http://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk
‘She’s a kind of unsung
hero behind his work,’
says Amy Concannon,
the exhibition’s assistant
curator, who believes
that Catherine’s signifi-
cance in Blake’s biography has been underplayed (it is only in
the past decade that she has even received her own entry in the
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography). To rectify this over-
sight, the Tate will ex hibit a series of illustrations, produced to
accompany John Bunyan’s religious allegory The Pilgrim’s
Progress from This World, that Catherine is believed to have
coloured. Deaccessioned by their previous owner, the Frick
Collection in New York, because of her involvement, they
are in fact a wonderfully imaginative set of images that chart
the protagonist’s journey from Earth to heaven in vivid detail.
Blake himself spoke openly about the extent of Catherine’s
contribution to his work, particularly the Divine Comedy series
on which he worked in the last three years of his life. ‘My wife
alone is answerable for their having existed in any finished state- I am too much attached to Dante to think much of anything
el se ,’ he w rote i n a n 1827 le t ter to one of h i s you n g p a t r on s , Joh n
Linnell. He cannot have been an easy man to live with –
Catherine herself commented wryly that she had ‘very little of
Mr Blake’s company; he is always in Paradise’ – but he remained
a devoted husband throughout their 17 years of marriage,
declaring in his final days that ‘you have ever been an angel to
me’ (angels, of course, being a
recurring motif in his paintings
and poetry). The writer William
Hayley, who commissioned
Blake to engrave the illustrations for
one of his books, called Catherine ‘so
truly the half of her good man that
they seem animated by one soul, and
that a soul of indefatigable industry
and benevolence’. She was, in short,
‘perhaps the only female on Earth who
could have suited him exactly’.
Catherine worked tirelessly to preserve
her husband’s legacy after he died in 1827,
continuing to print and colour the books of
poetry for which he is best remembered
today, before leaving the remainder of his
works to the artist Frederick Tatham (for
whom she had been nominally working as a
housekeeper) on her own death in 1831.
Tatham was one of the Shoreham Ancients,
a group of young men who became dedi-
cated followers of Blake in his latter years,
exalting his bold imagination and spiritual
powers. It is no coincidence that Catherine’s
role has been conveniently elided from the
heroic myth the Ancients created of their idol, who, in their eyes, had
pursued his vocation in brave isolation, defying the folly of a society
that had failed to recognise his brilliance. That Blake was ahead of
his time is no longer in doubt, but he was also a man who lived in the
real world, who suffered and loved like the rest of us, and who – as
the Tate exhibition shows – was never truly alone.
‘ William Blake’ is at Tate Br itain from 11 September to 2 Febr uar y 2020.
TALK ING POINTS
Revered for conjuring up witty dreamscapes that he
captures on camera, the British fashion photographer
Tim Walker has been visiting the V&A since the start of
his career in the 1990s; now, he has collaborated with
the museum to produce a theatrical new body of work.
‘Tim has been on an odyssey of discovery of the V&A’s
past and present. He has explored beneath us in South
Kensington, in the 19th-century passageways, and
above us up on the roof,’ says the curator Susanna
Brow n. Dur ing t his pi lg r ima ge, cer ta in objec ts, f rom a
16th-century Hindu painting to imagery of the Bayeux
Tapestry, became starting points for Walker’s images.
Edith Dawson’s 1885 watercolour
Conservatory at Renishaw inspired a
magnificent shot of Tilda Swinton at
Renishaw Hall, reimagined as the late
British poet Edith Sitwell (whose family
still own the Derbyshire manor). Swinton
is depicted dressed in jewellery and gold
Mary-Jane shoes resembling Sitwell’s own,
which Walker also unearthed from the
V&A’s archive.
The new photographs will hang
alongside a showcase of Walker’s greatest hits in
gallery spaces masterminded by his long-time
collaborator, the set designer Shona Heath. ‘It is a
privilege to see the energy everyone puts in to make
the magic happen,’ says Brown. ‘They are like an
orchestra, and Tim is the most
brilliant type of conductor.’
CHARLOTTE BROOK
‘Tim Walker: Wonderful Things’ is at
the V&A (www.vam.ac.uk) from 21
September to 8 March 2020. ‘Tim Walker:
Shoot for the Moon’ (£85, Thames &
Hudson) is published on 5 September.A captivating display of Tim Walker’s
images inspired by the V&A archives
PHOTOGRAPHY
Right: William
Blake’s sketch
of his wife Catherine
(1805). Below: his
‘The Tyger’ (1794)‘Karen Elson and Atlas the
Lion’ (2013) by Tim Walker.
Bottom right: his 2018
portrait of Tilda SwintonI
N
T
H
E
F
R
AME
Right: ‘Vanity
Fair’; below: ‘John
Bunyan Dreams a
Dream’, both by
William Blake for
‘Pilgrim’s Progress’
(1824–1827)