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Indepth Arts News:
"William Blake's Masterpieces"
2001-03-29 until 2001-06-24
Metropolitan Museum of Art
New York, NY,
USA
William Blake, the first American exhibition of works in all media –
drawings, paintings, and prints – by the legendary British Romantic, will
open at The Metropolitan Museum of Art on March 29, 2001. More than 175
works, including all of the illuminated books, for which he is most widely
known, will be on view in this first-ever exhibition to explore the artist's
work within the context of the social, economic, and political upheavals of his
times.
Many of the artist's greatest works will be on view in William Blake,
including the apocalyptic Angel of the Revelation (ca. 1803-05, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art), the celebrated Ancient of Days (ca. 1824, The
Whitworth Art Gallery, The University of Manchester), the powerful and
iconic large color prints Nebuchadnezzar and Newton (both ca. 1805, Tate
Britain), and a rare tempera painting, Ghost of a Flea (ca. 1819-20, Tate
Britain). The exhibition is organized by Tate Britain.
Other highlights of William Blake will include two of Blake's original
copperplates and one original woodblock, a bronze cast of the artist's life
mask, his manuscript notebook, an autograph letter, and examples from all of
his vibrantly colored illuminated books. Rare loans, including The Man Who
Taught Blake Painting in his Dreams, ca. 1819-20, and Portrait of the
Young William Blake, ca. 1827-31, by Catherine Blake (1762-1831),
both from the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, among others,
will also be on view. The exhibition will place special emphasis on the
artist's most intense period of work, ca. 1791 to 1800. During this time,
Blake invented his extraordinary method of relief etching – a process that
allowed for the simultaneous development of word and image directly on the
copperplate – and has only recently become fully understood by scholars.
William Blake was born in London in 1757 into a working-class family (his
father was a hosier) with strong nonconformist religious beliefs, and was
trained as a commercial engraver. Assisted by Catherine Boucher – a grocer's
daughter whom he married in 1782 – Blake produced a remarkable series of
color-printed books using his relief etching process. William Blake never
traveled outside of Britain and remained poor all his life. Aside from a brief
period on the southern coast of England (where he worked for the poet
William Hayley in Eartham from 1800 to 1803), he spent his entire life in
London. At his death in 1827, Blake was mourned by a small group of
intimate associates, some of them followers who called themselves the
“Ancients”; today, he is celebrated as one of the most original and important
artists and poets of the Romantic era.
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