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Michael Blaker R.E.
Traditional painter-etcher;
a lifelong involvement
A Retrospective of his prints

Michael Blaker: Self-Portrait with Hero, oils, c1980

Michael was nearing ninety-one years of age when he died in November 2018. He worked till his final year, holding a retrospective 90th birthday exhibition, Blaker’s World, at the Pie Factory Gallery in Margate, April 2018.

A painter-etcher, writer, and for ten years, 1983-93, editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, Michael was a lover of art, jazz and animals; he also had an eye for the humour in life.

Born and raised in Hove, where his father ran a newsagency, Michael Blaker’s paternal grandfather and grand uncle had both been aldermen and, turn and turn about, mayors of the municipality of Brighton & Hove. His maternal grandparents ran the Elite café and oyster bar beneath the Brighton promenade. They were Swiss immigrants of Italian extraction; he a Lanfranchi (Dante had met an ancestor in Hell) and she a Giuliani, granddaughter of a Longhi, and descendant of the Venetian painter Pietro Longhi (1701-1785). Blaker’s mother had attended Brighton School of Art.

Educated at Brighton Grammar School, except during a brief period of War time evacuation to Kendal, Michael became increasingly interested in animals, beetles and the natural world in general, and took up taxidermy. As a boy and young man his bedroom in the Brighton family home was reminiscent of a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ such as collected by artists of the 16th-18th centuries. An early etching showed one of his favourite haunts, the Skeleton Room of Brighton Museum. In the Sixth Form Michael was allowed to take on a small room adjacent to the art room as his studio.

Blaker was enrolled at the Brighton School of Art in 1945. In his first two years he followed the usual Intermediate course, a traditional introduction to different areas of the fine arts, but which did not include etching. It was while painting a mural on the staircase wall in the School overlooking the etching room that his future interest in etching was determined. For his final two years of his course he chose to specialise in Illustration, in which etching was part of the curriculum.

The Etching Room at Brighton School of Art, 1947-49. Tutor Dick Cowern compares a student’s plate with the printed impression. Michael Blaker is at the back, second from the right.

Michael described this ‘revelation’ and the excitement of his discovery in his Autobiography.

The very atmosphere of the etching room, with the white dishes of dangerous green acid, the procedure of dampening down the best rag paper, of smoking the beeswax ground – the air of devoted, monastic dedication, seemed archaic…We lived for the Friday all-day sessions, and I spent a great deal of time studying the history and methods of my new interest. From that moment when I had looked through the fanlight from my scaffolding and seen the etching room at work I had known by divine intuition that it was to be my selected way of life. Nevertheless, I was still involved, and was to continue to be so – we are, after all, essentially Painter-Etchers … with painting, modelling and sculpture.

Ted Owen, a fellow student at Brighton Eetching & aquatint 1958-59

Blaker would return to Brighton School of Art nearly a decade later, as a dedicated student of etching. In between these two stints at the School of Art, Blaker visited Paris, and spent some time in London, running his own art gallery in a cellar behind New Bond Street, where he also produced an Art Gazette (which ran to four issues) before returning to Brighton.

Extremely short-sighted, Blaker was exempted from National Service, so back in Brighton he returned to the School of Art in 1955-56 for a period to take advantage of the Friday Etching classes.

Working directly into the plate, sometimes adding aquatint, or roughening the surface to get a mezzotint effect, he made portraits of his fellow students. He began to use zinc rather than copper for larger plates.

In 1957 Michael was elected an Associate of the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers. The same year, at Brighton School of Art he and friends formed a spasm jazz band, The Eminent Victorians, and for a while jazz-playing occupied much of his spare time. Brighton had a very active Traditional Jazz scene at this period.

Jazz Dance, original etching with aquatint, late 1950’s.

Also in the late 1950’s and early ‘60’s Michael spent time at Ditchling. As a temporary job one summer he painted inn signs for Crosby Cook who lived in Brangwyn’s former home, The Jointure. Cook had been a lithographic printer and worked with Brangwyn on his posters. After Brangwyn’s death, he and his family moved into The Jointure, from where he ran a sign painting business. His daughter Diana was a student at Brighton College of Art in 1957 and Michael helped her with her etching.

Michael was friends with some of the artists of the Guild of St Dominic, some of whom taught at Brighton College of Art. During Michael’s first stint at Brighton he was taught silversmithing by Guild member Douglas Pruden and it was Pruden who suggested he sleep in the now empty gypsy caravan near their workshops. Pruden had built it earlier.

The caravan in which Blaker lived during his Summer at Ditchling, etching 1957-58. The man leaning against the caravan is Tony Lewery, a fellow student of Michael’s at Brighton. The little girl is Helen, Pruden’s daughter..

By the late 1950’s Eric Gill had long left the Ditchling community but Michael also spent a few weeks at Pigotts, near High Wycombe, at Gill’s last guild workshop. There were too, travels to the Continent.

It was only in the mid-1970’s, when he met and married Catriona McTurk, that Blaker moved on from his peripatetic rather Bohemian way of life. In 1978 they bought a house with a garden in Rochester, soon acquiring a cat and two dogs; it was their home until they moved to Ramsgate in 1987.

Michael decided to make his living primarily from selling etchings through commercial galleries, and in relation to this began to hand-colour his impressions with watercolour washes, an unusual procedure at that time.

Blaker’s Autobiography (published 1986) opens with

An etching should, of course, traditionally, be in black and white. It has “always been” and to the mind there at once leaps the image of a thin black frame enclosing a vast white mount in which the print - ideally rather small – sits enshrined with rather more authority about it than an old master drawing. There is, and always has been as Sickert inferred, something about an etching.

However,

It was pointed out to me (by the galleries in the late 1970’s) clearly and incisively that monochrome etchings, however painstakingly delineated, would not sell. Colour, was all they bought. Did they? I didn’t. Nor did many people I knew. Nor did the painter-etchers of the old school favour it. Colour to a painter-etcher had been an anathema. However, the whole new modern school of printmaking went in for colour wholesale. My own approach was admittedly, unmitigated Nineteenth Century; but that was what I liked… I was not going to change, because I only wanted to draw what I saw, and what I saw was seen with the eyes of that period, even when I inserted a contemporary car into a plate.

Interest of subject matter and detail were his overriding preoccupations.

“Why not colour them as you colour your watercolours?” Said Catriona.
“Or like the Eighteenth century aquatints - gentle, delicate washes - ”
I commenced to do this.

And sales duly followed. In 1985 one of his exhibits at the R.A. Summer show, printed in an edition of 200, completely sold out.

Blaker had been exhibiting etchings at the R.E. from 1957 and at the Royal Academy from 1965. It was only from 1965 that he began to print editions from his plates. Over the following years he increased the potential size of his editions, in some cases to 300, though usually far fewer impressions were actually printed.

Michael’s etchings are like a mirror on his life.

Self Portrait etching, aged 28. Etching, 1956.

At the Piano, etching, drypoint, aquatint and colour wash, c1985. The artist’s wife Catriona, who at that period was an accompanist and taught recorder at a local school in Rochester.

Summer Evening on the Medway, etching, aquatint and colour wash, c1980.

All the prints offered in this exhibition are from Michael Blaker’s estate.

The Blaker Exhibition

To view the entire Exhibition, print-by-print, click this link and then follow the prints through the Gallery by using the "next print >" and "< previous print" navigation buttons. Alternatively, you can select an individual print from its thumbnail or title in the list below.

		Stag Beetles Etching & Drypoint, 1947
		October Evening Etching, 1947
		Fish Market, (Brighton) Etching & Drypoint, 1947
		Railway Sidings Etching, 1947
		Self Portrait etching, aged 28 Etching, 1956
		Lower Promenade, Brighton Etching, 1956
		Life class study Etching, 1955
		Portrait Study Etching, 1957
		Helen under a tree Etching, 1956-58
		Sarah in a Fur Hat Etching c1961
		Denys Etching, 1956-58
		Girl with Trees Etching, 1973-75
		Catriona in furs Hand-coloured Etching, 1973-75
		Melanie Etching & Aquatint, late 1960's
		Melanie Etching & Aquatint, late 1960's
		Girl in a long dress Etching, 1971-73
		Diana Etching & Aquatint, 1964-65
		Jazz Dance Etching & Aquatint, late 1950's
		Ted Owen – clarinet player Etching & Aquatint, 1958-59
		Brighton Fishermen Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Pier and Capstans Etching, 1980
		Pier and Capstans Etching, 1980
		Old Shoreham Bridge Etching, c1974
		Rochester – a Wintry Dusk in the Vines Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Teatime in Rochester Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		At the Pier (Ramsgate) Etching, late 1980's
		A Winter's day by the Castle, Rochester Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		A Winter evening on the Backs, Rochester Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		A Winter Morning at Deanery Gate, Rochester Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Winter in the Vines Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Medway Backwater Etching & Aquatint, c1980
		Sailing Barge at low ride, Medway Etching & Aquatint, c1980
		Cranbrook Mill Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Hilaire Belloc’s Windmill Etching, c1975
		Stooks and Harvester Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		The Donkey Queue, Broadstairs Etching & Colour Wash, c1980's
		Morning at Piddinghoe Etching & Colour Wash, c1980's
		Siesta with Cat Etching, Drypoint & Colour Wash, c1980
		Girl with Cat Etching, c1970's
		Girl reading and Cat Drypoint, c1980’s – 90’s
		Girl with Cat Drypoint, c1970's
		Carriages in Salzburg Etching & Colour Wash, c1983-86
		Dieppe Rooftops Etching & Colour Wash, c1977
		The Road to Montoire Etching & Colour Wash, c1991-93
		Winter in Montmartre Etching & Colour Wash, c1992
		Evening outside the Moulin Rouge Etching, Aquatint & Colour Wash, c1987
		Travellers in Italy Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Venice Evening Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Lake Como Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Early morning by the Lake, Italy Etching & Blue Wash, c1980
		Richmond Lock Etching, c1970
		Sudden Storm Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Second-hand dealers Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		London Capriccio Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Late Night – Waterloo East Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		At the dog show Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Stroll at the dog show Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Tired Dog Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Waiting for the Judging Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		On guard Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Contemplating Cow Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Italian shepherd in the rain Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Circus Monkey Etching & Colour Wash, c1970
		Penitents Etching & Drypoint, c1970's
		Home with the Catch – Ramsgate Harbour Etching & Colour Wash, c1990
		Paradise Cottage Etching & Colour Wash, c1975
		The golden pears of Beresford Etching & Colour Wash, c1985
		The artist's hat Etching & Colour Wash, c1990
		Dog family of the artist Etching & Colour Wash, c1985
		Hero with Chrysanthemums Etching & Colour Wash, c1985-90
		Catriona in the Chinese Room Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Anemones and Violets Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Wild Flowers and Poppies Etching & Colour Wash, c1985
		Autumn Fruits Etching & Colour Wash, c1980
		Daffodils and Narcissus Etching & Colour Wash, c1985
		Summer Flowers Aquatint & Colour Wash, c1980

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