Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt

Wilfrid Jasper Walter Blunt (1901–1987) was an art teacher, author, artist and curator of the Watts Gallery at Compton, Surrey (1959–83). He was educated at Marlborough College (scholar), Worcester College, Oxford, and the Royal College of Art. He taught art at Haileybury College (1923–37) and Eton College (1937–59) and helped to start a revolution in the hand-writing of British school-children, using the 15th-century Italian Cancellaresca ("Chancery") script^[1] as a basis.^[2][3]

His brother was Anthony Blunt, Poussin expert and spy.^[4]

Books

• Haileybury Buildings (1936)
• Desert Hawk : Abd el Kader and the French Conquest of Algeria (Methuen, 1947)
• The Art of Botanical Illustration (1950) with William T. Stearn
• Tulipomania (King Penguin, 1950)
• Sweet Roman Hand (1952)
• Pietro's Pilgrimage (1953)
• Great Flower Books, 1700-1900 : A Bibliographical Record of Two Centuries of Finely-illustrated Flower Books (1956), Sacheverell Sitwell, Wilfrid Blunt and Patrick Millington Synge, Atlantic Monthly Press (1990) ISBN 0871132842
• Lady Muriel; Lady Muriel Paget, her husband, and her philanthropic work in Central and Eastern Europe (1962)
• Cockerell; Sydney Carlyle Cockerell, friend of Ruskin and William Morris and director of the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1965)
• Isfahan, Pearl of Persia (1966, with Wim Swaan)
• Haileybury Buildings, 2nd Edition (1966)
• John Christie of Glyndebourne (1968)
• The Dream King, Ludwig of Bavaria (1970)
• The Compleat Naturalist: a life of Linnaeus (Collins, 1971, with William T. Stearn)
• Captain Cook's Florilegium (1973, with W. T. Stearn)
• The Golden Road to Samarkand (1973)
• On Wings of Song; a biography of Felix Mendelssohn (1974)
• The Australian Flower Paintings of Ferdinand Bauer (1976, with W. T. Stearn)
• Splendours of Islam (1976)
• The Illustrated Herbal (Frances Lincoln, 1979, with S. Raphael)
• Married to a Single Life: an Autobiography, 1901-1938 (1983)
• Slow on the Feather: Further Autobiography, 1938–1959 (1986)
• Of Flowers & a Village: An Entertainment for Flower Lovers (Hamish Hamilton, 1963)

References

1. http://www.fontscape.com/explore?6TG Chancery Scripts - Retrieved on 2007-01-08
2. Wilfrid Blunt, Dictionary of Art Historians. Retrieved on 2006-10-23
3. Wilfrid Blunt (1952), Sweet Roman hand: Five hundred years of italic cursive script, James Barrie, ASIN B0000CI87Z, OCLC 7078722
4. True Colours - Retrieved on 2006-10-23

Bibliography

• Blunt, Wilfrid; Stearn, William (1994) [1950 Collins]. The art of botanical illustration: an illustrated history. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 9780486272658.
• Blunt, Wilfred; Stearn, William (1973). Captain Cook's Florilegium: A Selection of Engravings from the Drawings of Plants Collected by Joseph Banks and Daniel Solander on Captain Cook's First Voyage to the Islands of the Pacific. London: Lion and Unicorn Press. ISBN 0902490125. (see Banks' Florilegium)
• Stearn, William T. (1976). The Australian flower paintings of Ferdinand Bauer. Introduction by Wilfrid Blunt. London: Basilisk Press. ISBN 9780905013015. (see Ferdinand Bauer)
• Blunt, Wilfrid (2001). Linnaeus : the complete naturalist. Introduction by William T. Stearn. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691096360.