William Blake: Paradise Lost

By Jonathan Shih

Happy Birthday, William Blake!

On the anniversary of his birth, we’re delighted to announce that we will present "William Blake: Paradise Lost," the first comprehensive exhibition devoted solely to British poet John Milton’s pivotal influence on Blake’s imagination and iconoclastic career! It will open in February 2027.

Though Milton (1608–1674) lived more than a century before Blake (1757–1827), his ideas and works profoundly shaped Blake’s most personal and provocative achievements in both literature and the visual arts. Featuring the Morgan’s exceptional holdings by Blake and a choice selection of international loans, this exhibition will include major examples of Blake’s innovative color-printed drawings and more than 75 watercolors, drawings, and paintings made at the peak of his career, along with works by his contemporaries in the late eighteenth-century Milton revival including William Hogarth, Henry Fuseli, George Romney, and John Flaxman. Visual works of stunning originality will be shown alongside correspondence and manuscripts–including the only surviving fragment of Milton’s “Paradise Lost” in the Morgan’s own collection–that document Blake’s profound relationship with Milton.

Pierpont Morgan began collecting Blake in 1899, forming the foundation of what is now one of the most significant Blake collections in the United States. Today, the Morgan preserves illuminated books, engravings, letters, and watercolors that open a vivid window into Blake’s creative and spiritual universe.

"William Blake: Paradise Lost" will be on view at the Morgan February 26 through May 23, 2027! So while today marks his birthday, we’ll be celebrating Blake well into the future, and we hope you’ll join us!

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William Blake (British, 1757 - 1827), Illustration to Milton's "Paradise Lost": Satan, Sin, and Death: Satan Comes to the Gates of Hell [large version], 1808. Pen and watercolor, with touches of gold metallic paint on wove paper, 19 1/2 × 15 3/4 in. (49.6 × 40 cm). The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. © 2025, Courtesy of The Huntington Art Museum, San Marino, California.

Makati in the 1960s

By Jonathan Shih

Wide and brighter Makati City, Philippines, during the 1960s.

A time when the streets whispered stories of simpler days, the city moved at a gentler pace, and every corner held the promise of discovery. Before the towers and traffic, it was a place where memories lingered longer, and life felt beautifully unhurried.

Piotr Naliwajko and the Group of Three

By Jonathan Shih

Piotr Naliwajko was born in Poland in 1960. He graduated from the Krakow Academy of Fine Arts in 1984.

With two colleagues from the Academy, he founded the famed “Group of Three”, who exhibited their work on the sides of trolleys, in prisons, and in churches. The group, led by the wildly outspoken Naliwajko, brought lush, Renaissance-inspired work, injected with modern political commentary, to the masses. Their guerrilla “exhibitions” and “happenings” generated tremendous acclaim and controversy and were attende

d by up to ten thousand people. The attention eventually resulted in two documentary films being made about Naliwajko and his colleagues, “The Pretentious Trio” and “Brothers”.

Naliwajko’s paintings have since been exhibited in over 100 solo and group exhibitions in museums and galleries in Germany, the Netherlands, France, Poland, and the U.S. He has been featured in cover stories in Art Expression Magazine, and profiled in Décor Magazine, Fine Art Magazine, Profile Weekly Magazine and the La Jolla Art Monthly. He has received awards in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, and France, as well as from the Athenaeum in La Jolla, CA and the Art Institute of San Diego.

Fan Ho and the Hong Kong that once was

By Jonathan Shih

Fan Ho wasn’t just taking pictures—he was writing poems with light.

Born in Shanghai in 1931, he picked up a Rolleiflex camera at 14, a gift from his father, and learned to develop film in the family bathtub. When his family moved to Hong Kong in 1949, the city became his stage. He wandered through alleyways, wet markets, and sunlit streets, capturing moments most people walked past.

His photographs from the 1950s and ’60s turned ordinary life into timeless black-and-white theatre, with bold geometry, deep shadows, and beams of light cutting through the haze. Critics called him “the Henri Cartier-Bresson of the East,” and between 1958 and 1965, he was named among the world’s top ten photographers eight times.

Fan Ho also starred in and directed films, but his heart never left the streets. Today, his work lives on in museums worldwide, each frame a love letter to the Hong Kong that once was.

© fanho-forgetmenot.com

Charles Hawthorne on Painting

By Jonathan Shih

Charles Hawthorne wrote: "The only way to learn to paint is by painting. To really study, you must start out with large tubes of paint and large palette and not stint in any way as far as materials go. If you look into the past of the successful painter you will find square miles of canvas behind him. It is work that counts, experience in seeing color. 

Painting is just getting one spot of color in relation to another spot of color - after you have covered acres of canvas you will know. Don't be in a hurry to do something more - think how young you are. Suppose you spend ten years of your life just putting things together - think what an equipment you will have.

Don't try to be an artist all at once, be very much of a student. Be always searching, never settle to do something you've done before. Always be looking for the unexpected in nature - you can have no formulas for anything; search constantly. Don't learn how to do things, keep on inquiring how. You must keep up an attitude of continuous study and so develop yourself. I don't know a better definition of an artist than one who is eternally curious. Every successful canvas has been painted from the point of view of a student, for a great painter is always a student.

Make notes that will help fasten your conception of beauty. The more you study in the right way, the more you progress. Each day's study makes you crazy to go back and do over and do better what you did the day before. Do studies, not pictures. Know when you are licked - start another. Be alive, stop when your interest is lost. Put off finish as it takes a lifetime - wait until later to try to finish things - make a lot of starts. It is so hard and long before a student comes to a realization that these few large simple spots in right relations are the most important things in the study of painting. They are the fundamentals of all painting."

("Girl in White" by Charles Hawthorne. Excerpts from "Hawthorne on Painting" by Charles Webster Hawthorne.)

The Masters in Apples

By Jonathan Shih

A student named Wakabayashi Ayame, who graduated in 2019, created apple masterpieces based on the different styles of famous painters, such as Picasso and Claude Monet. The decorative apples were displayed at the Kuwasawa graduation exhibition in Japan.