Artist of unfulfilled grand ambitions to light up London night with Ancient of Days

This article is more than 9 months old

This article is more than 9 months old

William Blake always dreamed of making vast works for churches and palaces but to his bitter disappointment he never achieved it.

More than two centuries after his death Tate has announced it is going some way to making up for that by projecting his final work on to the giant dome of St Paul’s Cathedral.

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For four evenings from Thursday, his illustration, Ancient of Days, will dramatically light up the skyline of London.

Martin Myrone, the senior curator of pre-1800 art at Tate Britain, said Blake always had grand ambitions as an artist, proposing huge frescoes that were never realised. “Everything that survives of his work is very small. Many of his works are just a few inches high,” he said.

“What he said he wanted to do was produce altarpieces and large-scale pictorial schemes in churches and palaces. This is a moment to realise a version at least of that lifelong dream of Blake’s to be an artist with real public impact who was being seen on a large scale.”

Blake is regarded as a visionary, radical artist who was ahead of his time and unappreciated for most of his life.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest William Blake’s Ancient of Days projected on St Paul’s Cathedral. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP via Getty Images

“He had a frustrating career and had moments when he was really down and depressed,” said Myrone. “He felt alienated from the art establishment and he never really won the audience that he wished to have.

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“He did see himself as an artist who should be read and seen by not just a few connoisseurs but by lots and lots of people.”

The project, which marks his birthday, stems from Tate Britain’s current exhibition of Blake, the biggest for a generation, which runs until February and includes digital enlargements of works he imagined as vast frescoes on public buildings.

The St Paul’s dome takes it to another level and is an appropriate venue because it is home to a memorial to Blake. His body was buried in an unmarked grave in Bunhill Fields burial ground near Old Street in London.

Myrone said Blake was a contrary, argumentative person. “I think he would hopefully recognise that we are acknowledging him not as an easy figure but as a major presence in British cultural life.”