and to show you I’m not proud, you may shake hands with me!

Location

Country: USA
City: Los Angeles
Place: British Consulate-General

From Peter Blake’s 1970 portfolio of eight screenprints, Illustrations to Through the Looking Glass, this print illustrates a scene from Lewis Caroll’s classic novel, Alice Through the Looking Glass (1872). The sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), Carroll’s book was illustrated by John Tenniel. His subject was based on Alice Liddell, the middle daughter of Sir Henry Liddell, Dean of Christ Church College, Oxford University. A mathematician as well as a writer, Carroll lectured in mathematics at Oxford from 1855 to 1881. 

Blake based his prints on watercolours made in 1969, after moving from London to Wellow, a village near Bath in Avon. He was one of several artists based in the West Country, known in the mid 1970s as the 'Brotherhood of Ruralists'. His move to the country, coinciding with the birth of his first child, led to his fascination with the work of Victorian children's writers and illustrators, examples of which he had begun collecting in the mid 1960s. His interest was shared with the painter, Graham Ovenden, one of his students at the Royal College of Art. Blake’s classic sequence of eight watercolours, later also published as prints, became among the best known of his works, which, like Tenniel’s original Victorian illustrations, were distinctive for their spirit, imagination and painstaking attention to detail and technique.

Blake read the book several times in preparation for the series. His model for Alice was Amelia Gatacre, whose sister Sophie posed for Tweedledum, and whose parents were family friends. The girls' grandparents lived near Deventer in Holland, and had a garden laid out according to the chess board in Alice through the Looking Glass. During a visit there with the Gatacres, Blake read passages from the book to Amelia (then aged nine) and asked her to enact scenes. He then photographed the scenes. According to Blake, Amelia was a marvellous model who identified closely with the story and posed thoughtfully for each scene. 

Peter Blake is one of the leading British artists of the twentieth century. He was born in 1932 in Dartford and studied at Gravesend Technical College and School of Art from 1946 to 1951. He continued his studies at the Royal College of Art from 1953 to 1956, where he was one of the first British artists to produce works inspired by popular culture and folk art, later to be labelled ‘Pop art’. The incorporation of elements of popular cultural ephemera into his art is characteristic of his works from the mid 1950s onwards. Blake moved to the West Country with his wife in 1969 and co-founded the Brotherhood of Ruralists in 1975. His work of this period is characterised by an interest in themes of the Victorian period, such as fairy paintings, and in 1970 he produced illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking-glass. Blake has also designed covers for a number of albums and singles, including Paul Weller’s Stanley Road of 1995, the Band Aid single of 1984 and, most famously, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band of 1967. He was elected a Royal Academician in 1981 and awarded a CBE in 1983. He lives and works in London.

Places

Subjects

Caroll, Lewis, hill, girl, egg, stone wall, field, house, window, chimney, tower

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Peter Blake (1932 - )

Title

and to show you I’m not proud, you may shake hands with me!

Portfolio Title

Illustrations to Through the Looking Glass

Edition

76/100

Date

1970

Medium

Screenprint

Acquisition

Purchased from Waddington Galleries, October 1974

Inscription

below image: 76/100 / Peter Blake

GAC number

11644