A defining force in Romanticism, the English painter and poet William Blake’s unconventional works continue to inspire today. The National Gallery of Ireland has just opened a major exhibition of his most iconic works, alongside paintings and drawings by his contemporaries, so we sent Kate Green to take a deep dive into his idiosyncratic universe.
In a world dominated by algorithms, deadlines, and endless scrolling, imagination can feel like a luxury rather than a necessity. Yet, more than two centuries ago, William Blake argued the opposite: that imagination was not an escape from reality, but a way of transforming it. For Blake, the act of seeing differently was itself a radical gesture, one that challenged the structures of authority, perception, and control that shaped the world around him.
From April to July 2026, the National Gallery of Ireland brings Blake’s extraordinary vision to life in ‘William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy’, an exhibition that leads visitors from celestial visions to shadowed underworlds, tracing the vast imaginative terrain of his work. At a time when modern life can feel relentlessly rational and fast-paced, Blake’s insistence on wonder and creativity feels strikingly relevant.
Spanning a period of profound political and social upheaval, Blake’s work reflects a world in flux, one where industrialisation, revolution, and philosophical change were reshaping how people understood reality itself. In response, he turned inward, constructing vast symbolic landscapes filled with angels, prophetic figures, and mythic narratives that defied easy interpretation. The result is an artistic language that feels at once deeply rooted in its historical moment and startlingly contemporary in its insistence that imagination is a form of vision in its own right.
At the National Gallery of Ireland, ‘William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy’ unfolds as both a visual journey and an imaginative descent through Blake’s universe. Curated by Tate in partnership with the National Gallery of Ireland, the exhibition brings together over one hundred works that situate Blake within a wider artistic conversation, not only as a singular visionary, but as part of a network of influence, exchange, and shared experimentation across the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Rather than presenting a straightforward chronological experience, the exhibition is shaped as an experiential arc, beginning in luminous, almost transcendent imagery and gradually descending into darker, more chaotic visions. As was outlined at the exhibition’s opening, the show begins in heaven and ends in hell, a structure that feels less like a curatorial conceit and more like a reflection of Blake’s own preoccupation with extremes of human experience. This movement gives the exhibition a narrative rhythm, guiding visitors through shifting emotional and symbolic registers rather than fixed historical categories.
Alongside Blake’s own works, the exhibition includes paintings and drawings by artists who helped shape his visual language, as well as those who later carried elements of his imagination forward. Figures such as James Barry, Henry Fuseli, John Hamilton Mortimer, and J. M. W. Turner appear throughout, their works offering points of connection and contrast that deepen the sense of artistic dialogue running through the show. Seen together, these works reveal a period defined not by stylistic certainty, but by experimentation: a moment when artists were actively pushing the boundaries of what painting and printmaking could express.
Born in London in 1757, William Blake emerged as one of the most singular figures in British art and literature, working across poetry, painting, and printmaking in ways that defied easy categorisation. Trained as an engraver, he developed a highly individual method of production, often combining text and image within the same composition to create illuminated works that blurred the boundaries between literary and visual art. This hybrid practice allowed him to construct densely symbolic worlds in which language and image operated as part of the same imaginative system.
While many of his contemporaries aligned themselves with Enlightenment ideals of reason, order, and empirical observation, Blake moved in the opposite direction. His work is driven by vision rather than observation, populated by angels, prophetic figures, and mythological beings that arise not from the external world but from an intensely internal landscape of imagination and belief. During his lifetime, this approach left him largely outside the artistic mainstream, with his work often misunderstood or dismissed as obscure, eccentric, or excessively mystical.
Yet Blake never positioned himself as an outsider in retreat. Instead, he saw imagination as a form of truth-telling: a way of accessing deeper realities that conventional representation could not capture. That conviction runs through both his visual art and poetry, giving his work a consistency of vision that feels remarkably cohesive across different media. Today, this same refusal to separate imagination from meaning is what gives Blake’s work its enduring power, and what makes his presence at the centre of his exhibition feel so necessary rather than retrospective.
Moving through ‘William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy’ feels less like progressing through a conventional exhibition and more like entering a shifting imaginative landscape shaped by extremes. As noted at the opening, the exhibition begins in heaven and ends in hell: a curatorial structure that mirrors the emotional and symbolic intensity running through the work of William Blake himself. Rather than organising the material strictly by chronology or medium, the exhibition builds a sense of descent and transformation, guiding the viewer through increasingly complex registers of meaning.
The opening sections are filled with luminous, almost transcendent imagery: figures suspended in radiant space, scenes charged with spiritual energy, and compositions that suggest revelation rather than observation. These works foreground Blake’s fascination with the divine and mythic, where human and celestial forms often appear intertwined. There is a sense of expansion here, of vision stretching outward beyond the constraints of the physical world.
As the exhibition progresses however, the atmosphere begins to shift. Light gives way to shadow, order gives way to turbulence, and the imagery becomes more fragmented, more urgent. Revolutionary violence, moral struggle, and psychological intensity begin to surface, reflecting both the historical upheavals of Blake’s time and his own internal symbolic universe. Within this movement, the inclusion of artists such as Henry Fuseli and J. M. W. Turner deepens the sense of shared experimentation, their dramatic compositions echoing Blake’s own interest in states of emotional and perceptual extremity.
What emerges is not a linear narrative but a progression of moods, a carefully orchestrated descent that feels at once art historical and psychological. The exhibition does not simply present Blake’s visions; it places the viewer inside their shifting intensity, allowing the boundary between observation and immersion to slowly dissolve.
More than two centuries after his death, the work of William Blake continues to feel unexpectedly urgent. Emerging at a time when industrialisation was reshaping daily life in Britain, Blake pushed back against the growing dominance of rationalism, measurement, and systems of control. For him, imagination was not a retreat from reality but a way of confronting it and a means of seeing beyond the limits imposed by social structures and inherited ways of thinking. His art insists that perception itself is never neutral, but something that can be expanded, challenged, and transformed.
That idea resonates strongly in the context of the present. In an age defined by digital acceleration, constant information flow, and the increasing automation of attention, Blake’s belief in imagination as a form of resistance feels newly relevant. His work suggests that to imagine differently is not simply to escape, but to refuse the narrowing of possibility. It’s to insist that alternative ways of seeing still exist, even within systems that appear fixed or totalising.
Within ‘William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy’, this connection becomes particularly vivid. By placing Blake alongside artists who influenced him and those who followed in his wake, the exhibition reveals imagination not as an isolated act of genius, but as part of an ongoing conversation across time. It positions creative vision as something shared and continually reinterpreted.
Seen in this light, Blake’s world is not a closed historical chapter but an open invitation. His angels, prophets, and mythic figures are not simply artefacts of Romanticism; they are reminders that ways of seeing are always provisional, and that the act of imagination remains one of the most powerful tools for understanding and reshaping the world.
Experiencing ‘William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy’ in person at the National Gallery of Ireland brings a different kind of clarity to Blake’s work, one that only emerges through proximity and pace. Moving through the exhibition’s sections, the carefully structured progression from luminous, celestial imagery to darker, more fragmented visions becomes increasingly tangible, almost physical in its effect. Rather than simply illustrating themes of heaven and hell, the exhibition creates a rhythm of ascent and descent that shapes how the works are encountered in real time.
What becomes clear in this environment is how active Blake’s imagination remains when encountered in physical form. These are not static images to be quickly consumed, but works that seem to ask for sustained looking. In this sense, the exhibition does not simply present Blake’s world; it temporarily reconstructs its logic, inviting viewers to move through shifting states of perception rather than fixed interpretations.
In revisiting the work of William Blake through ‘William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy’, the National Gallery of Ireland offers more than a glimpse into the imagination of a singular artist: it invites viewers to reconsider their own ways of seeing. Blake’s visions of heaven, hell, and everything in between reminds us that imagination is not an escape from reality, but a means of reshaping it.
In a world that prioritises speed and certainty, his work stands as a quiet but powerful reminder of wonder, curiosity, and the courage to think differently.
Words: Kate Green
Feature Image: William Blake, The Body of Abel Found by Adam and Eve, c.1826 Tate, Bequeathed by W. Graham Robertson 1949. Photo: Tate.
William Blake – The Age Of Romantic Fantasy takes place at the National Gallery of Ireland until 19th July 2026
Rooms 6-10 | Tickets from €0-€16
Tickets: nationalgallery.ie
