Tempera and gold on canvas
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Collection
<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>
Bard Gray
Purchased 1920
actions: postures and motions
adults
armour
clothing and personal items
Edward I, King
Eleanor, Queen of Edward I
English
family
fine arts and music
flying
ghost
Gray, Thomas, ‘The Bard’
history
husband
individuals: female
individuals: male
instrument, harp
king
kneeling
landscape
literary
literature (not Shakespeare)
literature and fiction
looking up
magic and occultism
man
military
named individuals
nationality
objects
people
places
poet
portraits
queen
religion and belief
River Conwy
rocky
royalty and social rank
society
UK countries and regions
UK natural features
Wales
Wales, Edward I’s invasion, late 13th c.
Welsh
wife
woman
work and occupations
<p>Blake saw the Bards as his forerunners; they sang of loss, the future, and nationhood.</p><p>This tempera has greatly altered since it was painted. Blake used a very thin, white, preparatory layer of chalk and glue. This was impregnated with more glue during a conservation ‘lining’ treatment more appropriate to an oil painting. This reduced the effect of transparent colours over a white background, and displaced some details painted in shell gold. Blake’s paint medium has also darkened greatly. The opaque red vermilion used for the line of blood, glazed over with madder lake, has survived better than blue areas.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2004</em></p>
painting tempera gold canvas
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
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
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
6 August 2010 – 24 August 2011
2011-08-24
6 August 2010 – 24 August 2011
2011-08-24
2010-08-06
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2010-08-06
Blake and the Gothic Imagination
Collection based display
1 November 2011 – 21 October 2012
2012-10-21
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
20 April 2015 – 7 May 2017
2017-05-07
20 April 2015 – 7 May 2017
2017-05-07
2015-04-20
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2015-04-20
William Blake
Collection based display
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
29 October 2024 – 30 September 2025
2025-09-30
30 October 2024 – 2 February 2025
2025-02-02
2024-10-30
Reggia di Venaria Reale (Turin, Italy)
1 September 2025 – 31 January 2026
2026-01-31
2025-09-01
Museum of Fine Arts (Budapest, Hungary)
1 March 2026 – 31 August 2026
2026-08-31
2026-03-01
External
2024-10-29
William Blake and the Age of Romantic Fantasy: British Art & Imagination
Loan-out
The Bard, from Gray
support: 600 × 441 mm
frame: 775 × 623 × 70 mm
Purchased 1920
<div class="pbodytext">
<span class="text0">Blake saw the Bards as his forerunners; </span><span class="text16">they sang of loss, the future, and nationhood.</span><span class="text0">
<br/> </span>
</div>
<div class="para9">
<span class="text0">
<br/> </span>
</div>
<div class="pbodytext">
<span class="text0">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/t/tempera" title="Glossary definition for 'Tempera'"><span>tempera</span></a> has greatly altered since  </span><span class="text15">it was painted. Blake used a very thin, </span><span class="text14">white, preparatory layer of <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/chalk" title="Glossary definition for 'Chalk'"><span>chalk</span></a> and glue.</span><span class="text0"> </span><span class="text15">This was impregnated with more glue </span><span class="text0">during a conservation ‘lining’ treatment more      appropriate to an oil <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>. This reduced the effect of transparent      colours over a white background, and displaced </span><span class="text14">some      details painted in shell gold. Blake’s</span><span class="text0">
    paint <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/medium" title="Glossary definition for 'Medium'"><span>medium</span></a> has also darkened greatly. </span><span class="text14">The      opaque red vermilion used for the line</span><span class="text0"> of      blood, glazed over with madder lake, has survived better than blue areas. </span>
</div>

Display caption
2004-09-09T00:00:00
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-the-bard-from-gray-n03551" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>N03551</span></a> <b>The Bard, from Gray</b> 1809(?)
<br/></p>
<p>N 03551 / B 655
<br/>Tempera heightened with gold on canvas 600×441 (23 5/8×17 3/8)
<br/>Signed ‘WBlake [with traces of a date]’ b.c. Purchased (Clarke Fund) 1920
<br/>PROVENANCE Samuel Palmer, given between 1873 and 1876 to George Richmond, given 1887 to his son William Blake Richmond, by whom sold to the Tate Gallery
<br/>EXHIBITED Blake's exhibition 1809 (4); <i>Old Masters</i> RA 1873 (196): BFAC 1876 (45); <i>Century of British Art</i>
Grosvenor Gallery 1887–8 (232); Carfax 1904 (35); Carfax 1906 (23); <i>Century of Art</i> Grafton Galleries 1911 (57); Tate Gallery (54) and Manchester (49) 1913–14; Tate Gallery 1947 (45); Tate Gallery 1978 (207, repr.)
<br/>LITERATURE Blake <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i> 1809, pp.35–8 (reprinted in Keynes <i>Writings</i> 1957, pp.576–7); Rossetti 1863, p.202 no.6, and 1880, p.221 no.100; Robertson in Gilchrist 1907, p.416 under no.6; F.I. McCarthy, ‘<i>The Bard</i> of Thomas Gray, Its Composition and its use by Painters’, <i>The National Library of Wales Journal</i>, XIV, 1965, p.111, pl.11; Bentley <i>Blake Records</i> 1969, pp.178–9; Erdman 1969, pp.47–9, 453; Tayler in <i>Blake Newsletter</i>, X, 1976–7, p.81; Butlin 1981, pp.476–7, pl.885
<br/></p>
<p>A label on the back ‘contributed by Saml Palmer’ gives the information ‘Signed “<i>W. Blake</i> 1809”’; only the signature is now legible. Another inscription on the back records the gift by George Richmond of the picture to his son William Blake Richmond on 11 May 1887. The picture was restored at the Tate Gallery in 1977.
<br/>
<br/>There are two sketches for 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/c/composition" title="Glossary definition for 'Composition'"><span>composition</span></a> in the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Butlin 1981, no.656, <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>recto</span></a> and verso, pls.886 and 887). Blake had previously exhibited 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/w/watercolour" title="Glossary definition for 'Watercolour'"><span>watercolour</span></a> of the same subject, now lost, at the Royal <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/a/academy" title="Glossary definition for 'Academy'"><span>Academy</span></a> in 1785 (Butlin no.160) and had also painted a series of 116 watercolour illustrations to Gray's poems, including 14 to ‘The Bard’, <i>c.</i>1797–8 (Butlin nos.335 <i>53–66</i>, the whole series repr. Geoffrey Keynes, <i>William Blake Water-colour Designs for the Poems of Thomas Gray</i>, 1971 and Blake Trust colour facsimile 1972, and Irene Tayler <i>Blake's Illustrations to the Poems of Gray</i> 1971). William Rossetti, in his 1863 list, mistakenly associated 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/t/tempera" title="Glossary definition for 'Tempera'"><span>tempera</span></a> in the Tate Gallery with the watercolour exhibited in 1785; he corrected this in his 1888 list.
<br/>
<br/>Gray's poem recounts how Edward I, who on invading Wales condemned all the bards to death, was confronted by a lone survivor who prophesied the doom of the king and the successors of his blood. The surviving bard stands on a rock above the river Conway, accompanied by the ghosts of his fellows. In his <i>Descriptive Catalogue</i> Blake defends his ‘mode of representing spirits with real bodies’ by citing the example of Greek statues of the gods, ‘all of them representations of spiritual existences’; moreover the Prophets and Apostles ‘described what they saw in Vision as real and existing men whom they saw with their imaginative and immortal organs ... He who does not imagine in stronger and better lineaments, and in stronger and better light than his perishing mortal eye can see does not imagine at all’.
<br/>
<br/>Blake goes on to describe the rest of this much darkened picture: ‘King Edward and his Queen Elenor are prostrated, with their horses, at the foot of a rock on which the Bard stands; prostrated by the terrors of his harp on the margin of the river Conway, whose waves bear up a corse of a slaughtered bard at the foot of the rock. The armies of Edward are seen winding away among the mountains.... Mortimer and Gloucester lie spell bound behind their king’. He adds, somewhat confusingly, ‘The execution of this picture is also in Water Colours, or <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>’.
<br/>
<br/>The picture is a proclamation of the enduring power of art against the force of arms. Blake chose a similar subject for the next picture in his exhibition, the lost ‘Ancient Britons’ (Butlin no.657).</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 armour clothing and personal items Edward I, King Eleanor, Queen of Edward I English family fine arts and music flying ghost Gray, Thomas, ‘The Bard’ history husband individuals: female individuals: male instrument, harp king kneeling landscape literary literature and fiction literature (not Shakespeare) looking up magic and occultism man military named individuals nationality objects people places poet portraits queen religion and belief River Conwy rocky royalty and social rank society UK countries and regions UK natural features Wales Wales, Edward I’s invasion, late 13th c. Welsh wife woman work and occupations