Blanche Baker (1844–1929) was a Bristol-born English watercolour artist who specialised in landscape paintings. She trained at the Bristol School of Art, and went on to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy and with the Society of Lady Artists and the Camsix Art Club. She taught drawing in London schools, and her work documents extensive British and European travel. In 1902 she was elected a full member of the Bristol Academy.
Early life
Blanche Baker's father, William Baker, was born in Bristol in about 1820 and in 1840 married Mary Anne Crispin, whose mother was from Devon. They lived in Trenchard Street, in central Bristol. Initially he was a plasterer, then a builder.Ancestry.co.uk, Census 1841 and 1861. Ellen Blanche Baker was their third child and was christened at the Society of Protestant Dissenters in Lewin's Mead, Bristol, on 15 September 1844.Ancestry.co.uk.
‘[William] came into some money from his father and succeeded in amassing a tolerably fair fortune’Western Daily Press, 1 July 1880. – by 1861 he was a successful builder and contractor, employing 160 men,Ancestry.co.uk, Census 1861. and at some point he also acquired a saw mill at Canon's Marsh, Bristol.Canon’s Marsh Steam Saw Mills was later run by William’s oldest son, Herbert – information obtained from William Baker probate summary. The Baker family moved to Sneyd Park Villa in a wealthier part of Bristol.Local historian Chris Stephens in Bristol Nine Magazine (February and June 2018) gives the date of the move as 1859 and the full address as being Ivywell Road. Stephens says that Baker purchased some land following the break-up of the Sneyd Park Estate in 1855, and goes on to explain that Baker’s company went on to build the Montpelier and Clifton Downs stations ‘in … Gothic revival style’. These suggestions are not fully referenced. This was a substantial property with ‘lawns, gardens, a conservatory, stables and one and a half acres of land’ plus an adjacent farm.Western Daily Press, 23 May 1885. On the date of the 1861 census Blanche Baker was not actually in residence at Sneyd Park Villa, although the census indicates that she is one of nine siblings. Her grandmother Betsy Crispin had lived with them for several years, and there were live-in servants.
Following her general education, Blanche attended Bristol School of Art (established in 1853 as ‘Bristol School of Practical Art’ and later accommodated within the Bristol Academy for the Promotion of Fine Arts's grand building that had been opened in 1858. The School of Art would become the Royal West of England Academy Schools).‘Our History’, Royal West of England Academy website. She ‘graduated’ in 1864, winning a prize for Outline of FlowersWestern Daily Press, 30 Nov. 1864. – a work which qualified for the only National Medallion to be awarded to Bristol School of Art in that year.Report of the Examiners on the Works Sent from the Schools of Art in Competition for National Medallions, 1864. Meanwhile, in 1863, in the competitions that Bristol Rifle Club held annually in Sneyd Park, Blanche had taken second prize in the Ladies Rifle Match – 100 yards, seven shots with Prussian needle rifles. ‘These novelty, but interesting matches attracted, of course, a great gathering of both sexes.’Western Daily Press, 1 Aug. 1863.
In 1865 Mary Baker, Blanche's mother, died at the age of 46. There were three girls under the age of 10 to be looked after, and presumably much of the running of the household now fell to Mary's older daughters Rosa, 23, Blanche, 20, and Kate, 16. The oldest boy, Herbert, 21, had followed his father into the building business.
Artistic success and a family crisis The acceptance of a watercolour drawing, Greenfell Lane, Gloucester, by the Royal Academy in 1869 seems to have been a turning point for Blanche's artistic career.Titles of Baker’s works exhibited at the Royal Academy are taken from Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: A Complete Dictionary of Contributors and Their Work from Its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, vol. 1: Abbayne to Carrington, (London: Henry Graves & Co. and George Bell & Sons, 1905) and Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Academy Exhibitors, 1905–1970: A Dictionary of Artists and Their Work in the Summer Exhibitions of the Royal Academy of Arts (Wakefield: EP Publishing, 1973). In early 1870 she had a one-person show in Bristol – 70 watercolours (some framed and others unframed)Bristol Mercury, 7 Feb. 1870. – and in the summer of that year The Turnstile was selected for the Royal Academy. Blanche would sign her pictures with her initials, BBJoanna Soden (compiler), The Society of Women Artists Exhibitors 1855–1996, vol. 1: A–D (Calne: Hilmarton Manor Press, 1996). – suited to the small dimensions of most of her work and perhaps also conveniently gender-neutral.
The Bristol Academy for the Promotion of Fine ArtsThere are some inconsistencies in name use; for clarity ‘Bristol Academy’ will henceforth be used. opened a public exhibiting space in the spring of 1870,Illustrated Times, London, 26 Nov. 1870. and Blanche exhibited regularly at its Winter Exhibition for the next twenty years. The choice of watercolour as Blanche's preferred medium and of landscape as her preferred genre was common among ‘lady artists’, but the Bristol Academy did have traditional links to ‘Bristol School’ landscape painters such as William Muller, Francis Danby, J. B. Pyne and John Syer – active in the early nineteenth century – whose Bristol Society of Artists it had incorporated.‘Our History’ Royal West of England Academy website. In 1876 Blanche was elected an Associate of the Bristol Academy.Western Daily Press, 5 Feb. 1876.
Around this time her father ‘made the acquaintance of the wife of the Rev. Mr Wilkinson, on the death of whom he conceived the idea of marrying the widow, and communicated this fact to his family, who however were greatly opposed to the match.’ Nevertheless, the marriage to Mrs Gertrude Blanche Wilkinson, age 44, went ahead in April 1877.Ancestry.co.uk, Parish registers 1720–1933. The extent to which the changed circumstances at Sneyd Park Villa may have prompted Blanche to move from Bristol is not known, but a brief item in the Western Daily Press of 17 January 1878 noted that ‘Miss Blanche Baker has retired from the committee of the Boys’ Home in consequence of having left Bristol.’
The second marriage of William Baker proved even more calamitous than the family had feared. Mrs Gertrude Blanche Baker, in her mid-forties, was an ‘exceedingly improper person, for she was addicted to drink’. She behaved in an ‘unbecoming and indecent way’, committing adultery with the Sneyd Park Villa coachman (Wheeler) and the carpenter (Owen). Newspaper accounts from 1880 explain that her behaviour brought about ‘insanity’ and the necessity for William to be ‘removed to a lunatic asylum’. The Baker siblings took the unusual, but understandable, step of forming a committee and filing for divorce on behalf of their father, who was deemed incapable of representing himself. With adultery having been proved, a decree nisi was issued in July 1880 and a final decree in March 1881.Baker (by his committee) v. Baker, Wheeler & Owen in the High Court of Justice (Divorce), Court Minutes. The family now had the possibility of holding on to some of William's assets.
Although Blanche was said to have left Bristol in 1878, at the time of the 1881 census she was living with her sister Laura on the farm adjacent to Sneyd Park Villa.Ancestry.co.uk, Census 1881. However, a few years later she had moved to the outskirts of London – to Spring Cottage, Hanwell, Ealing, near where her father was living in a small private asylum, Wyke House, in Isleworth.William Baker probate summary and Historic Hospitals website.
Teaching Blanche had apparently left Bristol to teach art in a London school, partly inspired by a collection of essays on education by the philosopher and social theorist Herbert Spencer.Herbert Spencer, Education: Intellectual, Moral, and Physical (London: Williams & Norgate, 1861). The article ‘Spencer on Education’ at the Online Library of Liberty gives a full account of his educational theories. By coincidence, her sisters Rosa and Mabel Baker would be managing house for Spencer in the late 1880s and ‘we told him how the reading of this book [Education] by [Blanche] had induced her to take the post of art mistress in a London school, and had led to our leaving the country to join her in town.’‘Two’ [Rosa and Mabel Baker], Home Life with Herbert Spencer (Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1906, reprinted 1910), p. 106. It may have been Spencer's ideas on what was later termed a ‘child-centred’ approach to education that resonated with Blanche. The earlier reference to her serving on the committee of a boys’ homeWestern Daily Press, 17 Jan. 1878. seems to suggest social concern on her part and an awareness of the lack of opportunities for underprivileged children at this time before education had become nationally compulsory.
Becoming established
Blanche's strength of personality and independence are further evidenced in an 1884 classified advertisement in The Times: ‘Sketching Tours – Miss Blanche Baker, an exhibitor at the Royal Academy, will give LESSONS to ladies travelling with her on the Thames during the months of July and August.’The Times, 16 July 1884. Assuming that this enterprise went ahead, it was interrupted by her father's death on 16 August 1884. Blanche and her elder brother, Herbert Baker – who was now running their father's business at Canon's Marsh Steam Saw Mills – were the two executors of the will.William Baker probate summary. When probate was finally settled later in the year, William Baker's personal estate was worth about £5,311 (equivalent to about £627,000 in 2017) with a resworn amount of £14,938 in November 1884 (about £1,690,000 in 2017). Sneyd Park Villa was advertised for sale in the following year.Western Daily Press, 23 May 1885. It is not known whether the sale went ahead, as in 1888 Blanche used the Sneyd Park Villa address in the Royal Academy catalogue.
In early 1885 Blanche exhibited at a ‘Loan Exhibition of Women’s Industries’ at Clifton, Bristol.Western Daily Press, 27 Feb. 1885. Later in 1885 she had 11 watercolours in the Winter Exhibition of the Bristol Academy, ‘ transcripts of quaint buildings The Dutch House, Bristol; Clovelly and Mary-le-Port Street, Bristol’.Western Daily Press, 4 Dec. 1885.
In 1887 she exhibited three watercolours – Clovelly Pier, Clovelly and Bristol Streets – with the Society of Lady Artists (SLA) in London. The Society's purpose was ‘to gain acceptance for women artists by giving them the opportunity to exhibit their work. Membership was granted to women who had exhibited with the Society and who earned their livelihood through art.’ The Society's name changed to the more assertive Society of Women Artists in 1899.Elizabeth Lomas, Guide to the Archive of Art and Design, Victoria & Albert Museum (London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001), p. 228.