Thomas Bromley Blacklock 1863-1903

Bailee Douglas, by 1904;
Alec Bough;
Aitken Dott & Son, Edinburgh;
Bought by present owner Christie's, 2 March 1989, lot 21

Thomas Bromley Blacklock was a versatile artist who began his career as a painter of landscapes and occasional still lifes. In 1896 he painted his pivotal work Bonnie Kilmeny, an evening landscape in Kirkcudbright, into which he introduced an elfin figure of a young wood sprite. From this point onwards, Blacklock painted a series of works depicting innocent youth and mischievous children's games. The subjects were similar to those of Hornel and MacGeorge, but with their own distinctive expression. 'Borrowing, but more through stimulus than invitation, some of Hornel's brilliance of colour and inventiveness of pattern he added a touch of fantasy of his own. He developed into a painter of fairy-tales. He painted pleasant tender fancies expressed with a daintiness of colour and design and an ingenuity and quaintness in costume and accessory which... gave his pictures a definite if modest place among the more realistic or more artistically powerful and decorative work of the time.' (Peter J. M. McEwan, Dictionary of Scottish Art & Architecture, 1994, p. 77).