William Blake, The Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth (1805). Picture © Tate
BP British Art Displays: William Blake's 1809 Exhibition, Tate Britain, London, until October 4 2009
Two hundred years ago the first solo exhibition of the man now regarded (by the current Director of the Tate Britain at least) as "the greatest individual creative genius in the history of British Art" took place in a small room above a shop in Soho.
Conditions were cramped, lighting was less than ideal, and the first printing of the accompanying catalogue neglected to mention the address. Nevertheless, William Blake remained optimistic.
This was his chance to establish himself as a serious artist – a show of his own where he could display his works in watercolour and tempera (an egg-based paint more typically used for painting religious icons).
While his contemporaries at the Royal Academy busied themselves with oil paintings of landscapes and portraits, spurning other mediums as secondary and concerned only with representing external surfaces, Blake hoped to set his beloved London alight with the visionary fire of his Art.
Alas, it was not to be. Hardly anyone turned up, and those that did purchased nothing. A date had been set for the works to come down, when people could come and collect their purchases. A year later they remained hanging, neither Blake nor his friends having the heart to remove them.
If that wasn't bad enough, the sole journalist to give the exhibition any press used the opportunity to deliver what is perhaps the soundest critical thrashing in the history of British art. "William Blake," wrote a furious Robert Hunt in his review for The Examiner, "[is] an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement."
Many shared his opinion. The critical and commercial failure of the exhibition marked a turning point in Blake's life – the 52 year-old turned inwards and withdrew further from the public eye. While he continued to produce poetry and began to sell prints towards the end of his lifetime, he was not widely recognised as a great artist until well after his death in 1827.
William Blake, Jacob's Ladder 1799-1806, The British Museum. Picture © The Trustees of the British Museum
The Tate created the first gallery devoted to the poet, painter and printmaker in the early 1920s, making it an appropriate spot for the recreation of that fateful 1809 exhibition.
The reception is probably going to be a little warmer this time, with people specifically coming to view Blake's paintings and not the very different works of contemporaries like JMW Turner hanging on one side of the room for comparison.
The intervening 200 years has made it difficult to collect all the 16 original works in one place, with some simply lost to the ages, but the gallery has managed to obtain ten. The missing paintings are represented by a white square of appropriate size, with accompanying descriptions.
One wall is taken up by a huge white rectangle representing a painting called Ancient Britons. An artist who visited the original exhibition described the figures in this work as being life-size, explaining the estimated large proportions, but the other details – that it depicted ancient Britons being slain battling invading Romans – are largely thanks to Blake's writings in the accompanying exhibition catalogue.
Far from just a simple collection of explanatory notes, this sprawling text is both a manifesto – setting out artistic theories and documenting his visions – and a critique of the art world, with some choice criticisms dished out to those contemporaries whose work he found particularly distasteful.
An original copy – with pencilled in corrections by Blake – is on show, and appropriate excerpts are placed next to each painting. They reveal the artist's grand ambitions for an astonishing group of four watercolours on display.
William Blake, Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels 1805, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Picture © V&A Images / Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Blake hoped these would one day be reprinted as huge, 100ft-high public works, inspiring the population with their visionary power and turning their minds from the travails of the external world to the eternity that lies within.
A long-time admirer of the likes of Michelangelo, he wanted to create altarpieces and religious icons that would "make England like Italy – respected by respectable men of other cultures on account of Art."
Even in its 40x30cm incarnation, Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels (1805) is hugely powerful. Like many of Blake's paintings it seems imbued with an otherworldliness and uncanny depth that suggests he has managed to somehow transplant the living contents of his visionary consciousness directly onto the canvas.
The dark arch in the background almost throbs with emptiness, while in the foreground the cherubim's sacred symmetry glows with a silent but enormous power. Who knows what effects this watercolour would have if reprinted to as enormous proportions as Blake intended? They would probably be illegal.
Also on display are famous works in tempera, such as the curiously ambiguous The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan, and The Spiritual Form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth.
Quite what the pacifistic Blake meant by depicting a military leader and the Prime Minister of England as, respectively, a loin-cloth clad naked classical hero and an illuminated Christ-like figure – both surrounded by spectres – is unclear, but these dark entrancing images are none the worse for that.
Though Blake's life was a hard one, his struggles for recognition and unwillingness to compromise his unique vision to fit in with the orthodoxy of the day are certainly part of what make him such a popular artist two centuries on.
The curious collection of paintings and white spaces here may not be an ideal introduction to the great Gnostic, but for aficionados it is a must, firmly establishing Blake as not only poet and printmaker, but painter as well.
For more information visit Tate Online
