William Blake at the Huntington

William Blake has become one of the English-speaking world's renowned poets and artists. His writings are taught frequently in schools and studied intensively by scholars. During the last fifteen years, exhibitions of his art in London, Toronto, New Haven, and Tokyo have attracted large and ardent crowds. His brief lyric 'The Tyger' may be the most anthologised poem in the language. But such fame was not always Blake's lot. In his own life, his works were hardly known beyond a small band of patrons and connoisseurs. Throughout the last century and the early decades of our own, Blake's writings were kept alive by a handful of enthusiasts. An equally small number of collectors treasured Blake's prints and drawings. Among this latter group was the great American bibliophile Henry Huntington. He began to acquire for the new institution some of Blake's rarest and finest works, both visual and verbal. By the time of his death in 1927, Huntington had created one of the world's great Blake collections, particularly notable for the way it represents the full range of Blake's endeavours in many media.