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Major exhibitions that showed the work of Edmund Blampied, 1914 - 1966
This page lists all the most important exhibitions during his life time of Blampied's oil paintings, watercolours and drawings. Many were commercial exhibitions held at the galleries of art dealers to sell his work, but some were arranged simply to show Blampied's art to the public. All but one of these shows occurred in the USA; none were held in the U.K. or Jersey until 1964. The exhibitions in the USA mostly showed works owned by Harold James Baily, a New York lawyer, who had a large collection of Blampied's prints and paintings; from the collection of Evelyn Cloak-Campbell, a friend of Blampied who lived near Neenah, Wisconsin; or they came from the collection of the Boston Public Library, many of which had been given by Albert H. Wiggin, a banker who had bought a large number of drawings from Blampied in 1933. Although exhibitions of Blampied's pictures were held at the Barreau Art Gallery of the Société Jersiaise after World War II, many of the pictures were for sale.
Catalogues of exhibitions are hard to find, but the catalogues from the Leicester Galleries are in the collection of the Courtauld Institute in London, so they have been seen. The catalogues don't always describe the medium of the artwork or give the price, which is an indication of the importance of the work; the catalogue may simply give the title. If an item was not sold after the first show, which was usually held in London, it was often sent to another gallery, either in Scotland or the USA; sometimes to one then the other, which is perhaps why so many of his pictures ended up in the USA, where they were appreciated and sold.
Original drawing for the invitation to an exhibition (click to enlarge)
The titles may not be the same in each catalogue, and may have been changed from French to English for sale in the USA. This is one reason why it is hard to track paintings or know how many Blampied did. In additon some paintings were sold before they were shown at an exhibition, so they don't appear in a catalogue and there is no written record of their existence. Blampied is not known to have kept a list, although he had some paintings photographed.
Blampied only held one exhibition purely of his prints, in 1920. Thereafter they were released each year by his publisher for sale to subscribers, a common practice in those days, or were sold in galleries in Britain and the USA. A few were shown with his paintings. Blampied benefitted from the last 10 years of the 'print boom' until 1930, when the Great Depression brought it to an end. The prices asked for his paintings also dropped drastically, as you will see from the notes below.
Prints are identified in catalogues raisonnné:
CD = Campbell Dodgson (1926); AA = Arnold & Appleby (1996): AH = forthcoming.
Title: Etchings & Aquatints, Mezzotint & Dry-point engravings done by students of Bolt Court
Date: March, 1914
Gallery: LCC School of Photo-engraving and Lithography, Bolt Court
Total works shown: 104
► Dry points and etchings: 26 by Blampied
Notes: This show of the work of students at the London County Council School of Photo-engraving and Lithography at Bolt Court, off Fleet Street in London, may have been the first exhibition at which Blampied's etchings and drypoints were seen by the public. It was reviewed by a Correspondent for The Times who noted one of Blampied's prints.
The work of two of Blampied's best friends also featured strongly in the exibition: John Nicolson, with whom Blampied shared a house in the 1920s, and Robert Charles Peter, who had already had several pictures accepted by the Royal Academy for their Summer Exhibitions in 1910, 1913 and 1914.
The catalogue of the exhibition was reproduced in the catalogue raisonné issued by Arnold & Appleby in 1996.
Title: La Guerre et les Humoristes
Date: 1917
Gallery: Galerie La Boëtie, 64 bis, Rue de La Boëtie, Paris, France
Total works shown: 7
► Aq(uarelle): 5 by Blampied
► D(essin): 2 by Blampied
Notes: This exhibition was organised by the Société des Dessinateurs-Humoristes and the Société des Artistes-Humoristes to benefit artists who had been wounded in the war and the famillies of artists who had died. One of Blampied's drawings is said to have been used on the cover of the French magazine Le Rire Rouge, but it was not listed in the catalogue. A watercolour entitled Cresus allemand caressant son plus cher tresor (cat 132) was used, with a slightly different title, by the magazine Fantasio, which was published from the same office. The watercolours Danseuse (cat 137) and Article censuré (cat 136) were also used by Fantasio.
Cover of the exhibition catalogue and the page listing Blampied's
drawings (d) and watercolours (aq) (Click each to enlarge)
Title: Etchings and dry-points by Edmund Blampied
Date: October, 1920
Gallery: Ernest Brown & Phillips, the Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London.
Total works shown: 30
► Etchings: 28
► Lithographs: 2
Notes: This was Edmund Blampied's first solo exhbition, at the Leicester Gallery in London of his publisher Ernest Brown & Philips. Most of the prints had been designed before 1915 and were not officially 'published' until 1919 or 1920, such as 'Driving home in the rain' [CD:32; AA:35; AH:14.1], even though many proofs had been taken from plates before then. Proofs of a few prints had been shown at the annual exhibitions called Modern Masters of Etching
, which started in 1915 and were repeated every year until 1919. I can find no exhibition of Blampied's work in 1913, contrary to reports.
The catalogue shown below, the only one I have from this period, is sadly missing its covers. The Notes to the exhibition were written by Malcolm Salaman and were published separately as a small booklet. Proofs of three prints were lent, so were not presumably for sale. The print 'The knackers' [CD:31; AA:41; AH:14.12] was never published; the proof of 'Driving home in the rain' was lent by one of the owners of the Gallery.
Click on each page to enlarge and read
Title: Exhibition of etchings, dry-points and drawings by Edmund Blampied, A.R.E.
Date: 1922
Gallery: Kennedy & Company, 693 Fifth Avenue, New York
Total works shown: 69
► Etchings and dry-points: 41
► Drawings: 28
Notes: This was Blampied's first solo exhibition in the USA, in one of the oldest art galleries in New York. A proof of 'Driving home in the rain' [CD:32; AA:35; AH:14.1] was shown and original sketches for 'Wading' [CD:58; AA:71; AH:20.4], 'The Tumble' [CD:61; AA:80; AH:21.7] and 'The Fisherman's Return' [CD:70; AA:83; AH:22.2.ii]. Thanks to Geoff Morris of Grange Framing in Jersey for allowing me to photocopy his copy of the catalogue.
Title: Paintings and drawings by Edmund Blampied
Date: February, 1923
Gallery: Ernest Brown & Phillips, the Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London.
Total works shown: 36
► Drawings: 16
► Watercolours: 5
► Paintings: 15
Notes: This was Blampied's first exhibition of oil paintings and drawings. They were shown at the Leicester Galleries with etchings and dry points by Christoper Nevinson, whose prints are numbered 1 to 47; Blampied's pictures are numbered 48 to 83. The titles of some pictures are given with their medium but others are just listed under a general title of 'Paintings', so they could be oils or watercolours. Some have the same design as a print. The prices of oil paintings ranged from 45 to 85 guineas; the watercolours cost from 16 to 25 guineas; and the drawings were on sale for 12 to 35 guineas. The total for the 36 pictures was £1,644, which is about £95,000 in 2020 prices.
The notable pictures are:
Review in Aberdeen Press & Journal, 5th February 1923
- 'The Fisherman's return' (cat 50), an oil painting now in a private collection in the USA, and known as a drypoint in an edition of 100 proofs [CD:70; AA:83; AH:22.2.ii]
- 'Field workers returning home' (cat 53), a drawing, probably in charcoal.
- 'Tante Elizabeth' (57), an oil painting now in a private collection in Jersey, illustrated on the cover of the art magazine 'Drawing & Design', which was also a dry point [CD:66; AA:72; AH:21.1].
- 'Loading the cart' (cat 62), now in the Courtauld Institute.
- 'Mid-day rest' (cat 76), an oil painting, similar to an unpublished etching called 'Le vacher' [CD:50; AA:61; AH:20.15] and a published lithograph called 'Jean Francois' or 'The Cowman' [AA:L2; AH:L21.1]
- 'Interior of a stable' (cat 81), an oil painting bought by John St. Helier Lander, now in a private collection.
Title: Paintings and etchings by Edmund Blampied R.E.
Date: March - April, 1925
Gallery: Ernest Brown & Phillips, the Leicester Galleries
Total works shown: 33
► Etchings: 8
► Paintings: 25
Notes: This exhibition showed that Blampied had been travelling: to Paris, to Annecy in Savoie, and to the Basque country in south-west France. Two of Blampied's preliminary oil sketches for paintings are shown, left. I am planning a virtual recreation of this exibition using the monochrome photographs taken of most of the pictures. At this exhibition Blampied showed several notable items:
- 'Galloping home in the rain' (cat 75) the oil painting based on 'Driving home in the rain' [CD:32; AA:35; AH:14.1], which had been designed 10 years ealier. The design is in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, but no image is available. A preliminary oil sketch (see left) is in a private collection in England.
- 'Building a Cathedral at Annecy' (cat 66), now at Leeds Museum and Art Gallery.
- 'The green vraic cart' (cat 62), 'The three horses' (cat 68), 'Loading a barge on the Seine' (cat 71), 'Urrugne (Basque)' (cat 74) and 'Haymaking, Jersey' (cat 78) are known only from a reproductions in monochrome in contemporary magazines.
- One other painting has been seen in a sale catalogue: 'An Annecy Arch, Savoie' (cat 64).
Oil sketch of 'Galloping home in the rain' (cat 75) (Private Collection)
Oil sketch of 'Building a cathedral at Annecy' (cat 66)
Title: Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes
Date: April - October, 1925
Gallery: British Pavilion, Galerie du Grand Palais, Paris
Total works shown: 3?
► Lithographs: 3?
Notes: The name of this exhibition gave rise to the term 'Art Deco'. Three lithographs by Blampied were shown in the British Pavilion of the Exposition in the South Gallery on the Ground Floor, Section N: item 319 'Henry Keen and E. Blampied: Two Illustrations' (presumably one from each named person) and item 323 'E. Blampied: Two illustrations'. These items are listed in the Catalogue Général on page 587 under the names 'Henry Keen and E.Blamfield'. Two of Blampied's lithographs were: 'The cooling stream' [AA:L16; AH:L24.3] and 'A Jersey vraic cart' [AA:L17; AH:L24.2].
On page 59 of the Catalogue, under the heading Médailles d'or is listed 'E. Blampied (London C.C. Central School of Art and Crafts) - Grande-Bretagne.' According to the 'Report of the Advisory Council on the Work of the Session 1925-26' of the Central School of Art, Gold Medals were awarded to a number of students of the School as Collaborateurs. They were: Dianne Addams, Edmund Blampied, Oliver Burridge, Evelyn Goggs, Muriel Jackson, Arthur Kirk, Vera Law, Alfred Martin, Fred Matthews, Eleanor Potter, Lilian Sear and Howard Spear. Blampied did not receive his medal.
Poster for exhibition designed by Robert Bonfils (click to enlarge)
Title: Paintings, water-colours and drypoints by Edmund Blampied
Date: May, 1929
Gallery: Alex. Reid & Lefevre, 1a King Street, London
Total works shown: 81
► Etchings: 43
► Drawings: 2
► Watercolours: 19
► Oil paintings: 15
► Sculptures: 2
Notes: Blampied showed his only bronze sculptures at this exhibition in 1929, although they were both dated 1924: 'Kicking horse' in an edition of 15 at a price of 21 guineas (according to a letter to Harold Baily) and 'Homewards', edition unknown, price unknown.
The show was reviewed by Malcolm Salaman in the art magazine Apollo with six monochrome illustrations.
Two paintings, La Goutte (cat 11) and La Tante (cat 15) were illustrated in colours in the magazine called Colour.
Original drawing for the invitation to the exhibition (click to enlarge)
Title: Edmund Blampied
Date: November, 1930
Gallery: Alex Reid & Lefevre, 117 West George St, Glasgow
Total works shown: number not known
Notes: No catalogue for this exhibition has been seen, but Blampied sent Harold Baily a list of the 11 oil paintings and 22 watercolours with their titles and prices, which ranged from £60 to £125, so from £3,500 - £7,400 in 2020 prices. Blampied chose the painting 'Dumping' for Harold Baily (see left) and sent it to him after the exhibition. Baily bought another picture from the exhibition, called 'On the Cote d'Azur', probably from the Schwartz Gallery in New York in early 1931. These paintings are mentioned by Blampied in a letter to Baily dated 7th April 1931.
Label on watercolour chosen by Blampied for Harold Baily.
(Click to enlarge)
Title: Blampied's Nonsense show, an Adventure in Flippancy
Date: May, 1931
Gallery: Walter Bull & Sanders
Total works shown: 56
► Drawings: 56
Notes: This show was widely reviewed in the Press, many of which printed reproductions of pictures. One of the pictures, 'The freedom of Epsom' is in the British Museum and one, 'Gad, madam, your features are uncommonly familiar; weren't you married to me once?' is in the Victoria and Albert Museum. However, the picture at the V&A is no longer listed in their online catalogue.
The pen and ink drawing 'I heard you whisper my name among the roses' (cat 2) is in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Three Labour seats (13) A swell on the High C's (27)
Title: Water colour drawings and etchings by Edmund Blampied
Date: October, 1931
Gallery: T & R Annan & Sons, Glasgow
Total works shown: 66
► Etchings: 53
► Lithographs: 2
► Watercolours: 11
Notes: One of the watercolours was entitled 'Red Carnations', which is now at Princeton University Art Museum.
Title: Exhibition of drawings, etchings and drypoints by Edmund Blampied R.E.
Date: 18 April - 14 May, 1932
Gallery: Schwartz Galleries, 507 Madison Avenue, New York
Total works shown: 51
► Etchings: 29
► Lithographs: 22 drawings
Notes: The catalogue for this exhibition has been seen in the New York Public Library (Belcher, Blampied scrapbook 03-222). Two of the titles are for drawings that appeared in 'Travels with A Donkey'. They were bought with the five other remaining drawings from the book by Albert Wiggin, the banker who bought more than 200 drawings by Blampied when he visited his studio in 1933.
An example of one of Blampied's 'Colour poems' (click to enlarge)
Items 43 to 47 are all entitled 'Colour Symphony' with numbers 3, 7, 8, 10 and 11. These were abstract watercolours, which Blampied also called 'Colour poems', one of which is in the collection of the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. They were done by placing damp paper on glass and allowing the watercolours to diffuse through the substrate.
The watercolour 'Personnel at lunch' (cat 41) is in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Title: Water colours, drawings, and lithographs by Blampied
Date: June - July, 1933
Gallery: Walter Bull & Sanders, 22 Cork Street, London
Total works shown: 35
► Drawings: 25
► Lithographs: 10
Notes: This was a small exhibition. Seven of the 'drawings' were of flowers, probably water colours. Some of the drawings were related to prints such as 'Discussing the pound' (cat 25), probably the drypoint 'Agents de change' [AA:156; AH:32.1], 'Fetching the doctor' (cat 15), which is the same title as a lithograph [AA:L24; AH:L30.2], and 'The Wreck, Dieppe' (cat 2), which is also the subject of a lithograph in 1922 [The Wreck, AA:L13; AH:22.2]. The 10 lithographs included seven humorous titles plus the portraits of Elizabeth Lander as 'Serpina' [AA:L27; AH:L32.1] and John St. Helier Lander [AA:L28; AH:L33.1].
Title: Hot dogs or food for laughter
Date: November?, 1934
Gallery: Ackermann Gallery, 50 East 57th Street, New York
Total works shown: 28 + 12?
► Drawings: 28
► Lithographs: 12
Notes: This exhibition showed 28 drawings, many of which were the same titles as published lithographs, including the 12 titles in the folio called 'Hot Dogs' (see left) which was published by A.C. & H.W. Dickins and A. Ackermann, New York. Dickins was a British publisher. I can find no mention of a similar exhibition in the U.K. or of any advertising in Britain of the 'Hot Dogs' folio, so these folios may only have been sold in the USA.
Title: Water colour drawings by Edmund Blampied
Date: 7th December, 1935 to 4th January 1936
Gallery: Leicester Galleries, Leicester Square, London
Total works shown: 39
► Watercolours: 39
Notes: The titles of the watercolours indicate Blampied's usual themes: horses, collecting seaweed, farm carts, a landlord, and Jersey. I have seen a copy with notes in Blampied's hand and the prices of the pictures. They were about a quarter of the prices of pictures in earlier exhibitions, so in the range of £14 - 24, with one item already sold. The prices of water colours in 1930 ranged from £50 to £105, so either Blampied's notes indicate the amount he expected to receive from the sale of each watercolour, or the prices he could ask had fallen drastically. I suspect the latter, as a later catalogue of watercolours shown at Annan's in Glasgow (see below) was printed with similarly low prices.
The exhibition was held with exhibitions of watercolours by Arthur Rackham and sculptures by Alan Durst.
Title: Paintings and drawings by Edmund Blampied
Date: March, 1936
Gallery: T & R Annan & Sons, Glasgow
Total works shown: 39
Notes: This is another exhibition of paintings at much lower prices than 6 years earlier: 11 pictures were priced at £30, eight at £24, four at £21, twenty at £15, and the rest at between £8 and £12, except for one called 'Differences' (which suggests an argument, a typical Blampied theme) priced at £36. Several titles had been shown at the previous exhibition. The new titles reflected the fact that the Blampieds had visited the Continent, notably Wimereux in France and Knocke (Knokke) in Belgium, where Blampied had executed some oils. He described this in letters to Harold Baily.
The oil sketches done at Knocke are on small wood panels 8 inches by 11½ - not many about 10. A few are views from hotel window ... Two or three of buildings, sea and people. There is a night scene, a part of the front.
The photograph of Blampied (see left) was taken at the Hotel Edward VII, Avenue Lippess (now probably Lippenslaan), in Knocke (now spelled Knokke) in June 1934. He was aged 48. The hotel no longer exists; in fact most hotels in Knokke have disappeared, replaced by flats. Blampied wouldn't recognise it now.
Left: Knocke, Belgium, oil on panel (cat 22). Right: Night Effect, Knocke, oil on panel (cat 25).
The two paintings of Knocke shown above were made from the same raised view point, probably the balcony of the Grand Hotel des Flandres in Knocke, where the Blampieds stayed on their visit in July 1935. If you look closely at the lights on the night scene you will see Blampied's thumb print where he smudged the paint to soften the effect. Both were priced at £15, which is equivalent to about £1,000 in 2020 in terms of the retail prices index.
Title: Oils and watercolors by Edmund Blampied
Date: November - December, 1937
Gallery: Guy Mayer Gallery, New York
Total works shown: number not known
Notes: Blampied wrote several times to Harold Baily in 1937 about preparing paintings to be shown by Guy Mayer, who had visited Blampied in his studio in the summer of 1937 to discuss an exhibition in New York. They talked for four hours and Mayer bought for himself a 'good sized' watercolour and four small oil panels (letter to Harold Baily dated 6/9/1937). Both Mayer and Baily sent Blampied a copy of Esquire which reproduced six watercolours and had the title Blampied: French Peasant
. Blampied wrote to Harold Baily in December 1937 about this:
As for being referred to as a French peasant, that made me laugh. I have been referred to in another publication (this some months ago) as a Dutch Jew. Maybe some day I may be referred to as a Jewish Christian Zulu. However all that does not matter - as long as my work is talked about let anybody say what they like about it.
Title: Recent water colors and oils by Edmund Blampied
Date: 1st to 27th May, 1939
Gallery: Guy Mayer Gallery, New York
Total works shown: 19
► Pastels: 5
► Oils: 4
► Water colours: 9
► Crayon sketch: 1
Notes: The catalogue of this exhibition has been seen. It is the first exhibition that indicates that Blampied drew in pastels. Harold Baily bought a pastel called 'Vraicking in the morning'.
Both sides of the Admission card to the exhibition (click to enlarge)
Title: Exhibition and Sale of Drawings by Edmund Blampied
Date: December, 1939
Gallery: Restaurant De Gruchy, St. Helier, Jersey
Total works shown: 30
Notes: This exhibition was arranged by Blampied to benefit the St. John Ambulance War appeal. Blampied told Harold Baily in a letter dated 28th December 1939 that £536 had been raised, which is roughly equivalent to £30,000 in 2020, and all but 8 pictures had been sold. There were plans to publish a book of the drawings but that came to nothing as the Channel Islands were occupied by the Germans in June 1940.
Cover of the list of pictures (click to enlarge)
Title: Work by Edmund Blampied
Date: February - April, 1941
Gallery: The Cleveland Museum of Art, USA
Total works shown: 183
► Etchings: 117
► Lithographs: 21
► Drawings: 12
► Watercolours: 18
► Oil paintings: 14
► Sculptures: 1
Notes: Blampied had been commissioned in December 1938 by the Print Club of Cleveland to design an etching for its members. Blampied sent them three sketches in early 1939, one was chosen, and he etched the plate in Jersey in about June. It was printed by David Strang in London, the plate was cancelled, and 250 proofs were sent to Cleveland. Blampied sent Harold Baily one of his 10 personal proofs in September 1939. The print was issued to the Club members in February 1941, to coincide with a show of Blampied's art at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Harold Baily and Blampied in London in 1937
This was the first and largest non-commercial exhibition of the work of Edmund Blampied, anywhere. Of the 183 items which were shown at the exhibition, 74 were lent by Harold Baily including most of the early etchings or drypoints, 18 of the 21 lithographs, 12 small oil panels of which seven were of Jersey, and seven water colours: 'Controversy', 'Jersey cows', 'A Jersey Shore', 'On a Jersey coast road', 'A Jersey slipway', 'On the Cote D'Azur' and 'The water cart'.
Although Harold Baily wrote to Blampied in April 1941 to tell him about the exhibition, it is doubtful that the letter got through as people in Jersey were limited to sending and receiving very short messages through the Red Cross. Even as Edmund Blampied was interned in Jersey by the Germans, Harold Baily was working to promote his work in the USA.
Title: Edmund Blampied
Date: 5th - 24th January, 1942
Gallery: Vose Galleries, Boston
Total works shown: 36
Notes: The list of titles was kindly supplied by the Vose Galleries. They had been recorded in the gallery ledger. Many of the items on sale had been shown earlier at the gallery of Guy Mayer in New York, who seems to have been Blampied's main agent in the USA. Blampied had mentioned 'a small show in Boston' in a letter to Harold Baily in March 1937, but no details of it have been found. It may have been delayed until 1942.
Title: Edmund Blampied: drawings from the Wiggin Collection
Date: November, 1942
Gallery: Boston Public Library, USA
Total works shown: number not known
Title: Watercolors by Edmund Blampied
Date: February, 1944
Gallery: Brooklyn Public Library, USA
Total works shown: number not known
Notes: This is known only from a record of a 1 page typewritten catalogue of the exhibition held by the Frick Art Reference Library in New York.
Title: Exhibition of works by Edmund Blampied
Date: October - November, 1946
Gallery: Barreau Gallery, Société Jersiase, Jersey
Total works shown: 70
► Watercolours: 15
► Oil paintings: 36
► Pen drawing: 1
► Not stated: 17
Notes: This was Blampied's first exhibition after the War and his first true selling show in Jersey. Blampied sent a list of the titles to Harold Baily in New York with photographs of some of the paintings. The first page of three is shown left. The list has Blampied's notes on ownership, if items were lent; the prices of 47 pictures that were for sale; and what had been sold. The prices were higher than before the war and ranged from £25 to £80, which is equivalent to between £750 and £3,300 in 2020 prices. The total cost of all paintings was £2,200, equivalent to about £90,000 today. Fifteen pictures were marked as sold, costing £610.
First page of Blampied's list of pictures (click to enlarge)
There were several portraits of people and dogs, all lent: Canon G. Balleine; Alexander Coutanche; 'Gill', the Coutanche's dog and 'Tiger', another; Flight Officer Hulton; Lieutenant Beaufort; Jurat Hocquard; Mrs Charles Le Quesne; George Keiley; Sir Herbert Barker; and Mr Hawkins of Malassis, a watermill that had been repaired and pressed into service to grind grain during the war. As well as titles that reflected the Occupation of Jersey such as 'The Red Cross letter', 'Paul Mill', 'Outing during the Occupation', 'Listening in during Occupation' and 'The Threshing machine', there were several oil paintings of flowers - 'Peonies', 'Hydrangea', 'Tulips' and 'Godetias'. There were also titles that indicated an earlier time, 'Tante Elise and Tante Clara' and 'Tunisia', and the usual vraicking scenes: 'A day vraicking', 'Vraic cart' and 'Early morning vraicking'.
Blampied sent Harold Baily 20 black and white photographs of pictures that were taken for 'The Jersey Morning News' with a letter dated 18th November 1946. According to Jerripedia the paper was published between November 1937 and June 1940, but there is an item in the Jersey archives that makes reference to a copy of the Jersey Morning News dated December 1946, so it must have been revived for a short while after WW2.
Title: Paintings by E. Blampied
Date: March - April, 1947
Gallery: T & R Annan & Sons, 518 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow, C.2
Total works shown: 40, plus 10 'In the Portfolio'.
Notes: After the War Blampied's only exhibitions in Britain were held at the gallery of T. & R. Annan in Glasgow. Blampied was good friends with Thomas Craig Annan (1894-1965) known as 'Craigie'. Although seven of the pictures had been shown the year before in Jersey, there were many new titles and some old ones, which suggests that Blampied was selling things that had been in his personal collection for some time such as 'The Belgian Horse' an oil painting held back from the 1920s. The prices, which were in a mixture of whole pounds and guineas shown as pounds and shillings, ranged from 15 guineas (£15.15.0) to £60. Prices were generally £5 more than in Jersey, perhaps to reflect Annan's commission.
Review in The Scotsman, 20th March 1947
There were 10 pictures listed separately under a heading 'In the Portfoilo' but they were priced separately ranging from 11 guineas to £30 with a total cost of £230. Five of them had 'Jersey' in their titles, which suggests that they were all of scenes on the Island and were considered to be a set.
Title: Water colors, oil paintings, etchings and drawings by Edmund Blampied
Date: June - July, 1947
Gallery: Brooklyn Public Library
Total works shown: 50
► Etchings: 18
► Lithographs: 2
► Drawings: 2
► Watercolours: 24
► Oil paintings: 4
Labels on the back of 'Dumping' a watercolour by Blampied (click to enlarge)
Notes: This exhbition was probably instigated by Harold James Baily, an American lawyer with a practice in Manhattan, who lived in Brooklyn where he was a Trustee of the Brooklyn Public Library. As you will see above left from the labels on the backboard of a watercolour called 'Dumping' (1930), he had lent it to an exhibition of watercolours held at the Brooklyn Museum in 1931 and in 1947 it was shown again with 23 others watercolours from his collection, plus two oil paintings, two pastels, two ink drawings, 18 drypoints and etchings, and two lithographs, all by Edmund Blampied.
Title: Exhibition of paintings
Date: May, 1949
Gallery: Barreau Art Gallery, St. Helier
Total works shown: about 30 titles.
Notes: I have no details of this exhibition.
Title: Exhibition of Paintings
Date: 1st to 25th April, 1951
Gallery: A. de Gruchy & Co., King Street, St. Helier, Jersey
Total works shown: 45 (7 lent, not for sale)
Notes: I am assuming that this catalogue is for an exhibition in 1951.
The titles included seven vraicking scenes, six scenes of farms or farmers, four of Paris and somewhere called 'Navarreux, Spain.'
Thanks to June Summers Shaw for photographs of the catalogue.
Title: Oil Paintings and Drawings by Edmund Blampied, R.B.A.
Date: May, 1953
Gallery: T & R Annan & Sons, Glasgow
Total works shown: 54.
Invitation card to the exhibition (click each to enlarge)
Notes: The catalogue gives the title of each picture, but does not state the medium. The prices ranged from £12 to £100. Many of the titles suggest Jersey and a couple were of old haunts, Dieppe and Annecy, but two were of London: 'Hyde Park' and 'Richmond, the River'. The Blampieds had flown to London several times to stay with Cecil Hunt and Blampied's brother, John.
Title: Unknown
Date: 1954
Gallery: John Nelson Bergstrom Art Center and Museum, Neenah, Wisconsin
Total works shown: number not known
Notes: This exhibition was organised by one of the Assistant Curators, Mrs Evelyn Cloak-Campbell, who knew Blampied and had a personal collection of his paintings and drawings. I think that some of them are now in the Wriston Art Museum at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
Title: Exhibition of Paintings
Date: 29th November - 11th December, 1954
Gallery: Barreau Art Gallery, Museum, Jersey
Total works shown: number not known.
Notes: I only have the cover of the catalogue of this exhibition, which Blampied signed to give to someone, so I don't know the titles or prices of the pictures shown. The image on the front indicates that Blampied's silhouettes, which he published in March 1950, were on sale.
Cover of exhibition catalogue, signed by Blampied (click to enlarge)
Title: Paintings, etchings and drawings by Edmund Blampied
Date: May, 1956
Gallery: Brooklyn Public Library
Total works shown: 90
► Watercolours: 44. ► Pastels: 5.
► Oil panels: 12. ► Oil paintings: 4.
► Drypoints & etchings: 11. ► Lithograph: 1.
► Bronze: 1. ► Silhouettes: 12
Notes: This was another large exhibition of Blampied's work from Harold Baily's collection. This time he showed 44 watercolours, as he had been buying at least one a year since about 1928, excepting the war years. Baily also had an extensive collection of Blampied's prints, probably more than 120 etchings and drypoints, and most of Blampied's lithographs. This was a small selection of items from his house on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn which contained the largest private collection of Blampied's work ever created. He died in 1964. His wife Marguerite gave Blampied's self-portrait and his portrait of Harold Baily in 1981 to the Mead Art Museum at Amherst with nine drypoints and three other watercolours. She sold the rest.
Title: Exhibition of Paintings.
Date: 14th March - 1st April, 1960
Gallery: Barreau Art Gallery, Museum, Jersey
Total works shown: 48
► Paintings: 35
► Watercolours: 7
► Abstract: 3
► Medium not stated: 3
Notes: Another small selling show at the Museum in Jersey with prices for paintings ranging from £30 to £120. The prices were seen in the Harold Baily collection at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst University.
Title: Unknown
Date: 25h July - 19th August, 1962
Gallery: John Nelson Bergstrom Art Center, Neenah, Wisconsin.
Total works shown: unknown.
Notes: This exhibition is reported in the Appleton Post Crescent newspaper. Many of the items in this exhibition probably came from the personal collection of Mrs Evelyn Cloak-Campbell (sister of Madame de la Villéon, the wife of a French Consul in Jersey, a friend of Blampied) and a Curator at the John Nelson Bergstrom Art Center and Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin.
Title: The Art of Edmund Blampied
Date: July, 1964
Gallery: Barreau Art Gallery, Museum, Jersey
Total works shown: 80
► Oil paintings: 43
► Watercolours and drawings: 22
► Crayon on wallpaper: 4
► Drypoints, etchings and lithograph: 11
Notes: This was the first and only exhibition of Blampied's work in Jersey, held in his life time, at which nothing was for sale. It wasn't really a comprehensive exhibition of his work as most of the oils and watercolours had been done after 1945; his work before the war was in Britain or the United States, in collections such as that of Harold Baily. The Museum in Jersey had not bought any of Blampied's oil paintings or watercolours during the period 1920-1938, when he was at his peak as an artist in London. Blampied thought that they were waiting to be given his pictures when he was dead. He was probably right.
Title: Unknown
Date: August, 1965
Gallery: Community Theatre?, Neenah, Wisconsin.
Total works shown: unknown.
Notes: This exhibition is reported in the Appleton Post Crescent newspaper and Blampied was a topic of an article in an issue of American Artist, soon after he died. Many of the items in this exhibition probably came from the personal collection of Mrs Evelyn Cloak-Campbell, a friend of Blampied through her sister, Madame de la Villéon, the wife of a French Consul in Jersey) and an Assistant Curator at the John Nelson Bergstrom Art Center and Museum in Neenah, Wisconsin.
Other exhibitions
Blampied showed his drypoints and etchings at the annual exhibitions of the Royal Society of Painter Etchers and Engravers. Their records have been searched and Blampied's prints noted in exhibitions in: 1920 (4), 1921 (3), 1922 (3), 1923 (1), 1924 (3), 1925 (2), 1926 (3), 1927 (3), 1928 (4), 1929 (3), 1930 (2), 1932 (4), 1933 (3), 1934 (3), 1935 (4), 1936 (3), 1937 (4), 1941 (1 drawing), 1946 (1, 3 drawings), 1957 (1), 1957-58 (6), 1959 (3).
Blampied was a member of the Senefelder Club of lithographers from 1920, when he started to learn the method, but there is no archive of the club and no catalogues of the annual exhibitions of the Group have been found. The exhibitions are reported in the art press.
Blampied was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of British Artists in 1938 and showed paintings at their biannual exhibitions in: Winter, 1938 (3), Summer, 1939 (3), Winter, 1939-40 (3), Summer, 1940 (3), Summer, 1946 (3), Winter, 1946 (3), Summer, 1947 (2), Winter, 1947-48 (3), Summer, 1948 (3), Winter, 1948 (3), and Summer, 1950 (4).
Blampied showed a few prints and drawings at the Royal Academy: 1926 (3 drawings), 1933 (1 dry point), 1934 (1 dry point), 1937 (1 dry point), and 1958 (1 dry point).
Blampied showed a few paintings at the Royal Scottish Academy: 1929 (1 oil), 1953 (3 oils), 1958 (3 oils), and 1962 (2 oils).
Cover of RSPE exhibition catalogue, 1935 (click to enlarge)
Blampied's paintings have also been shown at exhibitions at the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool in 1924 (1), 1927 (2), 1936-37 (3) and 1938-39 (3); at the Atkinson Gallery, Stockport in 1934 (2), 1935 (1), and 1946 (1); and at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1926 (2), 1938 (3) and 1941 (1).
Prints shown at other exhibitions have been recorded but are not listed here as there are too many of them.