A blockbuster show at Tate Britain gives William Blake his due

By K.S.C.

IN THE GRAND new survey at Tate Britain of the prints, engravings, paintings and poetry of William Blake (1757-1827) is an enigmatic depiction of Isaac Newton (pictured). It is enigmatic because the nude, muscular Newton appears to be sitting on an encrusted rock on the ocean floor. Pink, anemone-like fronds waft gently by his feet and a confounding inky darkness extends behind him; but he is oblivious to all this. He has eyes only for the paper scroll at his feet, on which he is marking out a series of precise lines with a compass. Although this image has since been used as the model for a bronze sculpture of the 17th-century scientist and mathematician, now on display outside the British Library, Blake was not much of a fan. He disparaged “Newton’s particles of light” and his lack of spirituality, and was probably more than a little jealous of the acclaim Newton enjoyed. In a letter to a friend, Blake wrote: “Pray God us keep / From Single vision & Newton’s sleep!”

The show is chronological and delights in such detail. Blake grew up in Soho, in London, just a few streets away from where Newton had used a prism to split a beam of sunlight almost a century before. Blake’s family were comfortable, rather than wealthy, as the owners of a hosiery shop and haberdashery. They encouraged his interest in art, and, when he was 14, he was apprenticed to James Basire, a successful engraver. Later he studied at the Royal Academy, where he was expected to minutely copy classical paintings and statues and adopt a formal, mannered style which he loathed.