William James Blacklock
Encyclopedia
William James Blacklock (3 March 1816, Shoreditch
, London – 12 March 1858, Dumfries
, Scotland) was an English landscape painter, painting scenery in Cumbria, the Lake District and the Scottish Borders.
The Blacklock family had roots in Cumberland
dating back to the 1730s, and in 1818 they moved from London to the small village of Cumwhitton
, about eight miles east of Carlisle, where the family owned property and farmed. They are believed to have lived in Cumwhitton House, a detached, double fronted sandstone property dating back to 1818.
As a boy, Blacklock was apprenticed to Charles Thurnam, a publisher and bookseller in Carlisle and a friend of his father. He was, however, keen on drawing and decided to pursue a career as an artist. Carlisle had become an important artistic centre since the Academy of Art had opened in 1823, and Blacklock was taught there by the Carlisle artist Matthew Ellis Nutter. Blacklock exhibited at the Academy in 1833, and was described as a “rising artist” with a “feeling for nature and a correctness of taste”
Blacklock moved to London in 1836 and lived there until 1850, enjoying increasing success and renown. His picturesque style was likened to that of William Mulready
and he was praised by such artists as J. M. W. Turner
, David Roberts
and Thomas Creswick
. He exhibited four pictures at the Royal Academy of Arts
in 1836, and went on to show a total of eleven pictures at the Society of British Artists, four at the British Institution
and thirty six at the Royal Academy of Arts during the period 1835–1855. It is believed that Blacklock may have seen the cleaning of old masters in the National Gallery in 1844-45.
In 1847, William Ewart Gladstone
bought Blacklock’s painting Lanercost Abbey. James Leathart and Lord Armstrong, both Tyneside industrialists and art collectors, bought several of Blacklock’s paintings in the early 1850s, through Blacklock's admirer and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites
, William Bell Scott
.
However, by 1850 Blacklock's health and eyesight were deteriorating, and he moved back to Cumwhitton and worked in a studio in Stanwix
just outside Carlisle until 1854, when illness and the loss of sight in one eye made work increasingly difficult. In November 1855 his youngest brother, Thomas, had him admitted to the Crichton Royal Institution in Dumfries, suffering from an illness described as "monomania of ambition and general paralysis". The Institution pioneered the use of artistic activity in treating patients, and his case notes indicate that he continued to draw until mid 1857; a drawing of a cathedral and a watercolour of Craigmillar Castle
produced during this time have been attributed to him. After this he suffered further mental deterioration and died in the Crichton on 12 March 1858 of general paresis of the insane
, or syphilis
.
He was buried in Cumwhitton on 16 March 1858. An extract from his obituary described him as a "truthful and unpretending artist, who wooed nature rather than popular favour"
recognised the early Pre-Raphaelite
precision in Blacklock's technique and his great power of truth; indeed it was Scott and his artistic friends (almost certainly including Rossetti
), who used Blacklock's painting Barnard Castle of 1852–53 to try to study his luminous glazes
over a white ground which had been developed over many years.
Blacklock thereafter developed into an artist of great power. The steps at Haddon Hall, exhibited in 1848 at the Norwich Exhibition, has been described as the first thorough going mature white ground technique Pre-Raphaelite-influenced English landscape painting, and both its technique and inclusion of Huguenot figures, which clearly influenced John Everett Millais
's A Huguenot
(1852).(The picture above is a different later painting of Haddon Hall to the Tullie House one).
Although Blacklock's art can be described as semi-photographic, Blacklock rejected Ruskin
's exact copying of truth to nature and the Victorian faith in facts for his own inner thoughts and imagination.
Writing in a Sothebys sale catalogue Christopher Newall says "Although hard to place in the evolving pattern of progressive landscape painting in the mid-nineteenth century, Blacklock is an important and intriguing figure who may be regarded as a pivot between the early nineteenth-century landscape school and the achievements of Romanticism, and the earnest and obsessive innovation of the Pre-Raphaelite school."
Geoffrey Grigson
wrote "Blacklock, I reflect, belongs to the generation of Courbet, that creative wonder between Romanticism and Impressionism: he comes after Constable and after Corot",. adding that Blacklock participated differently in a naturalism of vision and imagination which changed the arts by the middle of the 19th century.
His works are very rare and there are strong similarities in the construction of his colouring and technique to that of Giorgione
, and more so Giovanni Bellini
, a true master of light in his landscape.
Shoreditch
Shoreditch is an area of London within the London Borough of Hackney in England. It is a built-up part of the inner city immediately to the north of the City of London, located east-northeast of Charing Cross.-Etymology:...
, London – 12 March 1858, Dumfries
Dumfries
Dumfries is a market town and former royal burgh within the Dumfries and Galloway council area of Scotland. It is near the mouth of the River Nith into the Solway Firth. Dumfries was the county town of the former county of Dumfriesshire. Dumfries is nicknamed Queen of the South...
, Scotland) was an English landscape painter, painting scenery in Cumbria, the Lake District and the Scottish Borders.
Biography
Blacklock was born in London in 1816, the second of five children. His father was James Blacklock (1782–1823), a bookseller and publisher, and his mother was Mary Ann Blacklock (née Pearson) (1784–1853).The Blacklock family had roots in Cumberland
Cumberland
Cumberland is a historic county of North West England, on the border with Scotland, from the 12th century until 1974. It formed an administrative county from 1889 to 1974 and now forms part of Cumbria....
dating back to the 1730s, and in 1818 they moved from London to the small village of Cumwhitton
Cumwhitton
Cumwhitton is a small village and civil parish close to Carlisle in Cumbria, England. There is a church called St Mary's and a public house or inn called The Pheasant which offers a wide range of food and a good reputation for Real Ale....
, about eight miles east of Carlisle, where the family owned property and farmed. They are believed to have lived in Cumwhitton House, a detached, double fronted sandstone property dating back to 1818.
As a boy, Blacklock was apprenticed to Charles Thurnam, a publisher and bookseller in Carlisle and a friend of his father. He was, however, keen on drawing and decided to pursue a career as an artist. Carlisle had become an important artistic centre since the Academy of Art had opened in 1823, and Blacklock was taught there by the Carlisle artist Matthew Ellis Nutter. Blacklock exhibited at the Academy in 1833, and was described as a “rising artist” with a “feeling for nature and a correctness of taste”
Blacklock moved to London in 1836 and lived there until 1850, enjoying increasing success and renown. His picturesque style was likened to that of William Mulready
William Mulready
William Mulready was an Irish genre painter living in London. He is best known for his romanticizing depictions of rural scenes, and for creating Mulready stationery letter sheets, issued at the same time as the Penny Black postage stamp.-Life and family:William Mulready was born in Ennis, County...
and he was praised by such artists as J. M. W. Turner
J. M. W. Turner
Joseph Mallord William Turner RA was an English Romantic landscape painter, watercolourist and printmaker. Turner was considered a controversial figure in his day, but is now regarded as the artist who elevated landscape painting to an eminence rivalling history painting...
, David Roberts
David Roberts (painter)
David Roberts RA was a Scottish painter. He is especially known for a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced during the 1840s from sketches he made during long tours of the region . These, and his large oil paintings of similar subjects, made him...
and Thomas Creswick
Thomas Creswick
Thomas Creswick was an English landscape painter and illustrator.-Biography:Creswick was born in Sheffield . He was the son of Thomas Creswick and Mary Epworth and educated at Hazelwood, near Birmingham.At Birmingham he first began to paint...
. He exhibited four pictures at the Royal Academy of Arts
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
in 1836, and went on to show a total of eleven pictures at the Society of British Artists, four at the British Institution
British Institution
The British Institution was a private 19th-century society in London formed to exhibit the works of living and dead artists; it was also known as the Pall Mall Picture Galleries or the British Gallery...
and thirty six at the Royal Academy of Arts during the period 1835–1855. It is believed that Blacklock may have seen the cleaning of old masters in the National Gallery in 1844-45.
In 1847, William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone
William Ewart Gladstone FRS FSS was a British Liberal statesman. In a career lasting over sixty years, he served as Prime Minister four separate times , more than any other person. Gladstone was also Britain's oldest Prime Minister, 84 years old when he resigned for the last time...
bought Blacklock’s painting Lanercost Abbey. James Leathart and Lord Armstrong, both Tyneside industrialists and art collectors, bought several of Blacklock’s paintings in the early 1850s, through Blacklock's admirer and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
, William Bell Scott
William Bell Scott
William Bell Scott was a Scottish poet and artist.-Life:The son of Robert Scott , the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, and he published verses in the Scottish magazines...
.
However, by 1850 Blacklock's health and eyesight were deteriorating, and he moved back to Cumwhitton and worked in a studio in Stanwix
Stanwix
Stanwix is a district of Carlisle, Cumbria in North West England. It is located on the north side of River Eden, across from Carlisle city centre. Although long counted as a suburb it did not officially become part of the city until 1912 when part of the civil parish of Stanwix became part of the...
just outside Carlisle until 1854, when illness and the loss of sight in one eye made work increasingly difficult. In November 1855 his youngest brother, Thomas, had him admitted to the Crichton Royal Institution in Dumfries, suffering from an illness described as "monomania of ambition and general paralysis". The Institution pioneered the use of artistic activity in treating patients, and his case notes indicate that he continued to draw until mid 1857; a drawing of a cathedral and a watercolour of Craigmillar Castle
Craigmillar Castle
Craigmillar Castle is a ruined medieval castle in Edinburgh, Scotland. It is situated south-east of the city centre, on a low hill to the south of the modern suburb of Craigmillar. It was begun in the late 14th century by the Preston family, feudal barons of Craigmillar, and extended through the...
produced during this time have been attributed to him. After this he suffered further mental deterioration and died in the Crichton on 12 March 1858 of general paresis of the insane
General paresis of the insane
General paresis, also known as general paralysis of the insane or paralytic dementia, is a neuropsychiatric disorder affecting the brain and central nervous system, caused by syphilis infection...
, or syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
.
He was buried in Cumwhitton on 16 March 1858. An extract from his obituary described him as a "truthful and unpretending artist, who wooed nature rather than popular favour"
Assessment
William Bell ScottWilliam Bell Scott
William Bell Scott was a Scottish poet and artist.-Life:The son of Robert Scott , the engraver, and brother of David Scott, the painter, he was born in Edinburgh. While a young man he studied art and assisted his father, and he published verses in the Scottish magazines...
recognised the early Pre-Raphaelite
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood
The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was a group of English painters, poets, and critics, founded in 1848 by William Holman Hunt, John Everett Millais and Dante Gabriel Rossetti...
precision in Blacklock's technique and his great power of truth; indeed it was Scott and his artistic friends (almost certainly including Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante Gabriel Rossetti was an English poet, illustrator, painter and translator. He founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in 1848 with William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais, and was later to be the main inspiration for a second generation of artists and writers influenced by the movement,...
), who used Blacklock's painting Barnard Castle of 1852–53 to try to study his luminous glazes
Glaze (painting technique)
Glazes can change the chroma, value, hue and texture of a surface. Drying time will depend on the amount and type of paint medium used in the glaze. The medium, base, or vehicle is the mixture to which the dry pigment is added...
over a white ground which had been developed over many years.
Blacklock thereafter developed into an artist of great power. The steps at Haddon Hall, exhibited in 1848 at the Norwich Exhibition, has been described as the first thorough going mature white ground technique Pre-Raphaelite-influenced English landscape painting, and both its technique and inclusion of Huguenot figures, which clearly influenced John Everett Millais
John Everett Millais
Sir John Everett Millais, 1st Baronet, PRA was an English painter and illustrator and one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.-Early life:...
's A Huguenot
A Huguenot
A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew's Day, Refusing to Shield Himself from Danger by Wearing the Roman Catholic Badge is a painting by John Everett Millais. The long title is usually abbreviated to A Huguenot or A Huguenot on St Bartholomew's Day.It depicts a pair of young lovers in an embrace...
(1852).(The picture above is a different later painting of Haddon Hall to the Tullie House one).
Although Blacklock's art can be described as semi-photographic, Blacklock rejected Ruskin
John Ruskin
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
's exact copying of truth to nature and the Victorian faith in facts for his own inner thoughts and imagination.
Writing in a Sothebys sale catalogue Christopher Newall says "Although hard to place in the evolving pattern of progressive landscape painting in the mid-nineteenth century, Blacklock is an important and intriguing figure who may be regarded as a pivot between the early nineteenth-century landscape school and the achievements of Romanticism, and the earnest and obsessive innovation of the Pre-Raphaelite school."
Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Grigson
Geoffrey Edward Harvey Grigson was a British writer. He was born in Pelynt, a village near Looe in Cornwall.-Life:...
wrote "Blacklock, I reflect, belongs to the generation of Courbet, that creative wonder between Romanticism and Impressionism: he comes after Constable and after Corot",. adding that Blacklock participated differently in a naturalism of vision and imagination which changed the arts by the middle of the 19th century.
His works are very rare and there are strong similarities in the construction of his colouring and technique to that of Giorgione
Giorgione
Giorgione was a Venetian painter of the High Renaissance in Venice, whose career was cut off by his death at a little over thirty. Giorgione is known for the elusive poetic quality of his work, though only about six surviving paintings are acknowledged for certain to be his work...
, and more so Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini
Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini, and his brother-in-law was Andrea Mantegna. He is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it...
, a true master of light in his landscape.
Works
His works include:- 1843 – Gilnockie TowerGilnockie TowerGilnockie Tower is a 16th-century tower house, located at the hamlet of Hollows, 2.3 km north of Canonbie, in Dumfries and Galloway, south-west Scotland. The tower is situated on the west bank of the River Esk. It was originally known as Hollows Tower...
(oil) - 1847 – Lanercost AbbeyLanercost PrioryLanercost Priory was founded by Robert de Vaux between 1165 and 1174, the most likely date being 1169, to house Augustinian Canons. It is situated at the village of Lanercost, Cumbria, England, within sight of Naworth Castle, with which it long had close connections.It is now open to the public and...
- 1847 – Calder AbbeyCalder AbbeyCalder Abbey in Cumbria was a Savigniac monastery founded in 1134 by Ranulph de Gernon, 2nd Earl of Chester and moved to this site following a refoundation in 1142. It became Cistercian in 1148. It is near to the village of Calder Bridge.- History :...
- 1848 – The Steps at Haddon HallHaddon HallHaddon Hall is an English country house on the River Wye at Bakewell, Derbyshire, one of the seats of the Duke of Rutland, occupied by Lord Edward Manners and his family. In form a medieval manor house, it has been described as "the most complete and most interesting house of [its]...
- c. 1850 – SolwaySolway FirthThe Solway Firth is a firth that forms part of the border between England and Scotland, between Cumbria and Dumfries and Galloway. It stretches from St Bees Head, just south of Whitehaven in Cumbria, to the Mull of Galloway, on the western end of Dumfries and Galloway. The Isle of Man is also very...
(watercolour) - 1852–3 – Barnard CastleBarnard CastleBarnard Castle is an historical town in Teesdale, County Durham, England. It is named after the castle around which it grew up. It sits on the north side of the River Tees, opposite Startforth, south southwest of Newcastle upon Tyne, south southwest of Sunderland, west of Middlesbrough and ...
- 1853 – LakelandLake DistrictThe Lake District, also commonly known as The Lakes or Lakeland, is a mountainous region in North West England. A popular holiday destination, it is famous not only for its lakes and its mountains but also for its associations with the early 19th century poetry and writings of William Wordsworth...
mountains, Crummock waterCrummock WaterCrummock Water is a lake in the Lake District in Cumbria, North West England situated between Buttermere to the south and Loweswater to the north. Crummock Water is two and a half miles long, three quarters of a mile wide and 140ft deep. The River Cocker is considered to start at the north of the...
, GrassmoorGrassmoorGrassmoor is a village in Derbyshire, England, approximately three miles to the south of Chesterfield. Its original name, according to 16th-century parish records, was Gresmore. Grassmoor formally housed many miners, however all of the local mines in the area have been closed since the...
and Whiteless PikeWhiteless PikeWhiteless Pike is a fell in the north-western English Lake District. It stands immediately east of Crummock Water and forms a perfect pyramid shape when viewed from Rannerdale. In his celebrated guide to the Lakeland fells, Alfred Wainwright called it "the Weisshorn of Buttermere"...
(sold 2008 for £51,650) - 1854 – An old mill near Haweswater
- 1855 – By the lakeside
- 1855 – Hermitage CastleHermitage CastleHermitage Castle is a semi-ruined castle in the border region of Scotland. It is under the care of Historic Scotland. The Castle has a reputation, both from its history and its appearance, as one of the most sinister and atmospheric in Scotland....
- 1855 – The Border Keep
- 1855 – Elter Water, and the Langdale Pikes
- 1855 – Belted Will's Tower, Naworth CastleNaworth CastleNaworth Castle, also known as, or recorded in historical documents as "Naward", is a castle in Cumbria, England near the town of Brampton. It is adjacent to the A69 about two miles east of Brampton. It is on the opposite side of the River Irthing to, and just within sight of, Lanercost Priory...
Galleries
Blacklock's works are in the following collections:- Tullie House Museum and Art Gallery, Carlisle, with 33 works.
- National Gallery of IrelandNational Gallery of IrelandThe National Gallery of Ireland houses the Irish national collection of Irish and European art. It is located in the centre of Dublin with one entrance on Merrion Square, beside Leinster House, and another on Clare Street. It was founded in 1854 and opened its doors ten years later...
, Dublin - Abbot Hall Art Museum, Kendal