William Blake: Apprentice and Master.

Billingsley, Naomi

William Blake: Apprentice and Master

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

4 December 2014-1 March 2015

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The past decade has seen a flourishing in studies of William Blake's Christianity from a number of different angles, including the discovery by Marsha Keith Schuchard and Keri Davies that Blake's mother had been a member of the Moravian community in London, and Christopher Rowland's analysis of Blake's biblical exegesis.

'William Blake: Apprentice and Master', curated by Michael Phillips for the Ashmolean Museum, offers another perspective on the artist and poet. Having explored Blake's visionary ideas in his exhibition for the Tate and the Metropolitan Museum in 20002001, here Phillips instead draws upon his expertise in Blake's practice as a printmaker; Phillips has himself developed a means of replicating Blake's graphic techniques. The exhibition examines three periods in Blake's career: his early training as a commercial engraver, his innovative printing techniques of the 1790s, and his final years--including his own late works, alongside works by the Ancients, a group of younger artists who were inspired by Blake: Samuel Palmer, George Richmond and Edward Calvert. Thus, it is the evolution of Blake's techniques, rather than the development of his beliefs that takes centre-stage.

There is, nevertheless, plenty to interest readers of Art and Christianity within the exhibition. Indeed, as is noted in a caption in the central gallery of the exhibition, for Blake, his technique reflected his message. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, 1793--two fine copies of which are shown in the exhibition--Blake stated that by printing in the innovative 'infernal method' of relief etching, he was 'melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.' This method is a metaphor for Blake's philosophical (or theological) mission to expunge error and reveal truth. In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell itself, this endeavour takes the form of a critique of the theology of Emmanuel Swedenborg. The strength of Blake's objections to this is also expressed in his annotated copy of the Swedish mystic's The Wisdom of Angels Concerning the Divine Providence in which, in the opening page displayed, Blake has written 'Lies & Priestcraft.'

Blake's own idiosyncratic Christianity is expressed in numerous works in the exhibition, including his early experiment in relief etching All Religions are One, c.1788, and his late masterpiece engravings The Illustrations to the Book of Job, 1826. There are also rarely-seen religious subjects from the Ancients--most notably Samuel Palmer's Rest on the Flight into Egypt, c.1824-8, and George Richmond's The Creation of Light, 1826. The vast majority of the works included are from collections in Britain. Most are rarely exhibited owing to the fragile nature of Blake's (and the Ancients') experimental techniques. So the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see these works (although in places it is regrettable that more far-flung loans were apparently not feasible--for instance, the selection of illustrations to Dante does not draw from the great collections in Melbourne and Cambridge, Massachusetts - and some of the finest examples of Blake's Large Colour Prints remain on display in the Tate's Blake room).

The narrative of the exhibition is clearly set out, and the display elegantly designed (with text panels in copper to echo Blake's printing plates). At the centre of the exhibition is a reconstruction of Blake's printing studio in Lambeth, which gives the visitor an insight into the environment in which Blake worked (on selected days, visitors can also see Michael Phillips at work printing reproductions of Blake's works). The selection of objects succeeds in setting Blake's works in the context of his contemporary art world, including both parallels and counter-examples to his works, thus demonstrating that he was not the introspective genius that he is sometime presumed to have been.

The beautifully produced catalogue, written by Phillips, expands admirably upon the interpretation in the exhibition itself, with additional essays by Martin Butlin (author of the catalogue raisonne of Blake's paintings and drawings) and Colin Harrison (Senior Curator of European Art at the Ashmolean). There is also a varied programme of events alongside the exhibition which offer a broader range of perspectives on Blake, and, in keeping with Blake's own belief that his works were often best understood by children, education and family resources are available via the exhibition website.

The final exhibit is a free sketch by Blake of the Laocoon (c.1825-27); the accompanying text describes it as epitomising 'the struggle of the artist against the repressive forces that attempt to suppress his spiritual and imaginative freedom.' As the Ancients recognised, Blake's struggles--both technical and ideological--make him, and this exhibition, still worth listening to.

Naomi Billingsley is a PhD candidate at the University of Manchester