William Blake's Universe

A beautifully illustrated book that explores William Blake's relationship with Europe against a backdrop of political turmoil.

Against a backdrop of revolution and war in Europe, enslavement and exploitation in European colonies, and repression and reaction at home in Britain, William Blake (1757-1827) produced an astonishing body of work that combined criticism of the contemporary world with a vision for universal redemption.

Blake has always been seen as a distinctively English figure. He never travelled abroad, he constructed a national myth based on the figure of Albion, who is both an everyman and the nation, and he is the author of the poem 'Jerusalem', which has become an alternative national anthem. But in reality his art at all periods of his career is profoundly involved with Europe, as a source of his art and as a vision of the past, present and future of humanity.

This book which accompanies an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum and is being produced in conjunction with the Hamburger Kunsthalle, argues for Blake as a truly European figure. Blake was not alone in looking to art to build the world anew in the face of shattering political crises and comparisons are therefore drawn between Blake and his younger contemporary in Germany, Philipp Otto Runge (1777-1810), who likewise sought to visualise the spiritual renewal of mankind in novel artistic form.

Beautifully illustrated with works by Blake, Runge and some of their contemporaries, William Blake's Universe is the first to showcase the full Blake holdings of the Fitzwilliam Museum and the treasures of the Geoffrey Keynes Bequest. It explores the vital ingredients of Blake's art - from his classical training at the Royal Academy and his immersion in the art of antiquity and the Renaissance to his fascination with early modern mystical imagery - and builds on the legacy of the Kunsthalle's landmark series Kunst um 1800 in 1975 by exploring Blake's relationship to Italy, France and Germany.