Tempera on canvas
Tate Britain
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<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/william-blake-39" aria-label="More by William Blake" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">William Blake</a>
Spiritual Form Nelson Guiding Leviathan
Purchased 1914
actions: postures and motions
adults
animals: fantastic
animals: reptiles
arm / arms raised
Bible: Old Testament
birth to death
black
contorted
death
ethnicity
female
fire
halo
individuals: male
Leviathan
male
man
militarism
mysticism
named individuals
natural phenomena
Nelson, Horatio, Viscount
nudes
people
portraits
religion and belief
sea monster
snake
social comment
society
society
spirit
standing
symbols and personifications
universal religious imagery
war - serpent
<p>After the Napoleonic Wars, Admiral Nelson became a celebrated national figure. Blake hoped to recreate this painting as a public monument ‘suitable to the grandeur of the nation’. Yet despite such patriotic claims, he portrays Nelson astride Leviathan, a Biblical serpent associated with chaos and the apocalypse. Figures representing the ‘Nations of the Earth’ are caught in Leviathan’s coils. The anonymous enslaved Black figure beneath Nelson’s feet acts as a dehumanising symbol of Nelson’s unrivalled imperial power. Blake opposed slavery and empire, but the painting is ambiguous: is Nelson shown as a hero or a villain?</p><p><em>Gallery label, June 2024</em></p>
painting tempera canvas
8 July 2002 – 1 October 2003
2003-10-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
William Blake Body and Soul
Collection based display
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
8 July 2002 – 16 March 2003
2003-03-16
2002-07-08
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2002-07-08
Body and Soul
Collection based display
24 November 2003 – 22 November 2004
2004-11-22
10 November 2003
2003-11-10
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2003-11-24
William Blake the Painter at Work
Collection based display
6 December 2004 – 15 August 2005
2005-08-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2004-12-06
Blake and Jerusalem
Collection based display
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
15 February 2006 – 1 May 2006
2006-05-01
2006-02-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-02-15
Gothic Nightmares: Fuseli, Blake and the Romantic Imagination
Exhibition
30 April 2007 – 21 October 2007
2007-10-21
23 April 2007
2007-04-23
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2007-04-30
1807 - Blake, Slavery, and the Radical Mind
Collection based display
20 April 2009 – 4 October 2009
2009-10-04
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2009-04-20
William Blake: The 1809 Exhibition
Collection based display
1 November 2011 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
1 November 2011 – 19 February 2012
2012-02-19
2011-11-01
State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts (Moscow, Russia)
3 July 2012 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
2012-07-03
Fundació “la Caixa” (Madrid, Spain)
2011-11-01
Blake Exhibition
Loan-out
13 May 2013 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
13 May 2013 – 6 April 2015
2015-04-06
2013-05-13
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2013-05-13
William Blake
Collection based display
25 November 2015 – 10 April 2016
2016-04-10
25 November 2015 – 10 April 2016
2016-04-10
2015-11-25
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-11-25
Artist and Empire
Exhibition
22 May 2017 – 28 July 2019
2019-07-28
22 May 2017 – 28 July 2019
2019-07-28
2017-05-22
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2017-05-22
William Blake in Focus
Collection based display
11 September 2019 – 2 February 2020
2020-02-02
11 September 2019 – 2 February 2020
2020-02-02
2019-09-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2019-09-11
William Blake: The Artist
Exhibition
24 June 2024
24 June 2024
2024-06-24
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2024-06-24
Blake
Collection based display
The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan
support: 762 × 625 mm
frame: 912 × 785 × 75 mm
Purchased 1914
<div class="text">
<p>
<i>The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan </i>c.1805–9 is a tempera painting by William Blake. Admiral Nelson (1758–1805), leader of the British Navy during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, appears as a youthful figure with outstretched arms at the centre; a Black man with chained wrists lies fallen at his feet and numerous bodies writhe around Nelson, ensnared by the spiked coils of the Leviathan, a serpentine monster described in the Book of Job in the Bible’s Old Testament. Nelson stands astride the beast, holding its reins in his left hand. The painting is of modest proportions, despite Blake’s ambitions to paint historical subjects on a much larger scale. The colours of the blue of the sky behind Nelson, the fiery spikes along the Leviathan’s body, and the flesh-tones of the figures would originally have been much brighter but have now significantly dulled due to ageing and damage. </p>
<p>This painting was shown as the first artwork in Blake’s 1809 ‘one man show’ exhibition in Broad Street, London, displayed alongside a companion piece entitled <i>The Spiritual form of Pitt Guiding Behemoth</i> c.1805 (Tate <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-spiritual-form-of-pitt-guiding-behemoth-n01110" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01110</span></a>). In the <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i>, written to accompany the 1809 exhibition,<i> </i>Blake explains that he has depicted Nelson commanding the biblical serpent Leviathan as it crushes ‘the Nations of the Earth’ in its ‘wreathings’. The imperialistic overtones of this painting are undeniable. Nelson had led the British Royal Navy to victory over the French at the Battle of the Nile (1798) and over the French and Spanish at Trafalgar (1805), where he was fatally wounded. These victories substantially removed the threat of rival maritime powers and secured Britain’s naval supremacy, which would prove foundational to the consolidation and expansion of the British Empire during the following century. The title, drawn from the listing in the <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i>,<i> </i>indicates that Blake intended the depiction of Nelson not to be true to life but rather a ‘spiritual form’; hence his portrayal as a nude, youthful figure wearing a halo. The painting bears some relation to a cult of hero-worship for Nelson, as expressed in the extravagant state funeral held in his honour in 1806, as well as in artistic homages by artists like John Flaxman and Benjamin West. </p>
<p>It has been suggested (for example, by Brown<i> </i>2020, p.100) that the inclusion of the Black man at Nelson’s feet was intended as a type for an enslaved African person, alluding to the role of the Royal Navy in enforcing the suppression of the transatlantic slave trade following its abolition in British Parliament through the Slave Trade Act of 1807. However, since this Act post-dated Nelson’s lifetime, during which the slave trade was fully operational (and Nelson was by no means an abolitionist), arguably Blake instead intends to highlight the inclusion of enslaved people within Nelson’s apparently omnipotent sway. Anti-slavery and anti-empire sentiments have often been identified in Blake’s wider body of work, for instance by the literary critic David Erdman (see David Erdman, <i>Blake: Prophet Against Empire</i>, New York 1992). Here, however, it is difficult to see how the Black figure could have been intended as part of a wider critique of the Empire. Blake’s representation adheres to commonplace tropes from the period, whereby Black people were stereotypically shown in positions of subjugation, dehumanisation, and marginality. The man is depicted without any distinguishing characteristics or specific identity, his presence presumably intended chiefly to signify to a white British audience the institution of slavery as a whole. The figure’s slumped, dehumanised form recalls the images of violence towards enslaved people which Blake had made for the soldier and author John Gabriel Stedman’s <i>Narrative of a Five Years Expedition against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam </i>(1796). Stedman’s <i>Narrative</i> condemned the violent treatment of enslaved people, but certainly did not advance an argument for the abolition of slavery itself.</p>
<p>Throughout the <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i> entries for <i>Nelson </i>and <i>Pitt</i>, Blake employs uncharacteristically patriotic rhetoric. One reason for this is Blake’s ambition to contend with his contemporaries as a history painter in the manner, for instance, of Benjamin West, who drew subjects from contemporary or recent historical events. Hence Blake announced his wish to ‘hav[e] a national commission to execute these two Pictures on a scale that is suitable to the grandeur of the nation’ on a scale of ‘one hundred feet in height’. Some scholars account for the apparently patriotic tone of <i>Nelson</i> with reference to its apocalyptic imagery. Art historian Paul Barlow, for instance, connects Blake’s visions of apocalypse to those of popular millenarian movements from his day, arguing that in <i>Nelson</i> and <i>Pitt</i> Blake may have been advancing a vision of the British Empire as a driver of necessary destruction, clearing the way for subsequent regeneration. This would be consistent with millenarian interpretations of violent contemporaneous events as manifestations of an unfolding Apocalypse, as foretold in the Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible. </p>
<p>The work is painted in tempera, a medium much favoured by Blake which uses a water-based glue or gum binder to ‘temper’ the pigments, making them dry quickly and retain both the clear linearity of watercolour and the layered density of oil painting. Technical analysis has also shown that Blake applied gold leaf between paint layers, which would have added to the brilliance of the painting in its original state. In its present state, the ground layer has darkened due to the conservation treatment of ‘glue’ lining; which is only suitable for oil paintings. Layers of glue in some of Blake’s paints have also darkened. The orange tonality comes from remnants of a discoloured varnish. In the <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i>, Blake explained that he executed the works in ‘fresco’, for which he used his own experimental formula involving tempera, gum, glue, and chalks, rather than the classical fresco medium used by Italian Renaissance masters, which involved painting with water-based paint directly onto wet plaster. Blake also declared his hopes (ultimately in vain) to establish his ‘fresco’ technique as a serious competitor of oil painting, which was viewed as the pre-eminent medium for serious painting in the period. The picture was restored by W.G. Littlejohn and W. Graham Robertson c.1906 but was subsequently badly damaged when the Thames flooded the lower ground floor of the Tate Gallery in 1928. Only about half of Blake's original paint remains. Now, the work is cracked and damaged because Blake used a thin canvas and chalk-based ground. The contraction of the glue-rich layers and the movement of the thin canvas has created stress, causing cracking. </p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>Paul Barlow, ‘The Aryan Blake: Hinduism, Art and Revelation in Blake’s <i>Pitt</i> and <i>Nelson</i> Paintings’, <i>Visual Culture in Britain</i>, vol.12, no.3, November 2011, pp.277–92.<br/>Alison Smith, David Blayney Brown and Carol Jacobi (eds), <i>Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 2015, pp.100–1.<br/>Amy Concannon and Martin Myrone, <i>William Blake</i>, exhibition catalogue, Tate Gallery, London 2019, no.123.</p>
<p>Caroline Anjali Ritchie<br/>February 2022</p>
</div>

Summary
2022-03-28T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<div class="text">
<p>William Blake portrays the naval hero Admiral Nelson astride Leviathan, a Biblical sea serpent associated with chaos and apocalypse. Figures representing the defeated ‘Nations of the Earth’ writhe around Nelson, trapped by Leviathan’s coils. The anonymous Black figure beneath Nelson’s feet appears to be an enslaved African person, dehumanisingly depicted as a symbol of Nelson’s unrivalled power. Blake opposed slavery and empire, but he may also have regarded violence as a necessary evil, clearing the way for change. The painting is ambiguous: is Nelson a hero or an anti-hero?</p>
</div>

Online caption
2023-11-29T00:00:00
online-caption
ONLINE_CAPTION
<p><a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-spiritual-form-of-nelson-guiding-leviathan-n03006" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03006</span></a> <b>The Spiritual Form of Nelson Guiding Leviathan</b>
<i>c.</i>1805–9
<br/></p>
<p>N 03006 / B 649
<br/>Tempera on canvas 762×625 (30×24 5/8) Purchased (National Loan Exhibitions Fund) 1914
<br/>PROVENANCE Thomas Butts; Thomas Butts jun., sold Foster's 29 June 1853 (70) £ 1.2.0 bt Robinson; T.W. Jackson by 1876, by whose executors sold to the Tate Gallery
<br/>EXHIBITED Blake's exhibition 1809 (1); Associated Painters in Water-Colours 1812 (280); BFAC 1876 (126); Carfax 1906 (24); Tate Gallery (65) and Manchester (44) 1913–14; Tate Gallery 1947 (44); Tate Gallery 1978 (205, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Blake <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i> 1809, pp.1–7 (reprinted in Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, pp.564–6); Rossetti 1863, p.211 no.79, and 1880, p.221 no.94; M.A., ‘William Blake's “Nelson”’, <i>Burlington Magazine</i>, XXVI, 1914–15, pp.139–40, repr. p.138; Binyon 1922, pp.20–1, pl.52; Damon 1924, p.95; Wright 1929, 1, pp.110–11, pl.34; Edgar Wind, ‘The Revolution in History Painting’, <i>Warburg Journal</i>, VI, 1943, p.202, pl.59a; Schorer 1946, pp.174–5, 478 n., pl.3; Bronowski 1947, p.80; Frye 1947, pp.139–40; Blunt :959, pp.37, 78, 97–103, pl. 46d; Damon 1965, pp.39, 239–40; Beer 1968, pp.189–90; Raine 1968, 1, p.359; Erdman 1969, pp.449–53, 463 n.4, pl.8; Grant in Rosenfeld 1969, pp.479–80 n.41; Paley 1970, pp.171–99; Macmillan in <i>Blake Newsletter</i>, V, 1971–2, pp.204–5; John E. Grant, review of Paley 1970 in <i>English Language Notes</i>, IX, 1972, pp.212–16; Lindberg <i>Job</i> 1973, pp.19 no. xvii, 300–2 no.15F, 304–11, pl.54, a reconstruction repr. pl.56a; Wittreich 1975, pp.68–9; Tayler in <i>Blake Newsletter</i>, X, 1976–7, pp.80–1; Bindman 1977, pp.155, 160–1, 163–4, pl.121; Erdman 1977, pp.521–2; Paley 1978, pp.53, 66, 178–9, pl.47; Paley in Essick and Pearce 1978, p.176; Butlin 1981, pp.472–3 no.649, pl.876; Warner 1984, pp.196 n.1, 197 n.16; Baine 1986, p.132, pl.59; Boime 1987, pp.345–9, pl.4.40. <i>Also repr</i>: Studio, CVII, 1957, p.97 in colour
<br/></p>
<p>The picture was restored by W.G. Littlejohn and W. Graham Robertson <i>c.</i>1906 but was subsequently badly damaged when the Thames flooded the lower ground floor of the Tate Gallery in 1928. Only about half of Blake's original paint remains.
<br/>
<br/>In Blake's <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i>, the title continues ‘... in whose wreathings are infolded the Nations of the Earth’. Lord Nelson died in 1805 and Blake may have been in part inspired (if only to contradiction rather than emulation) by Flaxman's monument in St Paul's, begun in 1808 though not completed until 1811 (repr. Margaret Whinney, <i><a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/s/sculpture" title="Glossary definition for 'Sculpture'"><span>Sculpture</span></a> in Britain 1530 to 1830</i>, 1964, pls. 147–8), and by Benjamin West's ‘Apotheosis of Nelson’, exhibited at his house in 1806 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; repr. <i>Blake Newsletter</i>, V, 1971–2, p.205, and Bindman 1977, pl.122). Blake had indeed, in his advertisement for his exhibition, called the ‘Nelson’ and the companion ‘Spiritual From of Pitt’, ‘grand Apotheoses of NELSON and PITT’ (Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, p.560). For a further discussion of the significance of this work see under <a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/blake-the-spiritual-form-of-pitt-guiding-behemoth-n01110" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N01110</span></a>.
<br/>
<br/>The sale of works from Samuel Palmer's collection at Christie's on 20 March 1882 included as lot 110 a ‘Spiritual Form of Nelson guiding Leviathan’ but there is no other record of this version and the title was almost certainly a mistake for the lost ‘Spiritual Form of Napoleon’ (Butlin 1981, no.652) which, together with ‘The Spiritual Form of Pitt’, did belong to Palmer. This identification is strengthened by the fact that the entry in the sale catalogue gives a reference to p.254 no.266 of Rossetti's 1880 list which in fact applies to ‘The Spiritual Form of Napoleon’.
<br/>
<br/>There is a preliminary sketch for ‘The Spiritual Form of Nelson’ in the British Museum (Butlin no.650, pl.875). The disposition of the figures and the serpent is much as in the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> though the exact poses, where they are clearly visible, were slightly modified. In the <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/d/drawing" title="Glossary definition for 'Drawing'"><span>drawing</span></a> itself Nelson's head was originally bent further over to the right but was altered by Blake to a position close to that in the painting.</p>
<p>
<br/><b>Published in:</b>
<br/>Martin Butlin, <i>William Blake 1757-1827</i>, Tate Gallery Collections, V, London 1990
<br/>
<br/></p>

Catalogue entry
2004-10-05T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults animals: fantastic animals: reptiles arm / arms raised Bible: Old Testament birth to death black contorted death ethnicity female fire halo individuals: male Leviathan male man militarism mysticism named individuals natural phenomena Nelson, Horatio, Viscount nudes people portraits religion and belief sea monster snake social comment society society spirit standing symbols and personifications universal religious imagery war - serpent