The Hungarian public will have the opportunity to view the art of William Blake for the first time at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest. The exhibition, titled The Marriage of Heaven and Hell – William Blake and His Contemporaries and opening on 25 September, presents a selection from the collection of Tate, UK, showcasing the most important works by this outstanding figure of British visual art and literature, while also offering an insight into a particularly dynamic period of British art. William Blake (1757–1827), neglected in his lifetime, inspired generations with his visionary pieces: prints, watercolours, poems and prophecies. Two hundred years on, his art is admired worldwide as a unique manifestation of the free spirit. The exhibition, comprising more than one hundred works, will display Blake’s works alongside those of the artists who most inspired him, as well as his contemporaries, including Henry Fuseli, Benjamin West, John Hamilton Mortimer and J. M. W. Turner. William Blake is one of the best-known artists of British Romanticism, with his exceptionally original art and poetry continuing to be a source of inspiration today. In those decades, many British artists were preoccupied with emotions and irrationality, often turning to highly subjective themes and seeking spiritual renewal. Like Blake, they were responding to a turbulent world. Significant contributing events in the emergence of the Romantic style in Britain were the humiliating defeat in the American War of Independence, the seismic impact of the French Revolution of the 1790s, the hardships of Britain’s long wars with France, political and social unrest at home, and the rapid pace of technological and industrial development. The art of Blake and his contemporaries evokes the spirit of that age. In many respects, William Blake embodies our modern conception of the Romantic artist, the solitary genius who received little recognition in his own time. Blake lived in London and worked as an engraver. Often labouring late into the night, he invented new printmaking and painting techniques to give perfect form to his imaginative world. He regarded himself as a prophet who, through art and poetry, was able to build bridges between the spiritual and the tangible worlds. In his works he frequently drew on his radical political views, his profound religious faith and his personal struggles. Yet his long-nurtured ambition to be recognised as a figure of national importance was never fulfilled. His unique vision shocked and astonished many of his contemporaries, and some even went so far as to call him mad. Organised in collaboration with Tate, UK, this large-scale exhibition is arranged in thematic sections, each structured around key works by Blake that reveals a different aspect of his multifaceted imagination. The first section, Poet Painter, evokes Blake’s illustrated poems. He began writing verse as a child, encouraged by his mother to accompany them with drawings. The young William, blessed with a vivid imagination, received no formal schooling and was first taught at home. As a young apprentice, he copied Gothic tombs at Westminster Abbey, and during his training he went on to master the art of engraving. He refined his experimental printing techniques throughout his life, often revisiting early poems, producing new impressions from existing plates or adding texts to earlier engravings. The changes and upheavals of the period prompted many artists to find answers to the extremes of the contemporary world. Some sought to depict the sublime, aiming to evoke emotions infused with fear and awe. British artists repeatedly explored the power and perils of nature, often distorting light, scale and space to unsettle the viewer. In Blake’s works featured in the exhibition chapter titled Horror and Peril, this is expressed in writhing and contorted bodies, and depictions of suffering and torment. Darker themes of captivity, madness, horror, danger and disease were also widespread among his contemporaries, as was the dramatic representation of nature. The section Fantastical Creatures is populated by the supernatural beings created by Blake and his contemporaries. Although they dismissed fairies and ghosts as fable or superstition, these creatures nevertheless flourished in the visual arts of their time. Some artists, such as Blake and Henry Fuseli, reimagined the realms of fairies and spirits, often filling their pictures with alluring and charming female figures. The distant past also provided a rich source of inspiration for Blake and his fellow artists. Amid the turbulence of the protracted wars with France, images and stories of Britain’s history nurtured national pride and conveyed timely messages. The exhibition chapter Romanticising the Past presents works born of this spirit, while the section titled Gothic explores the relationship between Gothic art and Blake’s work. Blake first encountered Gothic art as a young apprentice engraver, while copying tomb monuments at Westminster Abbey. The Gothic, which embodied both spiritual and living art as well as timeless ideals, played a central role in Blake’s artistic approach. At the heart of the section titled The Body of Newton is one of Blake’s most emblematic works, the rarely loaned Newton, inspired by classical and Renaissance art. In the works displayed in the thematic section on Satan and the Underworld, reflecting the anxieties of their time, artists rendered visions of the imminent apocalypse. Blake, who spent his final years depicting the torments of Dante’s Inferno, was not alone in treating satanic and hellish subjects, as the depiction of destruction and biblical revelations became fashionable in the period. The exhibition also highlights Blake’s influence on Hungarian artists: visitors can become familiar with his impact on Hungarian literature (Antal Szerb, Lőrinc Szabó) as well as works by Borsos Lőrinc and Béla Kondor, the latter regarding Blake as his master. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell provides a comprehensive picture of William Blake’s extraordinary imagination. Blake was an artist, poet and visionary, defying categorisation. His artistic universe, rich in symbols, is a complex realm where the visible and invisible, the sacred and the profane coexist. This exhibition is the fourth collaboration between the Museum of Fine Arts and Tate, following the exhibitions Turner and Italy (2009), Bacon, Freud and the School of London (2018), and Desired Beauty: Pre-Raphaelite Masterpieces from the Tate Collection (2021). Curators: Alice Insley, Tate; and Csilla Regős, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest 1/8 ×