Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
"Edmund Blampied was born on the isle of Jersey located in the English Channel off the French coast. His artistic talent was recognized at an early age and at 16 he traveled to England to get a formal art education. He worked primarily as an illustrator for books, newspapers and magazines, but exhibited frequently in galleries and was awarded membership to the Royal Society of Painter-Etchers and Engravers in 1920 and the Royal Society of British Artists in 1938. Blampied's 1939 illustrated edition of J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan is probably his best known work. In 1940, despite the threat of war, Blampied moved back to Jersey with his wife, who was Jewish. After the occupation of Jersey by German forces, they were held there until liberation on May 9, 1945, nearly a year after the allied invasion of France. A Jersey Vraic Cart was executed just before the occupation of the island and was issued by the Cleveland Museum of Art to promote a scheduled exhibition of his work in 1941. It shows a scene common to the island - a horse drawn cart used for collecting seaweed (vraic) to be used to fertilize the fields of island farms. After the war, Edmund Blampied and his wife lived out the remaining decades of their lives on Jersey.
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