THIS COLOUR PRINTED etching with hand-drawn additions in ink and watercolour was made three years before Goya’s The Sleep of Reason and a year after Turner’s watercolour of Tintern Abbey. It depicts the figure of Albion, a personification of Britain. Blake often portrayed Albion as an elderly man, exhausted or in fetters, destroyed by war, social injustice, false morality and capitalism. This image of Albion was printed in 1796 and reflects how Blake was inspired by the political changes created by the American War of Independence (1776-81) and the French Revolution (1789).

Here Albion as shown as a joyful and vigorous young man freeing himself from the shackles of materialism. In Blake’s world view, Albion could still be saved by the triumph of individual liberty, imagination and spirituality over social, political and religious oppression.



From England, c. ad 1796
Ht 26.5 cm