Below stairs

Edmund Blampied (1886-1966) 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 during the etching revival, but was also a lithographer, caricaturist, cartoonist, book illustrator and artist in oils, watercolours, silhouettes and bronze.

Blampied is well represented in the large collection of prints (both etchings and drypoints) that Sir John Ilott presented to Te Papa's forerunner, the National Art Gallery.

Blampied's earliest etchings are dated December 1909 and his prints were first shown at an exhibition of students' work in March 1914, where his etching of an ox-cart was noted by The Times. Blampied later recorded his method of working on zinc for etching and copper for drypoint in Ernest Lumsden's definitive treatise The Art of Etching. Blampied wrote: "I generally chose from amongst my various drawings one which would tend to produce a successful plate. I do not trace on to the copper, but copy a few important lines on to the bare metal with litho-chalk. I then sketch over this with an ordinary sewing needle and rub in a little black oil-colour. . . From the first my efforts are to improve on the sketch until I consider the plate finished. . . In very few cases do I touch a plate after the first proof, so the majority have but one state. If I am dissatisfied with either the composition or details, I prefer to start afresh upon another plate rather than make radical alterations."

One of the highlights of Blampied's subsequent career came in 1925 when the Central School of Arts and Crafts submitted two of his lithographs with the work of other students to the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris. The School won a Grand Prix for its works on paper and Blampied was one of 12 students who were awarded a Gold Medal as a collaborateur.

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; he illustrated short stories by E.F. Benson and other authors in Hutchinson's Magazine, and designed book jackets for publishers including Hodder & Stoughton, Herbert Jenkins, T. Fisher Unwin, Eveleigh Nash, William Collins and Constable.

When the market for etchings collapsed during the great depression in the early 1930s, Blampied reinvented himself as a cartoonist and caricaturist at a 1931 exhibition called 'Blampied's Nonsense Show'. This brought out his love of the absurd and led to his only book, obscurely entitled Bottled Trout and Polo. In May 1938 Blampied was elected to the Royal Society of British Artists. Later that year he was asked to prepare some new illustrations for a lavish edition of <em>Peter Pan</em>, the rights to which had been bequeathed by J.M. Barrie to Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children. The Blampied Edition of Peter and Wendy was published in 1939 and is one of the finest illustrated editions of this book.

In 1938 he returned with his wife to his native Jersey, surviving the German occupation and spending the rest of his life there.

The 'below stairs' in the title of this print indicates that it is in the servants' (today we say 'service') quarters of a grand house. The cook, silhouetted in white, contrasts graphically with the female servant, probably a junior housekeeper, who holds a broom. From her expression, and her proximity to the cook, we can infer a 'below stairs' romance is taking place, witnessed by the black cat between them. The coincidence between this print and 'Blampied's nonsense show' is worth noting, though the artist stops short of making his characters caricatures.

See: Wikipedia, 'Edmund Blampied', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Blampied

Dr Mark Stocker  Curator, Historical International Art   March 2018