I thought William Blake was a one-off but this powerful show surprised me

Waldemar Januszczak | Waldemar.tv | 4th May 2026

Blake’s England was buffeted by the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolution and a “mad king”. Given this fraught society, perhaps we should not be surprised that Blake seems “totally bonkers”. Showing him alongside his contemporaries (including JNW Turner) reveals that they too painted monsters and fantastical beasts. The spirit of that age was “joyless people in unhappy landscapes.” Even so, no one was quite as good at “imagining the unimaginable” as Blake. He was unique.