Color-printed relief etching in brown ink, with watercolor and pen and black ink on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 14 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches (36.8 x 26.7 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1992.8.2(1)
Classification:
Prints
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
men | women | children | night | stones | chains | nudes | shackles | cannon | religious and mythological subject | clouds
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
William Blake: Visionary (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2023-10-17 - 2024-01-14)William Blake - The Artist (Tate Britain, 2019-09-11 - 2020-02-20)The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)The Human Form Divine - William Blake from the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Center for British Art, 1997-04-02 - 1997-07-06)William Blake - His Art & Times (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982-12-03 - 1983-02-06)William Blake - His Art & Times (Yale Center for British Art, 1982-09-15 - 1982-11-14)
Publications:
William Blake, Libros profe´ticos, vol. 1, Atalanta, Vilau¨r, Spain, 2013, p. 196, PR4142 .S35 2013William Blake : Visionary, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, p. 116, pl. 72, NJ18.B57 A12 2020 OVERSIZE (YCBA)William Blake, Tate Publishing, London, p. 69, cat. 44, NJ18.B57 M97 2019 (LC) Oversize (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
At the height of the political and social upheaval of the French Revolution, William Blake printed his first full-scale prophetic book, America. A Prophecy. Rather than recounting the horrors that reverberated from France throughout Europe, his illustrated poem reflects on the revolutionary spirit in the American colonies, which had ended in American independence a decade earlier. Blake and many other radicals in the 1790s viewed the American Revolution as the beginning of a global process of liberating nations from superstition and despotism. Although America. A Prophecy is rooted in recent events, the text and accompanying plates do not offer a historical chronology but rather transform history into a mythical narrative of universal relevance. Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)