Yale Center for British Art
August 26 through November 30, 2025
For the first time in nearly thirty years, the Yale Center for British Art will present a major exhibition of works by William Blake (1757–1827), exploring the imaginative visual art and poetry that have long mesmerized and inspired viewers. Drawing on the museum’s rich holdings, William Blake: Burning Bright will focus on the innovative, hand-printed publications that seamlessly merge the artist’s poetry, pictures, and prophecies. Opening August 26, the exhibition encourages visitors to immerse themselves in Blake’s fantastical world by looking closely at the intricacies of his artwork and delving into the idiosyncrasies of his visionary writing.
“Blake’s extraordinary inventiveness and unconventional worldview have made him one of the most enduring figures in British art and literature,” said Martina Droth, Paul Mellon Director. “His work is at once tumultuous, forboding, and joyous, and in these complexities it still connects with us now. We are thrilled to show our rich holdings and invite visitors to experience Blake’s jewellike works from our collection firsthand.”
The YCBA’s celebrated holdings of Blake comprise more than nine hundred works, including paintings, drawings, prints, and books—many of which were executed in Blake’s signature invention: illuminated printing, a revolutionary process of relief etching that made it possible to fuse poetry and pictures on a single copper plate. His “infernal method” of printing text and image simultaneously allowed Blake complete control over the artistic vision and the production of his distinctive illuminated books. “We are excited to share insights into Blake’s innovative approach to printmaking and publishing,” said Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings. “The exhibition allows us to make connections between his earliest aspirations to creatively merge text and image, his mastery of the unique etching technique with which he published his own illustrated poetry, and his final virtuosic engraved projects.”
Largely assembled by the museum’s founder, the philanthropist Paul Mellon, the collection encompasses Blake’s most celebrated books, including Songs of Innocence and of Experience (1789–94) and America: A Prophecy (1793), as well as the only hand-colored version of Jerusalem (1804–20). Forming the center of the exhibition, these rare and unique books showcase Blake’s creative aspirations as poet, visionary, printmaker, and watercolorist. “Blake was wholly devoted to the advancement of his art, and the intensity of his convictions strikes a chord in our current moment,” said Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. “Burning Bright gives us the opportunity to learn more about the artist’s idiosyncratic beliefs, whether expressed in his hand-printed publications or embodied in stand-alone works.”
Spanning Blake’s five-decade career from the 1780s until his death in 1827, Burning Bright examines the wide range of media in which he worked, including drawing, printmaking, and painting. Featured works include I Want! I Want! (1793), an early illustration for a children’s book that reveals Blake’s imaginative inclinations, and the intimate Virgin and Child (made between 1818 and 1826), which demonstrates Blake’s unique interpretation of historic tempera painting techniques. The stunning large-scale watercolors Blake made to accompany the poetry of Thomas Gray highlight his radical approach to book illustration, while his monumental three-foot-long engraving Chaucer’s Canterbury Pilgrims (1810–20) and extended series illustrating the biblical book of Job (1826) exemplify his practice of translating classic texts into arresting imagery.
Burning Bright invites visitors to explore how Blake’s creation of individualized printed and hand-colored books was made possible by his ingenious technical innovations. A special reading room in the galleries will allow visitors to peruse exacting facsimiles of several works in the exhibition, providing an experience of individual works in book form.
William Blake: Burning Bright is curated by Elizabeth Wyckoff, Curator of Prints and Drawings, and Timothy Young, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts. The exhibition will be on view at the Yale Center for British Art from August 26 through November 30, 2025, and is accompanied by a new volume exploring the museum’s collection of works by Blake.
About William Blake
Born in London in 1757, a time of major social change and upheaval, Blake aspired to be an artist and a poet from a young age. During his apprenticeship as an engraver, he developed an elegant black-and-white style that he employed in both commissioned and original prints and book illustrations. As inventive as he was versatile, he devised a new, unorthodox technique of printmaking to create colorful illuminated books that merged his poetry and his art. Though Blake’s work won only limited recognition during his lifetime, today his boundless imagination and unconventional messages resonate deeply.
Related Publication
Blake, the second volume in the YCBA’s Collection Series, examines the art and methods of William Blake through the lens of one of the great collections of his work. Written by Elizabeth Wyckoff, with an essay by Sarah T. Weston, the book features exquisite reproductions of his paintings, watercolors, prints, and illustrated books, including the only hand-colored copy of his epic poem Jerusalem.
