Sarah Mayhew Craddock looks forward to the recreation of William Blake’s studio at the Ashmolean

Each year thousands of visitors descend upon artists’ studios across Oxfordshire as part of the annual Oxfordshire Artweeks festival.

Many of these artists are highly-regarded established artists, some of them are nationally renowned, and a handful are internationally renowned… but none of them are in the same realm as the late printmaker, painter and revolutionary poet William Blake (1757–1827).

How exciting, then, that a week from today we’ll be able to look upon a physical recreation of the cramped studio space in which William Blake produced some of the greatest prints in the history of art!

I, for one, can barely contain myself at the prospect. It’s one thing to gaze at a work of art in a gallery, and another thing entirely to find one’s self immersed in an artist’s environment, and in the forthcoming exhibition, William Blake: Apprentice and Master, at the Ashmolean on Beaumont Street, visitors will have the opportunity to do exactly that.

Blake’s former studio was located at 13 Hercules Buildings, in Lambeth, south London. The building itself was demolished in 1918 after being ravaged by fire; however, descriptions of visits to the studio by Blake’s contemporaries and floor plans of the house, made for a Victorian survey of the estate, were recently discovered in a library and introduced to the Ashmolean by guest curator Michael Phillips who hopes to provide an insight into “the working environment of one of Britain’s most original and influential artists”.

Born in Soho in 1757 William Blake was a revolutionary, and this exhibition will chart his extraordinary life and work from his formation as an artist displaying flair and promise at the tender age of 15, to his apprenticeship as an engraver and the unorthodox approach he employed (instead of cutting the lines of his drawings into a plate, Blake would cut everything else away leaving the lines in relief), through to his maturity during the 1790s when he was at the height of his powers as both an artist and poet. In addition, this exhibition brings together more than 90 of Blake’s most celebrated works and shines new light on his remarkable originality and influence. Blake is one of the most popular English artists ever to have lived, yet he is still one of the least understood.

His radical politics were reflected in his extraordinary technical innovations, especially in the field of printmaking and the illuminated book, making this insight even more intriguing.

One of the qualities that makes an artist great is the timelessness of their oeuvre, an ability to remain relevant, and therefore, of interest. Philip Pullman, president of the Blake Society, said: “It’s good to remind people every so often about his colossal imagination and his moral vision, which are just as potent now after 200 years as they were when he brought them into the world.”

As if Blake’s works themselves aren’t ‘live’ enough, Michael Phillips (also a printmaker) will offer fresh insight into Blake’s working methods as he works with replica printing plates that he has created (very few of Blake’s original plates survive) in the reimagined and replicated narrow work space to produce new prints of Blake’s work on the massive wooden roller press that the Ashmolean are also recreating for the exhibition (developed in the Renaissance, Blake was one of the last known artists to use a roller press of this type).

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Colin Harrison, a senior curator at the Ashmolean said: “From the plans and descriptions we know exactly where the equipment and furniture was, and exactly where the workbench and fireplace was.”

This exhibition, it would seem, will bring history to life making the weird and wonderful work of “Albion’s strangest genius”, as Pullman described him, illuminating for the aficionado and the officious infant alike.

Excitingly, the Ashmolean is presenting us with yet another once in a lifetime opportunity to inhale the life and work of a Great Master, his greatest influences, and those he greatly influenced.

CHECK IT OUT
William Blake: Apprentice & Master, runs from December 4 until March 1.  Access to the Ashmolean is free, but tickets to this exhibition cost £9 (£7 concs).

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