William Blake’s Notebook contains a fragmented, lengthy description of a large-scale painting of the Last Judgement. The scene, Blake reports, came to him in vision, fully-formed and populated with characters from both Christian and Classical traditions. It is a ‘history’ painting — a visual narrative in the tradition of the Italian Renaissance painters — of the eternal struggle between imagination and reason. The painting has been lost since Blake’s death in 1827. Nonetheless, he certainly did paint it. Contemporary reports describe a gargantuan watercolour, seven feet tall and five feet wide, and so overworked by Blake that it was ‘nearly black as your Hat’. Moreover, Blake had already completed a number of smaller Last Judgement paintings between 1805 and 1809. The later versions of these may be read as preparatory drawings for the final piece.

In this talk Rebecca Marks will reconstruct what Blake’s Last Judgment might have looked like, and consider how that reconstruction might change how we think about Blake as a cultural figure. She will also propose that Blake was not solely a poet or printmaker, but that he was instead a visionary fine artist with aspirations to the highest and grandest of all genres: history painting. Rethinking Blake in this light reframes his legacy and raises urgent questions about the public, political, and spiritual power of art.

The Last Judgment, c. 1809, 45.3 x 34.6 cm, Pencil, pen and ink with wash over graphite, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

Rebecca Marks recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge on William Blake’s reception of Michelangelo. Her work has been published in The British Art Journal and The Cambridge Quarterly, and monograph based on her thesis is in development. Currently, Rebecca works as an editorial consultant and lecturer, and writes a weekly arts newsletter, The Culture Dump. She can be found on Instagram at @culture_dumper