FLETCHER, Blandford

1858 - 1936

William Teulon Blandford Fletcher, known as Blandford Fletcher, was born at St Giles, London on 8 November 1858, eldest son and second child of William Fletcher, an upholsterer, and his wife Eliza. In 1871 young William was a 12-year-old living at Albion Road, Hampstead with his parents, 45-year-old William and 37-year-old Eliza, with siblings Sybil 14, Sidney 10, Bertrand Arnol 8, Basil 6 and Olive 1, all born in London, and they retained three indoor servants. Against his father's wishes, Fletcher studied at Royal College of Art at South Kensington 1875-1879, where he won the Silver Medal and the Queen's prize. He then studied at Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp until 1882, joining the life classes and made friends with Frank Bramley (1857-1915), Fred Hall (1860-1948) and Walter Osborne (1859-1903), during which time he visited Brittany making the acquaintance of Stanhope Forbes (1857-1947) and his friends spending time painting at Pont-Aven and Dinan in France, where he met Fred Millard (1857-1937) and Jules Bastian-LePage (1848-1884). Blandford Fletcher painted and sketched village scenes as well as landscapes, seascapes and portraits and first exhibited at the Royal Academy from Esmonde, Old Park Road, Enfield in 1884 and continued exhibiting irregularly until 1913. After spending a few months of 1885 in Newlyn, working on a single large canvas, before leaving the artists' colony forever and continued to travel including Berkshire and rural Suffolk and in 1891, was a 32-year-old artist, living at Kersey, Suffolk. He married at St Mary Magdalene Enfield, London on 4 October 1894, Norah Beatrice Emmeline Harris (21 November 1863-27 October 1960), a sculptor, and in 1901 they were living at 2 Richmond Road, Exeter, Devon with daughter Christina Emily [Chaplin] (27 September 1897-17 September 1945). He exhibited extensively including at the Manchester Autumn Art Exhibition in 1895 when his 'Walberswick Ferry' was sold for £20. The Fletcher's continued on their travels to such an extent that they thought of themselves as wandering artists, but they were finally to establish homes, firstly at The Willows, Westcott St Westcott, Dorking where their second daughter Rosamund Mary Beatrice (5 August 1908-18 February 1993) was born and, from 1915, at Abingdon, near Oxford. William Teulon Blandford Fletcher died at Northcourt Lodge, Oxford Road, Abingdon on 27 June 1936.

Royal Academy Exhibits
from Esmonde, Old Park Road, Enfield, Middlesex
1884 34 The Kinchen Garden in November
         308 Compulsory Education
         445 A Leader of Public Opinion
         1647 Breakfast Time
1885 1139 Dame Grigson's Academy
1887 960 Evicted
1888 150 'When the evening sun is low'
         728 The Gentle Craft
1889 1239 'O yes! O yes!'
1890 793 The Widow's Mite
1892 542 Under Petticoat Government
1898 703 Waiting for the Tide
         910 Sacrament Sunday
1904 213 A Sussex Kitchen
from The Willows, Westcott, Dorking
1905 46 'When the leaves fall, the summer has flown'
1906 2 The Old Mill
1911 108 The reading of the Psalms
1913 211 The Anthem

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Works by This Artist