We are fallen. And Blake knew it.
The Blake of the exhibition is not the mad visionary we’re familiar with, the fan of progressive Christianity and flexible marital arrangements. Rather, he is an expert and pioneering craftsman. The exhibition is chronological, with a recreation of his studio in Lambeth at its centre. It focuses on his technique rather than his subconscious. Blake’s night-time visions of his dead brother had practical consequences: it is told that Robert imparted the instructions for the most revolutionary of techniques, “Illuminated printing”. Drawing on copper plate with impervious liquid, then dipping in acid, left the raised outline to catch the ink. Blake could now print drawings next to his text and elaborate with charcoal, pen and colour.
The results are the Blake we recognise: fantastical creatures; tygers burning bright; Urizen separating dark and light. For the first time, three versions of The House of Death are displayed side by side. In the curved lines and different washes – mouths gape open more gruesomely, toes curl in rigor mortis, muscles gleam green – you can see how the versatility offered by this new technique gave him the freedom to turn prints into art. The tortured face of Los Howl’d on the front of the catalogue is a progenitor to Goya’s Saturn.
Blake was a mentor to the Ancients, a group of Romantic artists, notably Samuel Palmer, Edward Calvert and George Richmond, whose work is displayed at the end of the exhibition. This irrelevant visual addendum shows how Blake avoided the twee. Although the general public never really recognised him in his lifetime, now he is the only artist the punters are paying to see.
Cruelty has a human heart,
And Jealousy a human face;
Terror the human form divine,
And Secresy the human dress.The human dress is forged iron,
The human form a fiery forge,
The human face a furnace sealed,
The human heart its hungry gorge.William Blake