Background
William Blacklock was born in Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, in North East England, in 1872. His father died in 1886. He continued to live with his mother, at least until 1901, practising the trade of lithography.
William Blacklock was born in Bishopwearmouth, Sunderland, in North East England, in 1872. His father died in 1886. He continued to live with his mother, at least until 1901, practising the trade of lithography.
The couple made their first home in Chelsea, London, where Blacklock attended the Royal College of Artist
lieutenant seems that he added Kay as his middle name when he became an artist. Blacklock married Ellen Richardson from Hackney, London. They moved to Edinburgh in 1902, and Blacklock began studying at the Edinburgh School of Artist
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.
Their only child, Eleanor Irene, was born in Chelsea during 1910. He was still at Walberswick in 1914, but later moved to Street Ives in Cambridgeshire, and finally Leicester.
He signed his paintings West Kay Blacklock, and he probably also painted in the Netherlands, as some of his paintings suggest.
He died at Polperro, in 1924, and is buried there, in the civil parish of Liskeard.