Blockx Abstract
This family firm of chemist-colourmen is remarkable in many ways, for not only have they endeavoured, from the first, to produce the highest quality pigments and paints but they have gone to the ends of the earth to collect materials and then traded selectively with an impressive array of internationally reknown artists, both professional and amateur.
Belgium is ideally situated between the economic power-houses and major artistic markets, yet had just the right cultural climate to fully appreciate the early applied sciences, so that the Blockx archives exemplifies not only their own dedication but the flourishing social attitudes of the era, which rewarded and sustained such expertise.
So far I have identified over 300 firms with whom they traded before 1905 and, because they were a mail order business, we can also locate around 1,000 painters who used Blockx colours. Artists at the top of their profession used Blockx paints, such as Alma Tadema and Holman Hunt in London; Messonier and Gerôme in the Paris Academy; von Kaulbach in Munich; Werenskjold and Thaulow in Scandinavia; Ensor and Magritte, closer to home; Yankees such as Edward Austin Abbey and Gari Melchers; and close friends included Charles Verlat and Paul Signac. It can also be seen that word spread about Blockx around many distant village artists’ colonies, including Pont-Aven, Concarneau, Katwyk, Laren, St.Ives, Grez and Etaples, although there is hardly any country in Europe where their paints were not found in profusion, such as Russia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Rumania, Hungary and Switzerland.
For further information about the Blockx Archive and the project to conserve and digitalise this unique resource please contact art historian Dr.Brian D.Barrett c/o info@blockx.be
colors, each step in details was related.