David Burliuk

David and Marussia Burliuk

Thence by descent to the present owners

Burliuk pays homage to the visionary English poet-artist William Blake in the foreground of this painting, with a quote from the latter’s 1802 letter-poem ‘Letter to Thomas Butts’, appropriately illustrated with a little man and a thistle.

The poem is about modes of perception, which move beyond the cool rationality of physical sight and into the spiritual or imaginative realm, and it well suits the fanciful subject and dreamlike perspectives of this painting.

Both poet-artists, both radicals and pioneers, Burliuk and Blake shared, moreover, a holistic sense of design: there is no hierarchy between image and text in Blake’s illuminated poetry books, nor in the Hylaea almanacs Burliuk designed and produced – they are conceived as a whole, as coherent, composite works. The painted poem can be read, therefore, as a nod of gratitude to Burliuk’s artistic predecessor.