Friday 25 September 2009, 10.00–18.00

The one-man exhibition organised by William Blake in 1809 was a turning-point in the artist's life. Intended to promote his ambitions as a painter of great public schemes, the exhibition was a disaster, attracting only one, hostile review. 

Two hundred years on this symposium explores the 1809 exhibition, drawing
on a special display of reunited surviving works, and considers Blake's artistic imagination and the art world of early nineteenth-century London.

Tate Britain  Clore Auditorium and Clore Foyer
£25 (£15 concessions), booking recommended

    

Provisional Programme

10.00 - 10.30              Tea/Coffee and registration

 

10.30 - 10.45              Introduction to conference: Martin Myrone, Curator, Tate Britain

10.45 - 11.25               Konstantinos Stefanis - Reasoned Exhibitions: Blake 1809 and Reynolds 1813

11.25 - 12.05              Michael Phillips - The Artist at Home: William Blake and James Barry                        

12.05 - 13.20               Lunch (not included)

13.20 - 14.00              David Blayney Brown - Poets and Patrons: Turner's Gallery, 1809

14.00 - 14.40              Philippa Simpson - Lost in the Crowd: Blake and London in 1809                            

14.40 - 15.10              Tea/coffee break

15.10 - 15.50              Susan Matthews - Visual Enthusiasm and Gallery Culture

15.50 - 16.30            David Fallon - Public Meanings in Blake`s Spiritual Forms of Nelson and Pitt

16.30 - 17.00              Plenary discussion chaired by Martin Myrone

17.00 - 17.30              Drinks reception

Abstracts

Konstantinos Stefanis

Reasoned Exhibitions: Blake 1809 and Reynolds 1813

At the age of 52 William Blake attempted what several other artists had done before him: he staged a private exhibition of his works. It was an assemblage of sixteen pictures that covered a significant period of his production as an artist.

The exhibition’s Descriptive Catalogue provides the starting point for this paper to consider Blake’s 1809 exhibition in relation to the nascent practice of retrospectives. Although the retrospective exhibition emerged in the last quarter of the eighteenth century, it wasn’t until the nineteenth that it became established as an exhibition practice that showcased the career of an artist and put his/her oeuvre under scrutiny.

Four years after Blake’s exhibition, in 1813, the British Institution held a commemorative exhibition of Joshua Reynolds which authoritatively transformed the retrospective into an honouring device, where the collected works were examined as an ensemble; revealed similarities and differences, strengths and weaknesses and provided a model of emulation for other artists.

By looking at Blake’s and Reynolds' exhibitions, I wish to highlight the differences and similarities between a reactionary exhibition, initiated by the artist himself and one organised by an institution that served to pay homage to an established and recently deceased artist.

Michael Philllips

The Artist At Home: William Blake and James Barry.

Blake's exhibition of 1809, held in the rooms above his brother's hosiery shop in Broad Street, Soho, was not the only space in which his fellow artists, friends, patrons and customers viewed his work. Like many artists in the eighteenth century, his place of residence was both an atelier and an exhibition space, as well as a home. James Barry offers another example.

By recovering the houses in which they lived, and in particular the painting and printmaking studios in which they worked, we can learn much about how their work was viewed in these locations.

David Blayney Brown

Poets and Patrons: Turner's Gallery, 1809

J.M.W. Turner's gallery at his house in Harley Street was a prime example of the trend for successful artists to exhibit their works independently of the Royal Academy. In 1809 he showed eighteen paintings and watercolours in Turner's Gallery, and only three works at the Academy. The exhibition was everything Blake's exhibition was not - popular, well attended and reviewed, while one picture was surreptitiously copied by John Sell Cotman. If sales were not numerous, buyers included a bevy of aristocratic collectors. This paper investigates the artist's exploitation of his private space to act as his own curator, giving his exhibits coherent themes (notably English landscape, poetry and the River Thames). At the same time, it demonstrates how these were calculated to appeal to patrons and clients and explores the artist's relationship with his public.

Phillipa Simpson

LOST IN THE CROWD: Blake and London in 1809

Blake’s solo exhibition of 1809 took place during a period of seismic change in the capital’s sale and display culture. Until the end of the eighteenth century, British painters had had the London stage almost entirely to themselves, vying for attention upon a relatively limited range of platforms, of which the most prominent was the Royal Academy’s summer exhibition. Following the French Revolution, however, and the turbulence that subsequently spread across Europe, London’s art market was flooded with Old Master works dislodged from their regal and religious homes. Threatened by the arrival of Napoleon’s armies, and their demands for levies and property, churches, palaces and galleries were stripped of their treasures, which were sent across the channel to be sold. In the wake of these changes, a new and potentially unnerving range of events took place across the city, as sale rooms hosted extended displays of famous continental collections, and collectors began to open the doors to their newly augmented galleries. It is against this backdrop that Blake chose to stage his one-man show. Having been impressed by the works at the so-called Truchsessian Gallery - exhibited in London between 1804 and 1806 - Blake must have been acutely aware that London was by now not only a crowded but a fiercely competitive artistic arena. The decision to advertise his practice via a carefully selected and curated group of works was therefore not only exceptionally innovative, but remarkably brave. By adopting promotional strategies witnessed at Old Master shows - most notably through the publication of his “descriptive catalogue” and his attention to visual impact within the gallery space - it is clear that Blake was determined to stake out his own territory in the capital’s new exhibitionary battle-field.

Susan Matthews

Visual Enthusiasm and Gallery Culture

The debate about the role of visual enthusiasm dates from the birth of gallery culture in London in the 1760s when Hogarth’s Enthusiasm Delineated links the pleasures and dangers of popular religion with the pleasures and dangers of viewing public art.  As galleries diversify and become established in the 1780s and 1790s, not only do worries about visual enthusiasm reappear, but the importance of visual enthusiasm to the creation of a national visual culture is restated, in particular by James Barry, an artist particularly respected by William Blake.  Blake’s 1809 exhibition once again incurred attacks which linked his work to popular methodism; attacks which can be understood as a response to Blake’s coded attack on the attempted evangelical control of visual culture in works such as the tantalizingly named - and lost - picture, The Goats. 

David Fallon

Public Meanings in Blake`s Spiritual Forms of Nelson and Pitt

The few surviving contemporary responses to Blake’s 1809 exhibition reflect bewilderment at the paintings and catalogue entries leading to a conviction that their meanings were impenetrable and private in nature.  The paintings of Nelson and Pitt were particularly confusing in this respect, and critical discussion has largely been confined to wrangles over Blake’s stance on patriotism and the British war effort.  I will explain how they are Blake’s most clearly public works, appealing to distinct audiences with their themes, details, genre, and style.  The description of the paintings as ‘grand Apotheoses’ is a crucial clue to understanding the politics behind Blake’s mythical representation of these English ‘heroes’.  Blake was much more closely engaged with the public identities of his subjects than has hitherto been recognised and his catalogue entries on the paintings provide hints which indicate that the ‘Spiritual Forms’ were a coded intervention in the public commemorative culture surrounding these two figures.  Blake intended these paintings to be appeal to his ‘Fit Audience … tho’ few’ and they are highly revealing of his political and artistic beliefs.