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Join us for an illuminating lecture by author Philip Hoare, on the occasion of our major exhibition, William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy. No one can agree about him. William Blake was England's greatest Romantic artist. Or was he Irish, as W.B. Yeats insisted? Some thought he was a madman living in Bedlam. It took a long time for his genius to come through. The pre-Raphaelites, the surrealists, the modernists, the hippies, the punks, the new agers all laid claim to him. The fact is Blake is countercultural everything.
In this talk, Philip Hoare will draw on his book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love (4th Estate) to discern the meaning of Blake’s monstrously beautiful imagining. How the natural and supernatural world combined in his art in protest against slavery tyranny and the abuse of animals, how he invented the fanzine, how he took issue with a patriarchal God, but walked the seashore with Jesus Christ, Mohammed, and John Milton. How his fantastical Tyger is in fact the fearsome spirit of revolution, how he was haunted by sea monsters, how his sensual pictures threatened to pervert Gerard Manley Hopkins and how Joyce's Ulysses would have been nothing without Blake or his wife and co-artist, Catherine.
This is a portrait of the artist as a 269 year-old man, a Dr Who travelling in time and space, landing in the National Gallery of Ireland in 2026.
Tickets for the talk available at the link above.
Philip Hoare is the author of ten works of sort of non-fiction. His book, Leviathan, or The Whale, won the 2009 BBC Samuel Johnson Prize. He swims every day in the sea.
NOTE: Philip has kindly agreed to do a book signing in the Gallery Shop immediately after his talk, where copies of his book, William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love, will be available to purchase.
William Blake: The Age of Romantic Fantasy is at the National Gallery of Ireland from 16 April - 19 July 2026. Friends of the Gallery and under 18s go free.
Organised in collaboration with Tate.
This exhibition is supported by The William Blake Giving Circle.
The Gallery would like to thank the Department of Culture, Communications and Sport for their ongoing support.
Image: William Blake, The Ghost of a Flea, c.1819–20. Tate, Bequeathed by W. Graham Robertson 1949. Photo: Tate.
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Event Venue
National Gallery of Ireland, Merrion Square West,Dublin, Ireland
Tickets
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