Tate

Via {feuilleton}: According to an article in The Guardian, the Tate Britain (London) will be recreating Blake’s 1809 exhibition (his only individual show, which was held in Golden Square, Soho) for a retrospective beginning next April. The show was a large failure for the artist, who was hurt by the negative publicity it received. The only reviewer of the show had these very kind words to share with his audience, the readers of the Examiner:

Blotted and blurred and very badly drawn…The poor man fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures.

The Tate will be exhibiting up to 10 of the 16 original works, 11 of which survive, and will be reprinting Blake’s Descriptive Catalogue (which the Examiner referred to as “A farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness, and egregious vanity, the wild effusions of a distempered brain”). Check out the full article here.