Artist, born in Jersey, Channel Is. He is best known for his etchings which depict everyday farming life, in particular horses and peasants. During the German occupation he designed the Jersey occupation stamps, and later the Channel Islands victory issue.
Edmund Blampied (born Jersey 30 March 1886, died Jersey 26 August 1966) was one of the most eminent artists to come from the Channel Islands, yet he received no formal training in art until he was 16 years old. He was noted mostly for his etchings and drypoints published at the height of the print boom in the 1920s, but was also a lithographer, caricaturist, cartoonist, book illustrator and artist in oils, watercolours, silhouettes and bronze.
Early years
Edmund Blampied was born on a farm in the Parish of Saint Martin, Jersey in the Channel Islands on 30th March 1886, five days after the death of his father, John Blampied. She gave the young Blampied his first formal lessons in art and introduced him to watercolours. His caricatures of politicians such as the Constable of St. Helier, Philippe Baudains, during a local election brought Blampied to the attention of a businessman named Saumerez James Nicolle who offered to sponsor him at art school in London, provided he tried to get a scholarship.
Art school
In January 1903, aged 16 years old and barely able to speak English, Blampied left Jersey for the Lambeth School of Art where he was taught by Philip Connard R.A. After taking a test and submitting some drawings, in May 1904 Blampied won a £20 London County Council (LCC) Scholarship for 2 years to continue his studies at any LCC art school. Later that year he was selected by the head of the Art School to work part time on the staff of a national newspaper, The Daily Chronicle, which enabled him to earn some extra money.
In September 1905 Blampied transferred from Lambeth Art School to the LCC School of Photo-engraving and Lithography at Bolt Court for the final year of his scholarship.
Etching
Blampied’s earliest etchings are dated December 1909, suggesting that he did not begin to learn this technique until the academic year 1909 – 1910; Blampied later recorded his method of working on zinc for etching and copper for drypoint in Ernest Stephen Lumsden's treatise The Art of Etching (Seeley Service, 1925). If I am dissatisfied with either the composition or details, I prefer to start afresh upon another plate rather than make radical alterations.
Independent artist
At the end of 1911, while he was developing his skills as an etcher, Blampied decided to try his luck as an independent artist with his own studio. Blampied quickly gained commissions to provide drawings for Pearson’s Magazine, The Sketch, The Sphere, The Ladies Field, The Queen and The Graphic, many of which were signed “Blam”, a diminutive first recorded in The Tatler in January 1916.
Blampied’s etchings were brought to the attention of Ernest Brown and Phillips of the Leicester Galleries in London through an introduction from H. Granville Fell, an artist and well-known art editor. The Leicester Galleries offered Blampied a contract and his first three prints were shown to the general public in February 1915 in the first of a notable series of exhibitions of prints called Modern Masters of Etching.
Edmund Blampied married Marianne van Abbé, the sister of Dutch-born artists Joseph and Salomon van Abbé, in August 1914. Marianne had acted as his agent for nine years before they married, and continued to do so until Edmund's brother John began working as an artist's agent in the 1920s.
Military service
When conscription was introduced in Britain in 1916, Blampied returned to Jersey in the autumn of that year to be prepared to be called up for military service.
Blampied quickly re-established himself in London in September 1919 after his return from Jersey and his etchings were acknowledged by the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers who elected him an Associate in March 1920 at the same time as the wood engraver Gwen Raverat. Blampied was elected at the end of what has been called the "etching revival", but there was still a very strong market for prints, mainly as an inexpensive investment in art.
In October 1920 Blampied held his first solo exhibition of 28 etchings and drypoints at the Leicester Galleries, many of which were prints that had been held back because of the war.
Gold medal at 1925 Paris exposition
Blampied had started to experiment with lithography in 1920, as two lithographs were shown at his first solo exhibition, but they had been transferred to the lithographers stone from paper, and he wanted to learn how to draw directly onto the stone. Blampied turned to Archibald Hartrick, a founder member of the Senefelder Club of lithographers, who was teaching at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and started evening classes there.
In 1925 the Central School of Arts and Crafts submitted two of Blampied’s lithographs with the work of other students to the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, the exhibition that gave rise to the term “Art Deco”.
In 1924, having been inspired by an exhibition at the Leicester Galleries of models in wax by Degas, Blampied produced his only bronzes: Kicking horse, in an edition of 15, and Homewards evening (edition unknown). Blampied held another major exhibition of his work, also at the Leicester Galleries, in March 1925 where he showed 8 etchings, 25 paintings and 18 drawings, but his bronzes do not seem to have been shown at an exhibition until 1929.
Illustrations for books and magazines
While developing his skills as an etcher and lithographer in the early 1920s Blampied continued to work extensively for magazines and contributed hundreds of political cartoons and decorative drawings to The Bystander magazine between 1922 and 1926; Blampied also illustrated a film edition of Black Beauty by Anna Sewell and a new edition of The Roadmender by Michael Fairless.
Blampied held his first exhibition of paintings and drawings, rather than prints, at the Leicester Gallery in February 1923 while continuing regularly to exhibit his prints at the annual shows of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers and the Senefelder Club of British lithographers, named after Alois Senefelder, the inventor of the method.
Travel in Tunisia
At the end of 1926 Blampied gave up his work for books and magazines, sold his house and studio in south London, and travelled in southern France and north Africa for about 5 months. For the next three years after his return to London in April 1927, Blampied designed many prints, mostly using drypoint, dabbled in abstract art during an illness to produce what he called his “Colour symphonies”, and produced watercolours and oils for a major exhibition held in May 1929 at the galleries of Alex Reid and Lefevre.
Blampied as humorist
When the market for etchings collapsed during the great depression in the early 1930s, Blampied reinvented himself as a cartoonist and caricaturist at an exhibition in 1931 called “Blampied’s Nonsense Show”. In this period Blampied also published more than 30 humorous lithographs, many of dogs, that are not recorded in either of the catalogues raisonné (see Bibliography).
After illustrating a new edition of Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson , Blampied returned to work for magazines in 1933 with a weekly series of illustrations of British life in ink and sepia wash for The Illustrated London News.
Peter and Wendy
In May 1938 Blampied was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists.
German occupation of Jersey
By the time Peter and Wendy was published Blampied had moved from London to Jersey with the intention of settling there. Jersey was occupied on July 1, 1940 and Blampied was trapped there for almost 5 years by the German Occupation of the island until its liberation on May 9, 1945.
The lack of currency in Jersey led to a request to design bank notes for the States of Jersey in denominations of 6 pence, 1 shilling, 2 shillings, 10 shillings and 1 pound, which were issued in 1942. The only exhibition of his work during the war years was held at the Cleveland Museum of Art from February 1941 which showed 187 works mostly from the collection of Harold J Baily, an American lawyer who had been a notable patron of Blampied since 1927. The etching A Jersey vraic cart, which Blampied had just managed to have printed and signed before the island was invaded, was issued to the Print Club of Cleveland to coincide with the exhibition.
Blampied did not return to London after the war but remained in Jersey, mostly working in oils and watercolours, except for a series of 12 silhouettes he published in 1950 and a few etchings in 1958, one of which he exhibited at the Royal Academy. A large exhibition of his work was held at the John Nelson Bergstrom Art Center and Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin in July 1954.
Body of work
Blampied was a prolific illustrator and over 600 issues of magazines and newspapers have been recorded containing his work between 1905 and 1939.
During his career Edmund Blampied produced some 200 etchings and drypoints, and more than 80 lithographs and lithographic prints, many of which depicted rural life in his beloved island of Jersey.
Besides his work in the visual arts, he also amused himself and his friends by writing poetry in Jèrriais, signing himself as Un Tout-à-travèrs. In 1933, La Chronique de Jersey considered publishing a booklet of Blampied poems illustrated by the artist himself, but the plans came to nothing.
Blampied’s prints, drawings and pictures are in the collections of: the British Museum, London;
Edmund Blampied (Edmund Bliampi) R.E., R.B.A.
Illustrations and photograph reproduced by kind permission of the Estate of Edmund Blampied.
Selected bibliography
Dodgson, Campbell (1926). Blampied: artist and philosopher. The work for books and magazines of Edmund Blampied.Notable books illustrated by Edmund Blampied
All published in the UK unless otherwise noted.
1912. Titterton: Frank and Cecil Palmer and Mitchell Kennerly, USA
1914 The Money Moon by Jeffrey Farnol: Sampson Low Marston.
1915 The Chronicles of the Imp by Jeffrey Farnol: Sampson, Low Marston.
1919 Two little scamps and a puppy by Angela Brazil: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1919 Terry and Starshine by Amy Whipple: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1920 John’s visit to the Farm by Evelyn Sharp: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1920 At the Farm by Evelyn Hardy: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1920 The Jolly ABC by Blam: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1920 The Breezy Farm ABC by Blam: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1921 Blam’s Book of Fun: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1922 Black Beauty by Anna Sewell: Jarrolds.
1923 Untamed.
1923 Trapping Wild Animals in Malay Jungles, by Charles Mayer: T.
1924 The Zoo Book: Thomas Nelson and Sons.
1924 The Roadmender by Michael Fairless: Duckworth and Co.
1931 Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes by Robert Louis Stevenson: John Lane, The Bodley Head, UK and Dodd Mead &
1934 Albert goes through by J.
1936 Bottled Trout and Polo, by Blampied: George Newnes.
1937 Hand-picked Howlers by Cecil Hunt: Methuen.
1937 Cours de Francais I.
1938 More Hand-picked Howlers by Cecil Hunt: Methuen.
1938 Cours de Francais II.
1939 Ripe Howlers by Cecil Hunt: Methuen.
1939 Cours de Francais III.
1939 The Blampied edition of Peter and Wendy by J.M.
1940 Hand-Picked Proverbs by Cecil Hunt: Methuen.
1945 Jersey in Jail 1940 - 45 by Horace Wyatt: Ernest Huelin.
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