Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection

Christ holds his hands open at the level of the apostles’ faces. One young man looks directly upwards, his hands raised together; others bend so low that their faces almost disappear against the ground. Between these different responses, the risen body stands upright and exposed. William Blake makes recognition a physical encounter: a person seen, hands offered, faces lifted or lowered. The darkness surrounding the group makes the pale central figure especially striking, although the appearance of this particular print has changed through varnishing. ^{[1] [2]}

Tate dates Christ Appearing to the Apostles after the Resurrection to about 1795. Its impression, N05875, combines colour printing with ink and watercolour on paper and has a varnished surface. The composition survives in three impressions, each with its own colouring, finish and history. Tate’s sheet is the dark, closely cropped example discussed here. It is distinct from the impression acquired by Blake’s patron Thomas Butts in 1805 and from the brighter example in Washington’s National Gallery of Art. ^{[1] [2]}

Hands offered to frightened people

A long garment drops from Christ’s right shoulder, leaving the other shoulder and much of his chest bare. Its nearly vertical folds continue the upright movement of his body down to the exposed foot near the lower edge. His arms spread gently downwards and outwards. The palms turn towards us and towards the surrounding people, giving the gesture an openness very different from a commanding finger or clenched fist. ^[1]

The group occupies a shallow space. Behind Christ there is no clearly described room to carry our attention into the distance; a warmer area around his head and shoulders gives way to darker surroundings. Below, the apostles’ backs, shoulders and garments form a low bank across the image. Christ’s body interrupts that horizontal gathering, while his hands connect its two sides. The picture concentrates attention on how the people respond to his presence. ^[1]

Tate identifies the immediate biblical episode as Luke 24:36–40. Jesus appears among his followers and offers peace. They are frightened because they think they are seeing a spirit. He answers by showing his hands and feet and inviting them to touch him. The bodily emphasis in Blake’s design follows that reassurance: exposed flesh and accessible hands become the means by which the risen person can be recognised. ^{[2] [14]}

Luke’s complete chapter makes the difficulty of recognition more sustained. The women return from the empty tomb with news which the apostles initially dismiss. On the road to Emmaus, two followers speak with Jesus without knowing who accompanies them. Recognition arrives when he breaks bread, and they hurry back to Jerusalem. Only after their report does Jesus stand among the assembled company. Blake’s scene belongs to a succession of encounters in which seeing and understanding repeatedly fail to coincide. ^[14]

The verses immediately after the offered hands are equally revealing. The disciples still struggle to believe, now through joy and wonder. Jesus asks for food and eats before them. Luke then moves towards the opening of their understanding, their future role as witnesses, and the blessing at Bethany. Blake shows no meal or departure. He gathers the scene around the preceding moment of bodily demonstration, with the response still unfolding through several different postures. ^{[1] [14]}

Looking up and bowing down

The young apostle at the left is the clearest exception to the downward movement. His curly head tilts towards Christ, his bare shoulder turns into the scene, and his joined hands rise towards the open palm above. The space between those hands is small but expressive. Christ offers his body for recognition; the young man answers with an attentive face and an upward gesture. Neither figure needs a theatrical movement across the picture to establish their relation. ^[1]

Other hands appear lower down. At the right, a foreground apostle bends towards Christ’s foot, bringing his face close to the ground while his palms rise beside the descending folds. Behind him, broader curved backs and draped shoulders carry the group away into darkness. On the left, additional heads gather behind the young man. Blake gives the company a common focus without making every member express it in the same way. ^[1]

Those variations matter because bowing can suggest more than one state of mind. The lowered bodies can look overwhelmed, reverent, frightened or absorbed in worship. The young man can appear unusually receptive because he continues to look at the person before him. In the interpretation by David Bindman reported in Martin Butlin’s Tate catalogue, this difference becomes critical: the young apostle adores the risen Christ while the others bow as though before an idol. That is a particular reading of the gestures, which the arrangement allows us to examine. ^[2]

It also leaves a difficult question. Are the lowered heads a failure to recognise a living presence, or an expression of recognition too intense to sustain an upright gaze? The picture provides the contrast of postures; their precise spiritual value remains less secure. Luke describes a company passing through fear, doubt, joy and understanding. The variety of Blake’s bodies gives that changing response an unusual visual breadth. ^{[1] [14]}

Is this Doubting Thomas?

Butlin considers a more troubling interpretation in which the design concerns Thomas’s unbelief. The invitation to inspect Christ’s wounds naturally recalls John’s account of Thomas, but the two Gospel episodes have different sequences. In John 20, Jesus first appears to the assembled disciples while Thomas is absent. He shows his hands and side, and the disciples rejoice. Thomas subsequently refuses to accept their testimony without seeing and touching the wounds himself. ^{[2] [15]}

Eight days later, Jesus appears again with Thomas present and invites him to examine his hands and side. Thomas answers by acknowledging him as Lord and God. John does not then describe Thomas actually putting his finger into the wound. The episode ends by extending the question of belief beyond the eyewitness: those who believe without seeing are blessed. This gives the offered hands a powerful possible association, but it does not establish that Blake has singled out Thomas in this print. ^[15]

The visual action supplies no decisive identification. No apostle is unmistakably shown pressing a finger into Christ’s side, and the upward-looking young man has no identifying inscription. Tate’s primary narrative identification therefore remains Luke’s appearance to the frightened company. A Thomas reading addresses the larger problem of belief and bodily evidence while leaving the exact subject open. ^{[1] [2]}

An older catalogue description adds interest without resolving the issue. Butlin reports that William Michael Rossetti listed a tempera showing Christ overcoming Thomas’s incredulity, with the other ten apostles bowed in adoration. That work is untraced, and Butlin suggests the description may have referred mistakenly to the Yale impression of this colour print. The testimony may preserve a different work or an earlier identification of this design. It cannot securely name the young apostle in the Tate image. ^[2]

The early titles are comparably broad. The Butts account called its impression Christ appearing; other historical descriptions referred to the Saviour appearing to his disciples. These names establish the encounter but do little to distinguish Luke from John. Blake’s picture rewards attention to both narratives precisely because its visible invitation remains more specific than the identities of those receiving it. ^[2]

What darkness has changed

The Tate sheet measures 406 by 499 millimetres. Butlin records that it has been trimmed and that the lower corners have been made up. Its close edges therefore belong partly to the physical history of this impression. The bodies press towards the sides and lower boundary in the surviving object, but that boundary cannot be assumed to preserve the full extent of the printed design. ^{[1] [2]}

Varnish has changed its appearance more broadly. The catalogue places it among several prints formerly owned by J. W. Pease whose coatings have made them darker and harder to see. It leaves open whether Blake applied the varnish or whether someone did so later. The brown obscurity is part of our experience of the sheet today, yet it cannot all be interpreted as a deliberate original atmosphere chosen to contrast unbelief with revelation. ^[2]

This is particularly important around the wounds. Christ’s palms and exposed foot remain central to the gesture, but small marks are difficult to distinguish in the darkened surface. The National Gallery of Art impression makes red marks in the hands and foot much easier to see. Its lighter colouring helps clarify the composition’s bodily emphasis. It also reminds us that a detail legible in one impression may be obscured or differently developed in another. ^{[1] [16]}

The Washington sheet, accession 1943.3.8995, is catalogued as a colour print hand-coloured with watercolour and tempera. Blue and pink garments separate the kneeling figures, and a much paler field opens behind Christ. His face has stronger drawn definition and a different inclination from the face in Tate’s print. The comparison preserves the same broad encounter while changing its visual balance: bright drapery, flesh and the surrounding light remain more distinctly separated. ^[16]

The brighter image should not be treated as a transparent reconstruction of Tate’s original colours. Each sheet combines printing with work by hand; varnishing is only one of the reasons they differ. Comparison helps us see which gestures belong to the repeated composition and where finish, condition and individual treatment affect the encounter. The print’s history becomes part of close looking. ^{[2] [17] [16]}

Three impressions, several moments of making

Blake’s large colour prints comprise twelve designs surviving in multiple impressions. Joseph Viscomi places Christ Appearing among those made from prepared millboard, with colour transferred to paper and the resulting image developed by hand. His account explains why a repeated design can have such individual surfaces: the printed colour does not settle every contour, expression or fold. Drawing and painting continue the work after the transfer. ^[17]

Butlin considered Tate’s example the last pull, with the Washington impression first and the Yale impression second. Viscomi’s 2017 study retains that order in its table of known and conjectured impressions, assigning all three to the 1795 printing. For this design the two accounts agree on the sequence. The ordering remains a scholarly reconstruction from physical comparison, rather than a sequence written by Blake on the three sheets. ^{[2] [17]}

The Tate impression carries relatively little printed colour and very little subsequent finishing in pen and watercolour, according to Butlin. Viscomi includes it among unsigned impressions that seem to have received only rudimentary finishing and that were not sold by Blake. His broader argument links the signing and higher finishing of many independent works to their sale. It suggests a reason why sheets from one design could reach viewers in very different states of development. ^{[2] [17]}

The Butts impression has a separate history. Butlin identifies it as catalogue number 325 and connects it with delivery on 7 September 1805, recorded in the account drawn up on 3 March 1806. Viscomi likewise lists it among Butts’s September acquisitions and proposes that an earlier printed sheet was refinished for sale. He discusses its monogram and the possibility of a removed date, while leaving the precise timing of its signing uncertain. None of those details establishes an 1805 delivery, signature or finishing campaign for Tate’s number 327. ^{[2] [17]}

The later provenance has also required separation. Butlin’s account tentatively connected Tate’s sheet with a sale from the dealer Joseph Hogarth’s stock in 1854. In 2017 Viscomi argued that this sale history belongs to the signed Washington impression instead. He proposed an 1862 Sotheby’s sale as the appropriate earlier auction record for Tate’s unsigned sheet. The disagreement concerns two distinct objects whose similar titles made their histories vulnerable to confusion. ^{[2] [17]}

The better-established later passage runs through Pease’s collection, inheritance by Miss S. H. Pease in 1901, and the 1938 sale at which the work was bought for W. Graham Robertson. Robertson’s bequest brought it to Tate in 1948. The object now seen there carries the effects of that longer material life alongside the surviving evidence of Blake’s printing and drawing. ^{[1] [2]}

A possible answer to The House of Death

Butlin offers another way to understand the encounter by comparing it with The House of Death. In that design, a great bearded presence stretches across the upper field above afflicted bodies. One man looks upwards while others recline in pain or exhaustion; a sombre attendant stands at the right. In Christ Appearing, the upright figure stands among the surrounding people and lowers his open hands towards them. Both compositions organise the relation between a powerful presence and vulnerable human bodies. ^{[2] [18]}

The resemblance supports Butlin’s proposed contrast between divine wrath and mercy, expressed through the Old and New Dispensations. The suggestion belongs to his interpretation of the designs as counterparts. It does not prove that Blake planned them as a fixed pair or that the entire group of large colour prints must follow one theological scheme. The visual connection is strongest where it is most concrete: the body above or among others, the outstretched arms, and the person who looks upwards. ^{[2] [18]}

Butlin also records Michael Tolley’s suggestion that the upward-looking figures in the two works express hope and fear respectively. The comparison makes the young apostle’s lifted face especially affecting. He has room to meet the figure before him; Christ’s lowered hands bring divine presence within human reach. The surrounding bowed bodies keep that encounter from becoming an effortless image of universal understanding. ^[2]

Blake leaves the viewer facing the same invitation as the company. Christ is visibly present, yet the meaning of the response remains distributed across raised hands, bent backs and faces close to the ground. Luke’s story of reassurance and John’s questions about testimony can deepen the experience without exhausting it. The small space between the young man’s joined hands and Christ’s open palm holds the picture’s possibility of recognition. ^{[1] [14] [15]}