(Above) William Blake's painting The Good and Evil Angels, circa 1805.
The most important of these was Thomas Butts, for which Blake painted around 135 bible scenes, several of which are included in the exhibition.
Jo Digger, Collections Curator at The New Art Gallery Warsall said: “This timely exhibition enables us to connect the works by William Blake from our own collection with a wider context of Blake’s ideas and explorations.”
Extraordinarily, for Blake angels were very much rooted in the physical world and existed apart from any religious group; he had a manifest distrust of all institutions as he felt they opposed creativity and suppressed natural instinct and joy.
Famously, he claimed to have visions and even conversations with angels, adamant that imagination was the uniting principle between man and seraph.
He once said of them: “It is not because angels are holier than men or devils that makes them angels, but because they do not expect holiness from one another, but from God only.”
Blake’s perception - that there is no contradiction between these visions and reality - formed the basis of his ideas on theology, philosophy and the role of artistic creativity and imagination.
