Hugh Blaker

Hugh Blaker
Hugh Blaker, circa 1905
Born	Hugh Oswald Blaker (1873-12-13)13 December 1873 Worthing, Sussex
Died	8 September 1936(1936-09-08) (aged 62) Isleworth on Thames, Middlesex
Nationality	British
Education	Cranleigh School Kent; Teddington Art School, London; Académie Julian, Paris; and Antwerp School of Art
Known for	Painter, writer, critic, Museum Curator, Art Collector, Dealer in Old Masters

Hugh Blaker (1873–1936) was an English artist, collector, connoisseur, dealer in Old Masters, museum curator, writer on art, and a supporter and promoter of modern British and French painters.

Hugh Oswald Blaker was born on 13 December 1873 at 31 Marine Parade, Worthing, Sussex. Both his parents were originally from Worthing – master builder Robert Charles Blaker (born May 1836) and Jane Rosalie Redstone (née Sanders, born April 1845). Following Robert's death, Jane married John Richard Eyre in the Church of the Sacred Heart, Teddington on 27 August 1898.

Blaker's collection of essays on social problems of the day, Points for Posterity (1910), paints a detailed portrait of its author: a free thinker, open minded, opinionated, cynical, reactionary, critical, and a socialist. The book – which in its manuscript form is titled Hints for Historians – opens: "There is no greater proof of stupidity than to be in love with your generation. Strong men are in love with the future and its manifold possibilities."

Blaker was curator of the Holburne Museum in Bath from 1905 – 1913 and is best known nowadays as adviser to the Davies sisters Gwendoline and Margaret Davies of Llandinam (Wales, UK) in the formation of their internationally renowned collection of French nineteenth-century painting and sculpture, which they bequeathed to the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff.

As well as his activities as dealer and advisor to the Davies sisters, Hugh Blaker assembled an important collection of art that he kept in his home at 53, 55 & 57 Church Street, Old Isleworth. After his death in 1936, Blaker’s executors – his sister Jane (Jenny Louisa Roberta Blaker, 1869–1947) and the artist Murray Urquhart – sold over 600 artworks at auction and through two exhibitions at the Leicester Galleries, London (1937 & 1948). From 1895, Jane was governess to the young Gwendoline and Margaret Davies. She remained with them as companion throughout her life, firstly at Plas Dinam and from the early 1920s at Gregynog Hall, near Newtown, Montgomeryshire. When Hugh Blaker died in 1936, Jane presented from his art collection Amedeo Modigliani's Le Petit Paysan (1919) to the Tate Gallery and Quentin Massys' The Ugly Duchess (c.1513) to the National Gallery in London in his memory.