Colour print, ink and watercolour on paper
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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>
Newton
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
actions: postures and motions
adults
art and craft
bending forward
clothing and personal items
compasses
drapery
drawing
educational and scientific
individuals: male
landscape
leisure and pastimes
lichen
male
man
mathematician
moss
named individuals
Newton, Isaac
nudes
objects
people
plants and flowers
portraits
rocky
scientific and measuring
scientist
sitting
work and occupations
<p>Here, Blake satirises the 17th-century mathematician Isaac Newton. Portrayed as a muscular youth, Newton seems to be underwater, sitting on a rock covered with colourful coral and lichen. He crouches over a diagram, measuring it with a compass. Blake believed that Newton’s scientific approach to the world was too reductive. Here he implies Newton is so fixated on his calculations that he is blind to the world around him. This is one of only 12 large colour prints Blake made. He seems to have used an experimental hybrid of printing, drawing, and painting.</p><p><em>Gallery label, April 2024</em></p>
paper unique colour print ink watercolour
15 October 2001 – 7 July 2002
2002-07-07
15 October 2001 – 7 July 2002
2002-07-07
2001-10-15
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2001-10-15
William Blake and His Followers
Collection based display
11 January 2003 – 30 March 2003
2003-03-30
11 January 2003 – 30 March 2003
2003-03-30
2003-01-11
Ruskin Library (Lancaster, UK)
http://www.ruskin.org.uk/Foundation/
2003-01-11
A Pen of Iron: Ruskin and Printmaking
Loan-out
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
1 April 2006 – 16 April 2007
2007-04-16
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2006-04-01
Blake in the 1940s
Collection based display
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
11 November 2010 – 3 April 2011
2011-04-03
2010-11-11
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-11-11
Blake and Physiognomy
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)
2011-11-01
Blake Exhibition
Loan-out
20 April 2012 – 27 August 2012
2012-08-27
20 April 2012 – 2 September 2012
2012-09-02
2012-04-20
Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/liverpool/
2012-04-20
Marianne Faithfull and John Dunbar
Collection based display
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
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
17 April 2023 – 12 May 2024
2024-05-12
17 April 2023 – 12 May 2024
2024-05-12
2023-04-17
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-04-17
Blake
Collection based display
Newton
support: 460 × 600 mm
Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<div><p><span>Here, Blake satirises the 17th-century mathematician Isaac Newton. Portrayed as a muscular youth, Newton seems to be underwater, sitting on a rock covered with colourful coral and lichen. He crouches over a diagram, measuring it with a compass. Blake believed that Newton’s scientific approach to the world was too reductive. Here he implies Newton is so fixated on his calculations that he is blind to the world around him. This is one of only 12 large colour prints Blake made. He seems to have used an experimental hybrid of printing, drawing, and painting.</span><span> </span></p></div>
Display caption
2024-04-22T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_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-newton-n05058" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N05058</span></a> <b>Newton</b> 1795/<i>c.</i> 1805
<br/></p>
<p>N 05058 / B 306
<br/>Colour print finished in ink and watercolour 460×600 (18 1/2×23 1/2) on paper approx. 545×760 (21 1/2×30)
<br/>Signed ‘1795 WB inv [in monogram]’ b.r. and inscribed ‘Newton’ below design Watermarked ‘JWHATMAN/1804’
<br/>Presented by W. Graham Robertson 1939
<br/>PROVENANCE Thomas Butts; Thomas Butts jun.; Capt. F.J. Butts; his widow, sold 2 June 1905 to W. Graham Robertson
<br/>EXHIBITED BFAC 1876 (172); Carfax 1906 (29); Tate Gallery 1913 (63); on loan to Tate Gallery 1923–7; BFAC 1927 (54, pl.40); <i>Wartime Acquisitions</i> National Gallery 1942 (11, repr.); Paris, Antwerp (pl.25), Zurich (repr.) and Tate Gallery (repr.) 1947 (36); <i>Romantic Movement</i> Arts Council 1959 (612); Paris 1972 (14, repr.): Hamburg and Frankfurt 1975 (61, repr.); Tate Gallery 1978 (92, repr.); New Haven and Toronto 1982–3 (56b, colour pl.VI)
<br/>LITERATURE Gilchrist 1863, 1, pp.375–6; Rossetti 1863, p.203 no.22, and 1880, p.210 no.24; Robertson in Gilchrist 1907, pp.407–8, repr. facing p.396; Blunt in <i>Warburg Journal</i>, 11, 1938, p.61, pl.11a (reprinted in Essick 1973, pp.84–5, pl.29); Saxl and Wittkower 1948, at pl.67, repr. no.6; Preston 1952, pp.53–6 no.10, pl.10; Digby 1957, pp.44–5, pl.45; Martin K. Nurmi, ‘Blake's “Ancient of Days” and Motte's Frontispiece to Newton's <i>Principia</i>’, Pinto 1957, pp.207–16; Blunt 1959, pp.35, 60, pl.30c; Paul Miner, ‘The Polyp as a Symbol in the Poetry of William Blake’, <i>Studies in Literature and Language</i>, University of Texas, 11, 1960, pp.198–205; Damon 1965, pp.91, 298–9; Beer 1968, pp.191, 257, pl.48; Keynes <i>Letters</i> 1968, p.118; Raine 1968, 11, pp.64–5, 136, pl.159; Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, p.573; Kostelanctz in Rosenfeld 1969, p.126; Robert N. Essick, ‘Blake's Newton’, <i>Blake Studies</i>, 111, 1971, pp.149–62, pl.1; Gage in <i>Warburg Journal</i>, XXXIV, 1971, pp.372–7, pl.66b; Helmstadter in <i>Blake Studies</i>, V, 1972–3, p.108; Donald Ault, <i>Visionary Physics: Blake's Response to Newton</i>, 1974, pp.2–4, repr. as frontispiece; Mellor 1974, pp.97, 155–7, pl.41; Bindman 1977, pp.98, 100, pl.82; Klonsky 1977, p.62, repr. in colour; Bindman <i>Graphic Works</i> 1978, no.336, repr.; Mitchell 1978, pp.49, 51–2, 63, 73; Paley 1978, p.37, pl.30; Essick <i>Printmaker</i> 1980, pp.132, 148, pl.148; La Belle in <i>Blake</i>, XIV, 1980–1, pp.77–81, pl.17; Butlin 1981, pp.166–7 no.306, colour pl.394; Butlin in <i>Blake</i>, XV, 1981–2, pp.101–3, repr.; Bindman 1982, p.55, colour pl.VI; Morton Paley, review of 1982–3 exhibition, <i>Burlington Magazine</i>, CXXIV, 1982, pp.789–90; Bindman in <i>Blake</i>, XVI, 1982–3, pp.224–5; Essick in <i>Blake</i>, XVI, 1982–3, pp.35–6; Ruth E. Fine, review of 1982–3 exhibition, <i>Blake</i>, XVI, 1982–3, p.228; Behrendt 1983, pp.169–70; W.J.T. Mitchell, ‘Metamorphoses of the Vortex: Hogarth, Turner, and Blake’, Richard Wendorf, ed., <i>Articulate Images: The Sister Arts from Hogarth to Tennyson</i> 983; Warner 1984, p.102; Hoagwood 1985, p.69; Baine 1986, p.127, pl.57; Boime 1987, pp.352–5, pl.4.49; <i>Also repr:</i>Figgis 1925, p.75; <i>Mizue</i>, no.812, 1973, ⅔, p.13, colour pl.2
<br/></p>
<p>Listed in Blake's account with Thomas Butts of 3 March 1806, apparently as having been delivered on 7 September 1805, as is the probable companion ‘Nebuchadnezzar’. The only other known copy of this <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/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>print</span></a>, formerly in the collection of Mrs William T. Tonner, now belongs to the Lutheran Church in America, Glen Foerd at Torresdale, Philadelphia (Butlin 1981, no.307, pl.408). Before the discovery of the 1804 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watermark" title="Glossary definition for 'Watermark'"><span>watermark</span></a> I had assumed that the Tate Gallery copy of the design was the first to be pulled. However, unlike ‘Nebuchadnezzar’, where the character of all three known copies is very similar, the Glen Foerd copy of ‘Newton’ is very different, being closer to the Tate Gallery copies of ‘Pity’ and ‘Hecate’, nos.30 and 31. It therefore seems more likely that the Glen Foerd copy was executed in or about 1795, as indeed was suggested by David Bindman in the catalogue of the exhibition held at New Haven and Toronto 1982–3, when both versions were exhibited (the Glen Foerd version as no.56a, repr.). As Bindman points out, the form of signature on the Glen Foerd copy, ‘<a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/f/fresco" title="Glossary definition for 'Fresco'"><span>Fresco</span></a> WBlake inv’, corresponds to the version of ‘God Judging Adam’ in the Metropolitan Museum (see no.26) which seems to be the first pull of that <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> and again is likely to have been executed in or around 1795; this is so despite the fact that this form of signature is not known to have been used by Blake before 1810, in Butlin nos.667 and 669, and would therefore have been added at a later date, when the print was finished in pen and <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a> for a prospective client. (Morton Paley, in his review of the New Haven, Toronto exhibition of 1982–3, reports a suggestion that the Tate Gallery's ‘Newton’ was not colour printed at all but executed entirely in <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/i/ink" title="Glossary definition for 'Ink'"><span>ink</span></a> and watercolour, but further examination during the exhibition showed this to be unfounded.)
<br/>
<br/>A <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/g/graphite" title="Glossary definition for 'Graphite'"><span>pencil</span></a> sketch in reverse is in the Keynes Collection, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (Butlin no.308, pl.409).
<br/>
<br/>The figure of Newton is related to Michelangelo's Abias, one of the Ancestors of Christ in the lunettes of the Sistine Chapel; Blake had made a copy of this <i>c.</i>1785 from an <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/engraving" title="Glossary definition for 'Engraving'"><span>engraving</span></a> by Adamo Ghisi (Butlin no.168 <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/r/recto-verso" title="Glossary definition for 'Recto / Verso'"><span>verso</span></a>, pl.207; the engraving is repr. Blunt 1959, pl.30a). The design was also developed from plate 10 of the second issue of <i>There is no Natural Religion</i> of <i>c.</i>1788, which shows an old man kneeling on the ground and <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> with a pair of compasses to illustrate the text ‘Application. He who sees the Infinite in all things sees God. He who sees the Ratio only sees himself only’. This illustration also led to the famous ‘Ancient of Days’, frontispiece to <i>Europe</i> of 1794 (repr. Erdman <i>Illuminated Blake</i> 1974, p.156), in which the Creator in the guise of Urizen imposes a rational order on the universe. ‘The Ancient of Days’, although completely different in composition to ‘Newton’, is also related through having apparently been derived, as a deliberate visual counterblast, from A. Motte's frontispiece to the 1729 edition of Newton's <i>Principia</i>, in which Newton is elevated to the heavens. Another source, as Bindman suggests, may have been Blake's own commercial engraving after Stothard for the frontispiece to John Bonnycastle's <i>An Introduction to Mensuration, and Practical Geometry</i>, published in 1782 (Bindman 1978, no.2, repr.). The compasses, which are shown both in ‘Newton’ and ‘The Ancient of Days’, appear in <i>Urizen</i>, 1794, as one of the instruments created by Urizen to define the material world (Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, p.234); in <i>The Song of Los</i>, 1795, Urizen entrusts the ‘Philosophy of the Five Senses’ to Newton and Locke (Keynes 1957, p.246). If, as it appears at least in the Tate Gallery copy of the print, Newton is shown under water this is another symbol of materialism (Boime has drawn attention to Newton's comparison of himself to a boy playing on a sea shore, ‘diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me’). But Newton was also seen by Blake as contributing towards Man's redemption, if only by giving a tangible form to error; in <i>Europe</i> he blows ‘The Trump of the Last Doom’, one of the events leading up to the French Revolution (Keynes 1957, p.243).</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
2004-10-06T00:00:00
catalogue-entry
CATALOGUE_ENTRY
actions: postures and motions adults art and craft bending forward clothing and personal items compasses drapery drawing educational and scientific individuals: male landscape leisure and pastimes lichen male man mathematician moss named individuals Newton, Isaac nudes objects people plants and flowers portraits rocky scientific and measuring scientist sitting work and occupations