Blacklock, William K. (1870-1924) - The Sweet O' the Year

The Sweet O' the Year is a painting by William K. Blacklock that is the frontispiece for Ward Lock's Wonder Book of 1918. It depicts a lady sitting reading under a blossomed tree on a summer's day with her daughter sitting at her feet.

This download features 1 hi-res image, in jpeg format. It is 600dpi and 3297 pixels wide by 4830 pixels tall.

The picture is out of copyright and in the public domain, so you are free to use it in whatever way you'd like, including commercial use.

William Kirkbride Blacklock (1870-1924) was born in 1870, the son of William Blacklock who was a painter, and Eleanor Kirkbride. He signed his paintings William K. Blacklock but later adopted William Kay Blacklock as a signature. It seems his details have been previously conflated with another William Blacklock who was born 2 years later.

Blacklock married Ellen Eliza Richardson from Hackney, London. The couple made their first home in Chelsea, London, where Blacklock attended the Royal College of Art. They moved to Edinburgh in 1902, and Blacklock began studying at the Edinburgh School of Art. After completing his studies there, the couple moved again in 1906, to join an active artists' colony at Walberswick in Suffolk. The colony had been founded by the artist Philip Wilson Steer, who gathered around him a circle of English Impressionists. Between 1908 and 1915 the Blacklocks lived at "The Barn" in Walberswick.

His wife, who was called "Nellie", modelled for him, as did their daughter Eleanor, who was born in Chelsea in 1910.

A painter in both watercolours and oils, Blacklock exhibited 17 works at the Royal Academy between 1897 and 1918, and also exhibited his works at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.

He was still at Walberswick in 1914, but later moved to St Ives in Cambridgeshire, and finally Leicester.

He died at Polperro, in 1924, and is buried there, in the civil parish of Liskeard.