Sometimes seen as an eccentric figure – or a lone genius – William Blake’s Universe is the first exhibition to explore the artist’s boundless imagination, discovers Amanda Hodges
“IF THE DOORS OF PERCEPTION were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” William Blake is well known as a multi-disciplinary and visionary artist, a man for whom anything deemed ‘narrow’ would be anathema. He’s also a figure who embodies a certain Britishness, largely courtesy of his words for the hymn Jerusalem, but, at The Fitzwilliam Museum this spring, an entirely new dimension of Blake’s art is on offer and it’s one that strongly resonates with our world today.
Sometimes seen as an eccentric figure or deemed a solitary genius, William Blake’s Universe is the first exhibition to explore Blake’s illimitable imagination in the context of broader trends and themes within European art including romanticism, mysticism and concepts of spiritual regeneration. Placing him firmly within a constellation of his own European contemporaries who’d also embarked upon their own quests for spiritual enlightenment both in their lives and art, William Blake’s Universe collates the most substantial display of works yet on public display from the revolutionary artist, printmaker and poet, all gleaned from the Fitzwilliam’s extensive archives.
“The Fitzwilliam has a world-renowned collection of Blake, which has recently been added to by the final tranche of the Sir Geoffrey Keynes bequest,” says Esther Chadwick, co-curator, (alongside David Bindman) of the exhibition. Keynes was the surgeon and author brother of John Maynard Keynes and was also a friend of renowned First World War poet Rupert Brooke. “Many of the Blake works on show have rarely been seen in public before,” continues Chadwick. “There are rare and important works in the ▸ collection including, for example, his large-format drawing of the Laocoön and engraving of the same subject.”
With over half the artworks by Blake himself, there will be in the region of 180 paintings, drawings and prints on display. Works on paper predominate, given that Blake worked mainly as a printmaker and a watercolourist, but there are also sculptures by John Flax
