Blake in Sussex

 Now at Petworth until 25 March is a sort of capsule exhibition on the work of William Blake with special focus on his brief time on the Sussex coast in a subsequently famous cottage at Felpham, where, as in this image, he continued to see visions of angels in the sky - a different view to their manifestation over the rooftops of Lambeth.



TThe cottage is quite a contrast to the exhibition site Petworth House, one of the grander English mansions abutting a tame village amid extensive parkland, very appealing on a wintry day.

Which concentrates  the exhibition's intense presentation in two darkened rooms, filled with disparate works and objects, each conveying an aspect of Blake's career, aspirations, visual imagination, artistic endeavours, skills.


There's a lot to pack in, and for the visitor to take in, but all selected with intelligent care. Including the series of tiny vignettes engraved to illustrate an edition of Virgil's pastoral poems and convincingly linked to the Sussex landscapes that Blake found all round.  

They link so clearly with work by Samuel Palmer based on the countryside at Shoreham, not so very far from Petworth and of comparable appearance.

Then there are also the original court records from Blake's arrest and arraignment in 1804 on charges of sedition for allegedly shouting 'Damn the king, damn all his subject, damns his soldiers, they are all slaves; when Bonaparte comes it will be cut-throat for cut-throat; I will help him' when getting into a scuffle with two off-duty soldiers he found in his garden at Felpham.   Devils in place of angels, really.   Fortunately, the magistrates who heard the case included Petworth's owner the Earl of Egremont, and the jury acquitted Blake, perhaps perceiving that he was not entirely, or not always, sane.  Though he no doubt meant what he said - which was certainly seditious.