William Blake is famous as a poet, painter and print-maker. He also made and published books of his own writings, as well as illustrating other writers’ work. What can be easily overlooked is how the visionary, prophetic impulse behind Blake’s words and images also shaped how he produced his designs. This display looks at these working methods in depth for the first time, drawing on the findings of new technical research at Tate.

Most of Blake’s contemporaries took for granted the idea that modern artists should emulate the techniques used by celebrated Old Master painters. But Blake saw most ‘Modern’ art, particularly oil paintings, as corrupt. By ‘Modern’ he meant art of his own time as well as that by Old Masters such as Titian, Rubens, and Rembrandt.

Blake travelled further back along ‘the simple and plain road to [a] style of art ... unentangled in the intricate windings of modern practice.’ As a result he invented and used his own painting and printing techniques. In this he genuinely thought he was following medieval artists. He invented two methods which he called Tempera and Fresco, after medieval techniques. This was Blake’s solitary way of restoring for Britain the idea that art was ‘the Glory of a Nation’.

This display has been devised by curator Robin Hamlyn and Joyce H Townsend.

British Art Displays 1500-2004