In 1809, at the age of 52, the printmaker, visionary poet and artist William Blake held his first and only solo exhibition. He took over the first floor living rooms of his brother’s hosiery shop on Golden Square, Soho, to show 16 paintings in watercolour and tempera.

The conditions were cramped and the lighting poor. Times were hard for Blake. He had showed in London before, including at the Royal Academy, but Blake and his wife were pitiably poor, he was neglected as an artist, and struggling to make his living illustrating the work of other poets. The 1809 exhibition was Blake’s last attempt to make his name as a painter.

It was an abject failure. Few came, no pictures sold, and it only got one review.

Blake clearly had expected sales, for in his catalogue written for the show — actually a polemic railing against the state of the British art world, and a commentary on Blake’s aspirations as an artist, his symbolism, and art generally — he put the conditions of sale straight after the title page.

This was unusual, but whatever his ideals, he had a living to make.

He also wrote that the exhibition’s closing date was September 29, for customers to know when they could take their pictures home.

It was still open a year later. Presumably no one had the heart to take the pictures down.

Worse, that lone review was utterly scathing. The critic, Robert Hunt, of the radical newspaper The Examiner called Blake “an unfortunate lunatic” and scoffed that “the poor man fancies himself a great master, and has painted a few wretched pictures, some of which are unintelligible allegory, others an attempt at sober character ... and the whole ‘blotted and blurred,’ and very badly drawn.”

He then laid into the catalogue, mocking it as “a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness, and egregious vanity, the wild effusions of a distempered brain”.

It was all too much for Blake. It proved a turning-point, leading him to withdraw yet more fully from the public realm and become more embittered.

Now, exactly 200 years on, Tate Britain has recreated the 1809 exhibition, as far as possible. It has reunited ten of the surviving works and placed them for comparison alongside pictures exhibited the same year (two lesser works by Turner, for example; Thomas Stothard; William Mulready).

But why restage a failed exhibition?

Tate curator Martin Myrone says they’ve done it because “it represents Blake as the artist he wanted to be”.

“The illuminated books, the Songs of Innocence and of Experience from the 1790s, have tended to be the focus of scholarship with their extraordinary combination of words and text. But this exhibition shows us the image Blake wanted to project. It was a desperate bid to launch himself as a painter of large-scale public schemes in what he called ‘The Grand Style of Art’.”

The show starts with a blank: actually a blank space measuring nine by 12 feet on a painted wall. This stroke of curatorial confidence represents the now lost The Ancient Britons. A huge work by Blake’s standards, it apparently depicted life-sized figures. Yet even its absence illustrates Blake’s hopes for his art.

Of the works that are there to see, five are tempera on canvas, what Blake called his ‘fresco painting’ in imitation of the great Renaissance painters. Unfortunately these have not stood the test of time, most having darkened so much that they’re impossible to see properly.

It pays though to look into the darkness of the two national heroes: never will you have seen a Pitt like it, or a Nelson: the late Prime Minister is a Christ-like figure overriding storms and winds and beasties, and the naval hero a saintly figure in a loin cloth directing a Biblical monster of the deep.

In tune with his big ambitions, he spoke of them as 100 feet high, as murals in the Houses of Parliament.

The watercolours are a different story. These are as bright and clear as you’d expect, and include The Soldiers Casting Lots for Christ's Garments (1800), Jacob’s Ladder (c.1799-1806) and the striking symmetrical Christ in the Sepulchre, Guarded by Angels (1805).

One of the very best things about this exhibition is the display of the appropriate pages from Blake’s catalogue beside each picture.

This means you can follow his thinking. Of his Christ in the Sepulchre drawing Blake wrote that “the artist wishes they were in fresco, on an enlarged scale, to ornament the altars of churches, and to make England like Italy, respected by respectable men of other countries on account of art.”

A lovely idea: Blake’s vision of altarpieces and frescoes everywhere.

But, says Myrone, had this happened, had the exhibition made him the painter of large public projects as he wished, we probably today would have a completely different view of Blake.

I liked the idea of this exhibition and found it interesting. But it’s perhaps not one to make a special trip for on its own. It is small and the non-Blake half needs less attention. But what a lesson it is in how reputations can change.

Once neglected and slated, Blake is now seen as the epitome of artistic creativity, a genius. It cost two shillings and sixpence to get into that 1809 exhibition.

For that you got Blake’s catalogue and an odd experience looking at strange artworks in a too-dark room.

Tate’s recreation is brighter, fresher — and free as part of their BP British Art Displays. And as a result, far more viewers will see William Blake’s 1809 exhibition than ever did in Soho. It is on until October 4.

And you can still get the catalogue, reprinted by Tate, except it now costs £12.99.