Vernon Blake

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Vernon Blake (ca.1930)

Vernon Blake (born September 22, 1875 in Reigate , † April 18, 1930 in Avignon ) was a British author , journalist , painter , sculptor , inventor , avid cyclist and mountaineer . According to a contemporary journalist, he was "the most remarkable, the most versatile and the most outstanding man I have ever met".

biography

Design by Blake for the war memorial in Plan-d'Orgon
Blake's monument in Maussane-les-Alpilles

Vernon Blake was born to the physician Edward T. Blake and his wife Anne Madeleine Hanson; the family was wealthy. He received his university education at King's College and University College in London . He was interested in physics and chemistry, especially crystallography . His father rented a small house for him in Eaton Ford where he could carry out his university work; one room was set up as a laboratory.

From 1892 to 1896 Blake was a member of the North Road Cycling Club and raced, including setting the pace on a tricycle . In 1894 he won the popular Anfield 100 cycle race . However, as the magazine Cycling wrote, he preferred "the more unconventional kind of cycling". For example, he took part in a club trip over 200 miles from London to York , but then set out on his own for Edinburgh the following day to drive back to London via the Lake District and Manchester . Once he only traveled to Constantinople by bike and the most essential luggage, returned to England without money or papers and was only allowed to re-enter after receiving a telegram from his father. Frederick Thomas Bidlake wrote in Cycling : "He is one of the few who live the gospel never to take the train when the bike is doing the same thing." Blake is expected to continue cycling in these years East, for example to Syria, Turkey and the Balkans; His knowledge of Arabic is said to have enabled him to travel to Khartoum , disguised as a Fellache . However, there are no reliable sources for these trips. He was also said to have mastered 14 languages.

Blake was often out and about in the British Lake District , for mountaineering and off-road cycling . In 1896 he had an accident while mountain climbing with friends in the Alps , near Mont Blanc ; he broke several ribs in the process, and his ice ax dug into his lungs. After leaving the hospital, he went to Menton on a relaxing vacation . In his retirement he met a group of young painters and developed an interest in painting himself . Back in London , he successfully applied to the Slade School of Fine Art . Around 1899 he went to Paris to study with the painter Eugène Carrière , coincidentally at the same time as Henri Matisse , with whom he had little contact. During this time he married Marie Bonnin from Blois , who had worked as a model ; In 1902 a daughter named Suzanne was born. The couple traveled to Italy, and Blake made his living painting there and also turned to sculpture. In 1907 he became director of the British Academy of Arts in Rome .

In 1910 Blake and his wife returned to France, where he was commissioned to design the reading room of the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store, which no longer exists . The following year the couple bought a house in Les Beaux in the south of France . After the First World War , Blake received orders from local communities to design four war memorials . While working on them, he lost sight in one eye after it had been hit by a marble splinter.

In 1919 Blake organized an exhibition of his works in France, possibly in the gallery of the renowned art dealer Georges Petit . There were also two exhibitions of his works in his home country England.

Blake wrote numerous articles on French cycling and French bicycles for British magazines, which he often illustrated himself. In 1924 he spent most of the year in London and Oxford , during which time his daughter Suzanne learned English. He himself worked in London on the book Relation in Art , published in 1925 , for which he had collected material for eleven years and was highly praised by a professor at the Slade School of Fine Art . By 1929, other books were published by him, including The Art And Craft Of Drawing , which had several editions and was last reprinted in 2008. In this work he described various drawing techniques from China, Japan, from the Altamira cave , from English and French cathedrals, from Greek vases, from Michelangelo , Leonardo da Vinci and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes .

In his house in Les Beaux, Vernon Blake designed wooden toys and tinkered with bicycle gears and a brake that he patented. Since 1911 his friends have included the journalist Paul de Vivie , pseudonym Vélocio , who had previously invented a form of gearshift with a derailleur and repeatedly visited Les Beaux on bike tours. In 1927 Blake had a bicycle built according to his own design in Saint-Étienne and drove it back to Les Beaux for around 280 kilometers.

Vernon Blake did not drink alcohol and was a non-smoker throughout his life, although he suffered from attacks of Malta fever , which he caught on his travels to the Middle East , and from the consequences of his mountaineering accident. He died in a hospital in Avignon on April 18, 1930, Good Friday, at the age of 54. Even after his death, the CTC Gazette (CTC = Cyclists' Touring Club) published an article written by him, for example in July 1930 the description of a bike with balloon tires and small gears, which is considered to be the first mountain bike or its forerunner. His friend de Vivie was killed in an accident a few weeks before Blake's death. In the obituary for Blake, the Times wrote : "Chiefly a man of extraordinary indiviuality, thought and invention [...] bicycling was a much deeper and more lasting love, which yielded as material for his undoubted inventive genius." of extraordinary individuality, extraordinary thinking and inventive spirit [...] riding a bicycle was a much deeper and longer lasting love that served as the material for his undoubtedly inventive spirit. ")

Publications

  • Drawing for children and others. Oxford University Press, London 1915, (several editions).
  • Relation in art. Being a suggested scheme of art criticism. With which is incorporated a sketch of a hypothetic philosophy of relation. University Press, Oxford 1925, (several editions).
  • The way to sketch. Notes on the essentials of landscape sketching. Particular reference being made to the use of water-color. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1925.
  • The Aesthetic of Ashanti. In: Robert S. Rattray : Religion & Art in Ashanti. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1927, pp. 344-381.
  • The Art and Craft Of Drawing. Oxford University Press et al., Oxford et al. 1927.
  • Historical Guide to Les Baux en Provence. Blue Peter Publishing Co., London 1927.
  • Thought: A State Asset Self published, London 1930.

literature

  • Steve Griffith: Vernon Blake (1875-1930) . John Pinkerton Memorial Publishing Fund, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9566337-6-7 .
  • Steve Griffith: Vernon Blake: Man of Many Talents. Gearing Pionerr, Polymath, Painter . In: Bicycle Quarterly . tape 4 , 2012, p. 22-25 .
  • Vernon Blake: The "Floating Chain" . In: Bicycle Quarterly . tape 4 , 2012, p. 26-30 .
  • Vernon Blake's Machine . In: Bicycle Quarterly . tape 4 , 2012, p. 32-34 .
  • Roland Sauvaget: Notes on Vernon Blake (1875-1930) . In: Deutsches Zweirad-Museum / NSU-Museum Neckarsulm (Ed.): 3rd International Conference on Bicycle History 1992 . Neckarsulm 1992, p. 1-13 .

Web links

Commons : Vernon Blake  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , p. 2.
  2. ^ A b Vernon Blake: Gearing Pioneer, Painter, Philosopher, Polymath, Copy Editor. Alex Griffithreviews Vernon Blake, in his first venture into the history of cycling. (No longer available online.) In: Haberdashers' History Journal Timeline 2013/14. Archived from the original on February 8, 2018 ; accessed on February 5, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF file) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / habsonline.org.uk
  3. ^ Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , p. 3.
  4. ↑ a b Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , p. 4.
  5. ^ A b c Frank Berto: The Dancing Chain . Van der Plas Publications / Cycle Publishing, San Francisco 2005, ISBN 1-892495-41-4 , pp. 42 .
  6. ↑ Steve Griffith: Vernon Blake: Man of Many Talents. Gearing Pionerr, Polymath, Painter . In: Bicycle Quarterly . tape 4 , 2012, p. 23 .
  7. ^ Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , pp. 7f.
  8. ↑ Sauvaget writes of seven monuments, four have been proven. See Monuments aux morts de la guerre de 1914-1918 en Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur ;
  9. ^ Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , p. 8.
  10. ↑ a b Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , p. 10.
  11. ^ Nancy Underhill: Sidney Nolan. NewSouth, 2015, ISBN 978-1-742-24192-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  12. ^ Sauvaget, Vernon Blake , p. 11.
  13. ^ J. Stan Metcalfe: Change, Transformation and Development. Springer Science & Business Media, 2012, ISBN 978-3-790-82720-0 , p. 61 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  14. ↑ Vernon Blake: Some Weigths and a Specification . In: CTC Gazette (Cyclists Touring Club), May 1920, pp. 168-169.
  15. ↑ The Times , April 25, 1930. Quoted in: Steve Griffith: Vernon Blake: Man of Many Talents. Gearing Pionerr, Polymath, Painter . In: Bicycle Quarterly . tape 4 , 2012, p. 22 .
personal data
SURNAME Blake, Vernon
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British photographer, artist and sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Reigate
DATE OF DEATH April 18, 1930
Place of death Avignon