Christ Appearing to His Disciples After the Resurrection

Blake was perhaps the quintessential Romantic artist. Blake stressed the primacy of individual imagination and inspiration to the creative process, rejecting the Neoclassical emphasis on formal precision which had defined much 18th-century painting and poetry. Above all else, Blake scorned the contemporary culture of Enlightenment and industrialization, which stood for a mechanization and intellectual reductivism which he deplored.

For Blake, the Bible was the greatest work of poetry ever written, and comprised the basis of true art, as opposed to the false, pagan ideal of classicism. He had a loyal patron who commissioned him to create  a series of illustrations to the Bible that included about fifty tempera paintings  and more than eighty watercolors.  These focus on Old Testament prefigurations of Christ, the life of Christ, and apocalyptic subjects from the Book of Revelation, although the series’ exact program and its intended display remain unclear.

Christ Appearing to His Disciples/Apostles After the Resurrection is one of Blake’s large colour print series from 1795, which refers to the gospel of Luke, chapter 24 verses 36-40:
And as they thus spake, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them, and saith unto them, “Peace be unto you.” But they were terrified and affrighted, and supposed that they had seen a spirit. And he said unto them, “Why are ye troubled? and why do thoughts arise in your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet.

This work is hand-colored with watercolor and tempera, measures 43.2 x 57.5 cm, and is in The National Gallery of Art