Relief etching printed in orange ink, with watercolor and pen and black ink on moderately thick, smooth, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 13 1/2 x 10 3/8 inches (34.3 x 26.4 cm)
Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1992.8.1(95)
Classification:
Prints
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
flames | men | sinews | text | nudes | roots | religious and mythological subject | literary theme
Currently On View:
Not on view
Exhibition History:
The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)William Blake (Tate Britain, 2000-11-02 - 2001-02-04)The Human Form Divine - William Blake from the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Center for British Art, 1997-04-02 - 1997-07-06)
Publications:
Andrew Burkett, Romantic Mediations : Media Theory and British Romanticism, State University of New York Press, Albany, p. 103, fig. 3.5, PR447 .B77 2016 (LC)Denise Gigante, Life, organic form and Romanticism , Yale University Press, New Haven, 2009, between p. 114 and p. 115, pp. 151-52, Pl. III. 16, PR575.L54 G54 2009 (YCBA)Holly Shaffer, Grafted arts : art making and taking in the struggle for western India : 1760-1910, The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, New Haven, CT, p. 208, fig. 130, N72.P6 S53 2022+ (YCBA)
Gallery Label:
William Blake insisted that Jerusalem, his final prophetic book, was divinely inspired. Of the five copies he printed in his lifetime, only the edition now at the Yale Center for British Art was colored. Blake described his narrative as a “Sublime Allegory,” which he divided into four chapters that correspond to spiritual stages of human history, addressed “To the Public,” “To the Jews,” “To the Deists,” and “To the Christians.” The text has been linked to biblical precedents, particularly the Book of Revelation, as it begins after a universal fall and ends with redemption. However, Jerusalem is not a straightforward expression of Christian devotion. The illuminated text offers a critique of organized religion at a moment of spiritual uncertainty across Europe. Blake called for radical religious reform by liberating faith from the corruption and dogmatism of institutional churches and reimagining it in modern terms. Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)