Blanche Baker

Blanche Baker (1844–1929) was a Bristol-born English watercolour artist who specialised in landscape paintings. She trained at the Bristol School of Art, and went on to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy and with the Society of Lady Artists and the Camsix Art Club. She taught drawing in London schools, and her work documents extensive British and European travel. In 1902 she was elected a full member of the Bristol Academy. Early life Blanche Baker's father, William Baker, was born in Bristol in about 1820 and in 1840 married Mary Anne Crispin, whose mother was from Devon. They lived in Trenchard Street, in central Bristol. Initially he was a plasterer, then a builder. Ellen Blanche Baker was their third child and was christened at the Society of Protestant Dissenters in Lewin's Mead, Bristol, on 15 September 1844. ‘[William] came into some money from his father and succeeded in amassing a tolerably fair fortune’ – by 1861 he was a successful builder and contractor, employing 160 men, and at some point he also acquired a saw mill at Canon's Marsh, Bristol. The Baker family moved to Sneyd Park Villa in a wealthier part of Bristol. This was a substantial property with ‘lawns, gardens, a conservatory, stables and one and a half acres of land’ plus an adjacent farm. On the date of the 1861 census Blanche Baker was not actually in residence at Sneyd Park Villa, although the census indicates that she is one of nine siblings. Her grandmother Betsy Crispin had lived with them for several years, and there were live-in servants.