William Blake 1809
Photography by Jere Salonen
William Blake's 1809 Exhibition is at Tate
Britain until 4 October
2009, admission free.
Tate Britain has recreated the only solo show staged by printmaker, poet and artist William Blake 200 years ago. At the time, almost no-one came to the exhibition, and only one (bad) review appeared at the time.
Exactly two centuries later, ten of the surviving pictures are exhibited at Tate. The missing five works, including a large-scale painting of
The Ancient Britons, are represented by blank spaces.
Pictures by other artists exhibited during 1809 are also shown, giving a sense
of what was different about Blake's exhibition – and
why contemporaries may have found his work so strange
and confusing.
Exhibition design by EMMI, curated by Martin Myrone.
