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Creator:
Print made by William Blake, 1757–1827
Title:
"Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night..." (Plate 6)
Part Of:

Collective Title: America. A Prophecy, Copy M

Date:
1793
Materials & Techniques:
Relief etching printed in blue ink, with watercolor and pen and black ink on moderately thick, slightly textured, cream wove paper
Dimensions:
Sheet: 14 1/2 x 10 1/2 inches (36.8 x 26.7 cm), Plate: 9 1/8 x 6 1/2 inches (23.2 x 16.5 cm)
Inscription(s)/Marks/Lettering:

Inscribed in blue ink upper right: "4"

Lettered upper center: "Appear to the Americans upon the cloudy night."; center: "Solemn heave the Atlantic waves between the gloomy nations, Swelling, belching from its deeps red clouds & raging Fires. Albion is sick. America faints! enrag'd the Zenith grew. As human blood shooting its veins all round the orbed heaven Red rose the clouds from the Atlantic in vast wheels of blood And in the red clouds rose a Wonder o'er the Atlantic sea; Intense! naked! a Human fire fierce glowing, as the wedge Of iron heated in the furnace; his terrible limbs were fire With myriads of cloudy terrors banners dark & towers Surrounded; heat but not light went thro' the murky atmosphere"; lower center: "The King of England looking westward trembles at the vision."

Credit Line:
Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
Copyright Status:
Public Domain
Accession Number:
B1992.8.2(6)
Classification:
Prints
Collection:
Prints and Drawings
Subject Terms:
clouds | dragon | men | nudes | religious and mythological subject | spear | stones | text
Access:
Accessible in the Study Room [Request]
Link:
https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/tms:3865
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At the height of the political and social upheaval of the French Revolution, William Blake printed his first full-scale prophetic book, America. A Prophecy. Rather than recounting the horrors that reverberated from France throughout Europe, his illustrated poem reflects on the revolutionary spirit in the American colonies, which had ended in American independence a decade earlier. Blake and many other radicals in the 1790s viewed the American Revolution as the beginning of a global process of liberating nations from superstition and despotism. Although America. A Prophecy is rooted in recent events, the text and accompanying plates do not offer a historical chronology but rather transform history into a mythical narrative of universal relevance.

Gallery label for the Critique of Reason: Romantic Art (Yale Center for British Art, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26)

William Blake: Visionary (The J. Paul Getty Museum, 2023-10-17 - 2024-01-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

William Blake - The Artist (Tate Britain, 2019-09-11 - 2020-02-20) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Critique of Reason : Romantic Art, 1760–1860 (Yale University Art Gallery, 2015-03-06 - 2015-07-26) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

The Human Form Divine - William Blake from the Paul Mellon Collection (Yale Center for British Art, 1997-04-02 - 1997-07-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition] [Exhibition Description]

William Blake - His Art & Times (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1982-12-03 - 1983-02-06) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

William Blake - His Art & Times (Yale Center for British Art, 1982-09-15 - 1982-11-14) [YCBA Objects in the Exhibition]

William Blake, Libros profe´ticos, vol. 1, Atalanta, Vilau¨r, Spain, 2013, p. 205, PR4142 .S35 2013 [ORBIS]

William Blake : Visionary, The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, p. 120, pl. 77, NJ18.B57 A12 2020 OVERSIZE (YCBA) [YCBA]


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