoön), c. 1826–27
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.398-1985
For Rees’s Cyclopædia, 1820:
“Sculpture” (Venus de Medici, Apollo Belvedere, Laocoön)
“Sculpture” (Durga Slaying Mahishasura, An Etruscan Patera, A Colossal Statue at Thebes, Persian Sculpture at Persepolis, A Chinese Statue)
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.579-1985, P.739-1985
Free Version of the Laocoön, c. 1825 (Butlin #681)
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.29-2020
The Present: Europe in Flames
America, a Prophecy copy O, composed 1793, printed c. 1821:
Frontispiece
Title page
“A Prophecy”
“The morning comes”
“The terror answerd”
“Thus wept the Angel voice”
“Over the hills”
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.127-1950 (1, 2, 5, 8, 10, 12, 18)
For Stedman, Narrative, 1796:
“Europe Supported by Africa and America,” hand colored
“Group Imported to be Sold for Slaves”
Cambridge University Library, Keynes.H.4.12; British Museum, 2006,0830.49
“The Little Black Boy,” printed recto/verso
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.679-1985
Visions of the Daughters of Albion copy P, composed 1793, printed c. 1818, open to the title page Fitzwilliam Museum, P.126-1950
The Song of Los copy A, composed and printed 1795:
Frontispiece
Title page
King and Queen on a Lily
Los Rests from His Labours
British Museum, 1856,0209.409, 410, 413, 416
Europe copy K, composed 1794, printed c. 1821, all eighteen prints on display
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.127-1950 (19-36)
“F[rench] Revolution,” after Ryley, for Bellamy’s Picturesque Magazine, 1793
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.544-1985
Death on a Pale Horse, c. 1800 (Butlin #517)
Fitzwilliam Museum, 765
The House of Death, c. 1795 (Butlin #322)
Fitzwilliam Museum, 1769
“Albion Rose,” from the so-called Large Book of Designs, 1794–96 (Butlin #262.1)
British Museum, 1856,0209.417
The Future: Spiritual Renewal
The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ’s Garments, 1800 (Butlin #495) Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.30-1949
The Angel of the Divine Presence Clothing Adam and Eve with Coats of Skins, 1803 (Butlin #436) Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.29-1949
The Ascension, c. 1805–06 (Butlin #505) Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.32-1949
Watercolors for Paradise Regained, c. 1816–18, all twelve on display (Butlin #544)
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.14-1950 to PD.25-1950
An Allegory of the Spiritual Condition of Man, 1811? (Butlin #673)
Fitzwilliam Museum, PD.27-1949
Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1823–26:
“Job and His Family”
“Job’s Evil Dreams”
“When the Morning Stars Sang Together”
“Job and His Daughters”
“Job and His Family Restored to Prosperity”
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.454-1985 (2, 12, 15, 21, 22)
Samuel Palmer, The Magic Apple Tree, c. 1830
Fitzwilliam Museum, 1490
Samuel Palmer, Coming from Evening Church, 1830
Tate, N03697
Jerusalem copy B, composed 1804–20, printed 1821, frontispiece
Private collection
Jerusalem, frontispiece, proof impression
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.24-2018
Jerusalem copy B, composed 1804–20, printed 1821:
Title page
Pl. 6, “His Spectre driv’n by the Starry Wheels”
Pl. 11, “To labours mighty, with vast strength”
Pl. 14, “One hair nor particle of dust”
Pl. 25, “And there was heard a great lamenting in Beulah”
Private collection
Jerusalem copy H, composed 1804–20, printed c. 1832, pl. 28, “Every ornament of perfection” Fitzwilliam Museum, P.5054-R
Jerusalem, pl. 37, “And One stood forth”
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.708-1985
Jerusalem, pl. 51, Vala, Hyle, and Skofeld
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.709-1985
Vala, Hyle, and Skofeld, and Another Figure, c. 1810
Hamburger Kunsthalle, 1976-258
Jerusalem, pl. 100
Fitzwilliam Museum, P.710-1985
“Albion Rose,” second state
British Museum, 1894,0612.27
胡昀: 远山 / Hu Yun: Mount Analogue
Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai
23 March–25 August 2024
Untitled ( from the narrative of a five years expedition) (2016–17), a creative intervention on Blake’s illustrations to Stedman’s Narrative by Shanghai-born artist Hu Yun, featured in the first chapter, “China Journal,” of the project “Complex Geographies” at the Rockbund Art Museum, “which in 1933 served as the location for China’s first natural history museum—the Royal Asiatic Society Museum.”www.rockbundartmuseum.org/exhibition/hu-yun-mount-analogue. The exhibition was titled after René Daumal’s Le Mont Analogue (1952), originally subtitled in translation “An Authentic Narrative,” then retranslated under the title Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, which generalizes the French “alpine adventures” for a global public.René Daumal, Le Mont Analogue: Récit véridique, Gallimard, 1952, translated into English by Roger Shattuck in 1959. Subsequent editions bear the subtitle Roman d’aventures alpines, non euclidiennes et symboliquement authentiques, reflected in the changed English title Mount Analogue: A Tale of Non-Euclidian and Symbolically Authentic Mountaineering Adventures, translated by Carol Cosman, Overlook Press, 2004. The ascension narrative, arranged over three floors, was given continuity by The Hollow-Men, a site-specific installation of sails mounted in the hollow in the middle of the floors of the building, evoking the colonial travel that brought the natural history collection together. In this context of colonial exploration and encounter, Hu Yun’s engagement with Blake became part of a wider study, exposing official histories, taxonomies, archives, and foundational figures in colonial natural history.For the exhibition’s engagement with colonial natural history and disciplinary formations, see Jennifer Piejko, “Hu Yun Turns to the Unfinished Novel,” Frieze, no. 245, 11 June 2024, www.frieze.com/article/hu-yun-mount-analogue-2024-review.
Hu Yun’s reenvisioning of Blake was placed on a mezzanine above The Hollow-Men. The seven works framed on the wall are obtained by an art of deletion or redaction, which takes out the colonial bodies from Blake’s compositions for Stedman’s Narrative: “Taking out certain elements in the original drawings by Blake, Hu Yun intentionally leaves viewers with plenty of blankness. Such abstraction points directly to the violence behind taxonomy and selective recording.”Aike Gallery, photos of Rockbund Art Museum installation, Instagram, 26 May 2024, www.instagram.com/p/C7brmvsRCnj.
Untitled ( from the narrative of a five years expedition), 2016–17
Ink on tracing paper, 7 pieces, 26.5 × 19 cm. (image), 52 × 36 cm. (framed)
Wallpaper dimensions variable
Mondes souterrains: 20,000 lieux sous la terre / Subterranean Worlds: 20,000 Leagues under the Earth
Curated by Alexandre Estaquet-Legrand, Jean-Jacques Terrin, and Gautier Verbeke
Musée du Louvre-Lens
27 March–22 July 2024
The exhibition was conceived as a “path of initiation,” a “physical experience” for visitors, who, “cut off from the world,” “discover[ed] chasms and caves.” It used The Fall of the Titans (anonymous copy, retouched by Peter Paul Rubens, of a drawing by Pieter Coecke van Aelst) to document the underworld described in Hesiod’s Theogony (eighth century BCE).
Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels, one of twelve watercolors commissioned by Thomas Butts, was displayed in a section named “Descent into the World Beyond” to capture the association of the underworld with hell: “Civilizations have conceived the abyss as the realm of death where the dead hope to find eternal life or resurrection. Reflecting the hierarchies of mortal worlds, these infra-worlds have their divinities, but, braving the rules of life and death, some gods and heroes have tried to trespass their doors to travel in subterranean worlds.”Quoted from the visitor guide; the translation is mine. Blake’s muscular Satan exemplifies the heroic decision to renew the onslaught of the rebel angels.
Watercolors for Paradise Lost, Butts set, 1808:
Satan Arousing the Rebel Angels (Butlin #536.1)
Victoria and Albert Museum, FA.697
William Blakes Universum
Curated by Andreas Stolzenburg in collaboration with David Bindman and Esther Chadwick
Hamburger Kunsthalle
14 June–8 September 2024
Catalogue: Stolzenburg, Andreas, in collaboration with David Bindman and Esther Chadwick, editors. William Blakes Universum. Hamburger Kunsthalle/Hatje Cantz, 2024.
The collaboration between the Fitzwilliam and the Hamburger Kunsthalle served a mutual interest in establishing a dialogue between Blake and German Romantic art. Almost fifty years since a groundbreaking Blake exhibition commissioned by the Kunsthalle’s then director Werner Hofmann as part of a cycle on British Romantic art and curated by David Bindman (1975), Bindman joined forces with Esther Chadwick and Andreas Stolzenburg to reinvent Blake in a German and European context for a different generation, after Brexit. The Fitzwilliam took the partnership as an opportunity to present the work of Philipp Otto Runge to the British public, whereas fewer Runge works were exhibited in Hamburg. Conversely, despite the pioneering work of Henry Crabb Robinson in introducing Blake to the German reading public in an article published in Vaterländisches Museum (1811), the Kunsthalle claimed that “[Blake’s] work is still little known outside of England.”www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/en/william-blakes-universe, accessed 10 Sept. 2025. This claim is surprising, given the evidence discussed in The Reception of William Blake in Europe, edited by Sibylle Erle and Morton D. Paley, 2 vols., Bloomsbury Academic, 2019. Both exhibitions prided themselves on the display of objects from Sir Geoffrey Keynes’s bequest to the Fitzwilliam; for the Kunsthalle, “This exhibition will be the first public showing of the entire Blake collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge together with the bequest of the well-known Blake collector Geoffrey Keynes.”www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/en/william-blakes-universe, accessed 10 Sept. 2025.
German reception of William Blakes Universum noted the coincidence with the 250th anniversary of Caspar David Friedrich’s birthNicola Kuhn, “Ausstellung über William Blake; Die Götter treten gegeneinander an,” Der Tagesspiegel, 21 June 2024. The Friedrich anniversary was celebrated with a retrospective at the Hamburger Kunsthalle (15 Dec. 2023–1 April 2024, www.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/caspar-david-friedrich), preceding William Blakes Universum but overlapping with the Fitzwilliam’s William Blake’s Universe. The Metropolitan Museum of Art also marked the occasion with Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature, “organized in cooperation with the Alte Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, and Hamburger Kunsthalle …” (8 Feb.–11 May 2025, www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/caspar-david-friedrich-the-soul-of-nature). and applauded the exhibition’s dialogue with German art to claim Blake as a “true European,”Vera Fengler, “‘Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst’; Das Kunstspiel zum Mitmachen—jeden Montag im Abendblatt. Heute: William Blake, ‘Der Alte der Tage; Europa, eine Prophezeiung,’” Hamburger Abendblatt, 15 July 2024. despite his never having traveled outside England. Yet reviewers also expected an explicit engagement with Blake’s contemporary legacy as a “painter, poet, mystic, proto-hippie,”Peter Richter, “William Blake in Hamburg; Beim Propheten der Bärte; Die Hamburger Kunsthalle entdeckt schon zum zweiten Mal den Maler, Dichter, Mystiker und Proto-Hippie William Blake,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, 7 Aug. 2024. and “anarchistic rebel.”Wolfgang Krischke, “Anarchistischer Rebell und Künder esoterischer Visionen,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 3 July 2024. A number of reviews wanted the exhibition to engage with his significance in pop culture, “from Aldous Huxley to the Doors, from Patti Smith to Ridley Scott.”See Krischke. If it “lacked the thunderous sound of rock music,”See Kuhn. its vibes were activated by an iconic use of “The Ancient of Days,” “reminiscent of an album by a heavy metal band.”See Fengler. One review contrasted the status of Blake’s “Jerusalem” hymn as an “unofficial national anthem” to his countercultural power in music, film, and book arts: “The Doors also set his verses to music, Jim Jarmusch created a cinematic monument to him with Dead Man. His poetry also influenced Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan, and Blake pioneered the graphic novel genre.”See Kuhn.
To bring Blake’s world to a contemporary audience, Hamburg’s initiatives included commissioning a delightful graphic novel about Blake’s life by local comic-book artist Noëlle Kröger, who centered the narrative around Blake’s collaboration with his wife, Catherine, remediating some of his visual inventions within the comic-book panels. While the Fitzwilliam familiarized Blake’s character by means of short glosses and an abridgment of the action in the captions below the plates of the continental prophecies, the Kunsthalle produced a glossary on one of the exhibition’s walls. “A Note on Gender Images” acknowledged Blake’s “queer potentials and interpretations,” yet claimed that [t]he characteristics of the allegorical figures in Blake’s mythology are based on ideas of masculinity and femininity that appear stereotypical—or even sexist and misogynistic—from today’s perspective.… The allegories employed by Blake in his mythical worlds always present contemporary variations of the historically evolved binary system of gender. Hopefully, the upcoming bicentenary will be an opportunity to translate recent research on queer Blake into curatorial initiatives that revisit the gender dynamics and queer sensibilities to be found and reinvented in his corpus.
The Kunsthalle’s most original intervention consisted in its approach to the illustrations to Stedman’s Narrative. Both in Cambridge and in Hamburg, how to mediate Blake’s engagement with slavery was a curatorial problem that raised questions in contemporary decolonial aesthetics. The Fitzwilliam opted for a trigger warning written on the wall above the glass vitrine with the Stedman plates, which were deliberately placed horizontally, activating an “ethics of horizontality” to deny such subjects the honor of verticality, echoing the deposition and then horizontal display of statues associated with slavery.On the “ethics of horizontality,” see Luisa Calè, “William Blake’s Universe: An Interview with David Bindman and Esther Chadwick,” Blake, vol. 57, no. 3, winter 2023–24, https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.352. The statue of Bristol slave-trader Edward Colston was toppled in 2020, went on temporary display in the horizontal rather than the vertical position until January 2022, and that solution was made permanent in spring 2024 after Bristol inhabitants were surveyed about and approved this decolonial curatorial strategy: see Chloe Harcombe and Alice Bouverie, “Edward Colston Statue Goes on Permanent Display in Bristol Museum,” BBC News, Bristol, 14 Mar. 2024, www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-68569148. In Hamburg the vitrine with the Stedman prints was placed beneath protective cloths, under a wall text:
The images in this display case are concealed as they contain racist depictions that are directed against Black people. We have not made them directly visible for this reason, but the fabric can be lifted to view them. How does this change the way we see? What impact does this intervention have on the way you view the depiction?
In addition, there are racial epithets on the sheets. These are terms introduced by white people to devalue and exclude groups and people by emphasising supposed inequality and producing inequality.
The decision to add a mirror to the Stedman display was the product of a process of consultation involving the gallery’s Education Department in collaboration with freelance curator Christopher Nixon,Curator of the Colonial Past and Postcolonial Present at the Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg, 2020–21 (zugang-gestalten.org/sprecherinnen/christopher-nixon); author of Den Blick erwidern. Epiphanie und Ästhetik postkolonial, Passagen Verlag, 2023. who suggested Pedro Lasch’s Black Mirror experiments.For mention of Lasch’s Black Mirror, see also Erle, “Blake in Hamburg.” For details of the process, I am grateful to Julia Kersting, curatorial assistant at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, who was responsible for the organization and implementation of this display. The decolonial introduction of mirrors into the exhibition space magnifies viewers’ discomfort, making them see themselves reflected in scenes of colonial violence and exploitation, addressing them as participants rather than detached observers. To support such a practice of self-reflection in William Blakes Universum, the gallery added this label to the Stedman display:
We don’t just look at the images through the mirror in this display case. We see ourselves. The mirror throws our gaze back at us. It is intended to encourage us to become aware of our voyeuristic, eager, curious gaze at these depictions and invite us to reflect on our own gaze. Who is looking at whom here? Who is the subject, who is the object of observation? Because the way people and bodies are depicted here is also the result of a constructed and culturally learnt colonial point of view, a colonial regime of looking.
(Integrating a mirror here was inspired by the complex project Black Mirror by the artist Pedro Lasch, ongoing since 2007.)
This invitation to decolonize the gaze exposed, interrogated, and subverted subject positions and ways of seeing in “a colonial regime of looking.” Lasch argues that Black Mirror/Espejo Negro, “with its play of transparencies and reflections, makes impossible any clear separation between past-present, artwork-viewer-environment.…”Quoted from pedrolasch.com/blackmirror.html#en; for further information, see Black Mirror/Espejo Negro, edited by Pedro Lasch, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute/Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, 2010. Lifting the protective cloths brought viewers in contact with the display, implicating them in the cruelties of slavery captured by Blake.
Slow Looking
Samek Art Museum, Bucknell University, Lewisburg
4 September–8 December 2024
Showcasing a bequest from Bucknell alum Stuart Coyne, this exhibition advocated slow looking by trying to evoke the wall hangs of Coyne’s San Francisco apartment. “Christ Descending into the Grave” and “The Soul Hovering over the Body,” two etchings by Louis Schiavonetti after Blake’s inventions for Robert Blair’s The Grave, featured at the center of a hang including Hogarth’s “The Sleeping Congregation.”
Schiavonetti after Blake, published in Blair, The Grave, 1813:
“Christ Descending into the Grave”
“The Soul Hovering over the Body, Reluctantly Parting with Life”
Samek Art Museum, 2023.5.19, 2023.5.20
Dürer to Matisse: 400 Years of European Prints
Curated by Dana Cowen
Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
27 September 2024–5 January 2025
This exhibition selected samples from Illustrations of the Book of Job for a survey of printmaking and “art historical movements from the Renaissance to Cubism and beyond.”ackland.org/exhibition/durer-to-matisse-400-years-of-european-prints. Blake’s engravings were put into conversation with Dürer’s and works in various print media by Rembrandt van Rijn, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Francisco de Goya, Edgar Degas, Mary Cassatt, Vincent van Gogh, Käthe Kollwitz, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso.
Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1823–26:
“Satan Going Forth from the Presence of the Lord”Thirty-six prints from the museum, including “Satan Going Forth,” were displayed at other North Carolina universities in 2023, as documented in Calè, “Blake and Exhibitions, 2023.”
“Job and His Wife Restored to Prosperity”
Ackland Art Museum, 58.1.1067.1, 58.1.1067.14
Francis Bacon: Human Presence
Curated by Rosie Broadley
National Portrait Gallery, London
10 October 2024–19 January 2025
Catalogue: Broadley, Rosie, editor. Francis Bacon: Human Presence. National Portrait Gallery, 2024.
Francis Bacon: Human Presence documented Bacon’s encounter with Old Masters. The impact of Blake was signaled by his life mask, made by James Deville in 1823, owned by John Linnell, and acquired by the National Portrait Gallery in 1918. In the exhibition, the life mask complemented Study for Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake) (1955), which Bacon painted in response to a commission from the composer Gerard Schurmann.Exhibit labels, www.npg.org.uk/assets/uploads/files/Francis-Bacon_LARGE%20PRINT_GUIDE.pdf,
p. 39. Bacon kept a plaster cast purchased from the museum shop in his studio, but preferred to work from a photograph.
James S. Deville, Head of William Blake, 1823
National Portrait Gallery, NPG 1809
Francis Bacon, Study for Portrait II (after the Life Mask of William Blake), 1955
Tate, T02414
Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy
Curated by Philip S. Palmer and Erica Ciallela
Morgan Library and Museum, New York
25 October 2024–4 May 2025
Catalogue: Ciallela, Erica, and Philip S. Palmer, editors. Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy. Morgan Library and Museum/DelMonico Books, 2024.
Blake’s watercolor The Lord Answering Job out of the WhirlwindAfter three months, the library substituted When the Morning Stars Sang Together. Many thanks to Sheelagh Bevan, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Printed Books and Bindings at the Morgan, for this information. featured among the acquisitions of the Morgan’s inaugural librarian, Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950), daughter of the first black graduate of Harvard College, whose family changed their name “to pass as white in a racist and segregated America.”www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/belle-da-costa-greene. Greene joined the library in 1905 and oversaw its development after J. P. Morgan’s death in 1913, working as director after J. P. Morgan, Jr., turned the library into a public institution in 1924. In a letter to Morgan Sr. in 1909, the same year in which she acquired the Blake prints, she announced the acquisition of the only surviving manuscript of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” and went on to articulate her ambition for the Morgan Library. She viewed the British Museum and the Bibliothèque Nationale de France as her only rivals when it came to purchasing incunables, bindings, and the classics.Exhibition audio stop 11, “Belle Greene Builds the Collection,” www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/online/belle-da-costa-greene/11.
Watercolors for the book of Job, Butts set:
The Lord Answering Job out of the Whirlwind, c. 1805–06 (Butlin #550.13)
When the Morning Stars Sang Together, c. 1805–06 (Butlin #550.14)
Morgan Library and Museum, 2001.75, 2001.76
Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno / In the Age of William Blake. Visionary Journeys
Curated by Alice Insley
Reggia di Venaria, Turin
31 October 2024–2 February 2025
Catalogue: Insley, Alice, editor. Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno. Hopefulmonster, 2024.
This first Italian Blake retrospective invited the viewer to envision Blake’s art in a European palace built to embody the royal ambition of the Savoy family before the unification of Italy, emulating some architectonic features of Versailles. In stark contrast with Blake’s politics and the viewing conditions of Blake’s works in his own time, this bold contrafactual setting afforded yet another opportunity to think about the role he might have had in public art: it projected The Spiritual Form of Pitt on a flimsy fabric fluttering from above, a ghostly haunting presence for a European dwelling. Drawing on the Tate collection, the exhibition introduced Blake through British Romantic art and British Romantic art through Blake.For a full review, see Luisa Calè, “Blake e la sua epoca. Viaggi nel tempo del sogno, La Reggia di Venaria, 31 October 2024–2 February 2025; Blake e la sua epoca, edited by Alice Insley,” Blake, vol. 59, no. 1, summer 2025, https://doi.org/10.47761/biq.391. It subsequently moved to the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest in September 2025 in what amounts to the first exhibition of Blake originals in Hungary,See Calè, “Blake e la sua epoca” n4. and will next be shown at the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, in 2026.
Introduction
Blake, The House of Death, 1795–c. 1805 (Butlin #320)
Tate, N05060
Blake, The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy, formerly Hecate, c. 1795 (Butlin #316)
Tate, N05056
Blake, Satan Exulting over Eve, c. 1795 (Butlin #291)
Tate, T07213
Horror and Peril
John Hamilton Mortimer, Banditti Going Out in the Morning, 1773
Tate, T08277
Philip James de Loutherbourg, Travellers Attacked by Banditti, 1781
Tate, T00921
In the style of John Hamilton Mortimer, Rocky Landscape with Banditti, c. 1770–80
Tate, T00342
Nathaniel Dance, Two Women in a Dungeon
Tate, T08444
John Hamilton Mortimer, The Captive
Tate, T10125
Attributed to George Richmond, Fettered Nude Figure Reclining by a Rock, c. 1825
Tate, A00838
James Barry, Study for Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos, 1770
Tate, T08127
George Romney, John Howard Visiting a Lazaretto, c. 1791–92
Tate, T03547
Blake, The House of Death, c. 1790 (Butlin #259)
Tate, N05192
Henry Fuseli, Lady Macbeth Seizing the Daggers, exhibited 1812?
Tate, T00733
Blake, The Blasphemer, c. 1800 (Butlin #446)
Tate, N05195
Blake, watercolor for the Divine Comedy, 1824–27:
The Punishment of the Thieves (Butlin #812.102)
Tate, N03364
Blake, The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve, c. 1826 (Butlin #806)
Tate, N05888
Samuel Colman, The Death of Amelia, 1804?
Tate, T02109
William Westall, The Commencement of the Deluge, exhibited 1848
Tate, N01877
Philip James de Loutherbourg, An Avalanche in the Alps, 1803
Tate, T00772
Francis Danby, The Deluge, c. 1840?
Tate, N06134
Alexander Cozens, A Shipwreck Fantasy: Inscrutable
Tate, T08772
François Louis Thomas Francia, A Shipwreck
Tate, T08915
Jacob More, The Deluge, 1787
Tate, T12758
Samuel Colman, The Destruction of the Temple, c. 1830–40
Tate, T01980
Fantastical Creatures
John Hamilton Mortimer, Caliban?, 1770s
Tate, T09101
John Hamilton Mortimer, Caricature Heads
Tate, T09097
John Hamilton Mortimer, Fish Devouring Shell Food
Tate, T09124
John Hamilton Mortimer, A Sea Monster with Fish
Tate, T10131
Attributed to Master of the Giants, Unknown Mythological Subject
Tate, T01843
John Varley, Sketch for Treatise on Zodiacal Physiognomy, 1828
Tate, T07251
Blake, The Head of the Ghost of a Flea, c. 1819 (Butlin #692.98)
Tate, N05184
John Linnell, The Man who Built the Pyramids (after William Blake), c. 1825
Tate, N05185
Blake, The Ghost of a Flea, c. 1819–20 (Butlin #750)
Tate, N05889
Thomas Rowlandson, The Judge
Tate, T08531
Thomas Rowlandson, Queen Anne’s Bounty
Tate, T09201
Blake, Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1823–26, reprinted 1874:
“Behemoth and Leviathan”
Tate, A00026
Susanna Duncombe, The Ghost Scene from The Castle of Otranto
Tate, T04244
John Hamilton Mortimer, Three Skeletons
Tate, T10127
British School, Lord William and the Ghost of His Nephew
Tate, T09855
Nathaniel Dance, The Ghost of Mrs. Swellenberg’s Uncle
Tate, T08415
Nathaniel Dance, A Monster Emerging from a Cave
Tate, T08436
Nathaniel Dance, A Dog-Headed Monster in a Cave, a Lilliputian Figure Below
Tate, T08437
Enchantments
Henry Fuseli, The Shepherd’s Dream, from Paradise Lost, 1793
Tate, T00876
George Romney, Tom Hayley as Robin Goodfellow, 1789–92
Tate, N05850
George Romney, Lady Hamilton as Cassandra, c. 1785–86
Tate, N01668
Henry Fuseli, The Debutante, 1807
Tate, N03396
Henry Fuseli, Charis Phykomené, 1791
Tate, T10440
Henry Singleton, Ariel on a Bat’s Back, exhibited 1819
Tate, N01027
Blake, Oberon, Titania, and Puck with Fairies Dancing, c. 1786 (Butlin #161)
Tate, N02686
Blake, Design from Visions of the Daughters of Albion, pl. 7 [Bentley; Erdman pl. 4], c. 1795 (Butlin #265) Tate, N03374
Blake, Design from The Book of Urizen, pl. 2, “‘Teach these Souls to Fly,’” 1796, c. 1818 (Butlin #261.5) Tate, N03696
William Young Ottley, A Flight of Angels
Tate, T09144
J. M. W. Turner, A Subject from the Runic Superstitions, exhibited 1808
Tate, N00464
Theodor von Holst, The Fairy Lovers, c. 1840
Tate, T01518
Theodor von Holst, Fantasy Based on Goethe’s Faust, 1834
Tate, T05747
William Etty, The Fairy of the Fountain, 1845
Tate, N04108
Blake, Design from The Book of Thel, pl. 7 [Bentley; Erdman pl. 5], “‘Doth God take Care of these,’” 1796, c. 1818 Tate, T13000
Blake, Design from The Book of Urizen, pl. 19, “‘Is the Female death’” / “‘Become new Life,’” 1796, c. 1818 Tate, T12998
After Joshua Reynolds, Puck or Robin Goodfellow
Tate, N05384
Romanticizing the Past
Benjamin West, The Bard, 1778
Tate, T01900
Blake, The Bard, from Gray, 1809? (Butlin #655)
Tate, N03551
Blake, Lear and Cordelia in Prison, c. 1779 (Butlin #53)
Tate, N05189
Robert Blake, The Preaching of Warning, c. 1785? (Butlin #R6 recto)
Tate, A00003
Richard Westall, A Gaelic Warrior Pointing to a Vision
Tate, T08653
Nathaniel Dance, Macbeth Entering the Witches’ Cavern
Tate, T08445
Thomas Girtin, A Subject from Ossian
Tate, T08935
J. M. W. Turner, From Spenser’s Fairie Queene, c. 1807–08
Tate, D08139
William James Müller, Stonehenge
Tate, N02385
Samuel Palmer, Tintagel Castle, 1848
Tate, T13441
Edward Calvert, “The Bride,” 1828
Tate, A00157
Samuel Palmer, A Hilly Scene, c. 1826–28
Tate, N05805
The Gothic
Thomas Girtin, Guisborough Priory, Yorkshire, 1801
Tate, T00993
Edward Hawke Locker, Riveaulx Abbey, 1802
Tate, T08202
Francis Towne, Netley Abbey, 1809
Tate, T08194
J. M. W. Turner, Salisbury: A Gothic Porch in a Garden, 1798?
Tate, D02350
Alexander Cozens, The Enchanted Castle
Tate, T08042
Robert Ker Porter, An Ancient Castle, c. 1799–1800
Tate, T08532
John Sell Cotman, An Ancient Castle
Tate, T08122
George Cuitt, Jr., Window in Conway Castle, 1807
Tate, T08756
Circle of Dr. Thomas Monro, A Ruin and Trees by a Pool: Moonlight
Tate, D00856
Blake, Detailed Drawings for A Figure Standing in a Gothic Apse, c. 1819 (Butlin #692.22)
Tate, T01335
Blake, Judas Betrays Him, c. 1803–05 (Butlin #491)
Tate, T06606
Blake, The Entombment, c. 1805 (Butlin #498)
Tate, N05896
Blake, Bathsheba at the Bath, c. 1799–1800 (Butlin #390)
Tate, N03007
Satan and the Underworld
Nathaniel Dance, A Devil with Torch and Spear
Tate, T08433
Nathaniel Dance, A Devil with a Spear
Tate, T08434
Blake, Satan Smiting Job with Sore Boils, c. 1826 (Butlin #807)
Tate, N03340
James Barry, “Satan, Sin, and Death,” c. 1792–95
Tate, T06578
Blake, Satan in His Original Glory, c. 1805 (Butlin #469)
Tate, N05892
John Robert Cozens, Satan Summoning His Legions, c. 1776
Tate, T08231
John Robert Cozens, A Milton Subject, Unfinished
Tate, T08232
John Charles Denham, A Haystack Resembling a Devil
Tate, T10448
George Cumberland, Inside the Peak Cavern, Castleton, Derbyshire, c. 1820
Tate, T02304
Blake, The Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth, 1805? (Butlin #651)
Tate, N01110
Blake, watercolors for the Divine Comedy, 1824–27:
Plutus (Butlin #812.14)
The Primaeval Giants Sunk in the Soil (Butlin #812.60)
The Wood of the Self-Murderers: The Harpies and the Suicides (Butlin #812.24)
The Devils, with Dante and Virgil by the Side of the Pool (Butlin #812.40)
The Inscription over the Gate (Butlin #812.4)
Tate, N03355, N03363, N03356, N03358, N03352
John St. John Long, The Temptation in the Wilderness, 1824
Tate, T04169
Theodor von Holst, Charon, c. 1837
Tate, T15482
J. M. W. Turner, The Cave of Despair, c. 1835
Tate, N05522
Formerly attributed to John Martin, The Fallen Angels Entering Pandemonium, from Paradise Lost Book 1, exhibited 1841? Tate, N05435
Blake, Design from The Book of Urizen, pl. 11, “‘Every thing is an attempt’” / “‘To be Human,’” 1796, c. 1818 Tate, T13003
Blake, Engravings for the Divine Comedy, 1826–27, reprinted 1892:
“Ciampolo the Barrator Tormented by the Devils”
“The Six-Footed Serpent Attacking Agnolo Brunelleschi”
“The Pit of Disease: The Falsifiers”
“The Serpent Attacking Buoso Donati”
“The Baffled Devils Fighting”
Tate, A00006, A00008, A00010, A00009, A00007
Blake, Illustrations of the Book of Job, 1823–26, reprinted 1874:
“The Fall of Satan”
Tate, A00027
David Scott, “The By-Way to Hell”
Tate, N02405
Edward Dayes, The Fall of the Rebel Angels, 1798
Tate, T05210
