This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| A railway survey sketch artist, geologist and mining engineer, William
Blake was a student of mineralogy and chemistry at Yale University and
then became the official geologist and artist, along with Charles
Koppel, of Lt. R.S. Williamson's 1853 survey in California of potential
rail and road building routes that would connect the east-west surveys
along the 32nd and 35th parallels. The assignment by mandate of
Congress was to examine especially the mountain passes of the Sierra
Nevada for future railway building. The venture began July, 1853,
from Benicia, the northernmost part of the survey, which was about 25
miles north of San Francisco, and ended December 19, 1853 in San
Diego. Much of the time was spent in the Sierra Nevada Mountains
looking for potential sites for laying track and roads to facilitate
travelers through this geographical barrier to western settlement.
From this expedition, Blake wrote the Report of a Geological Reconnaissance in California,
an extensive report that included detailed sketches and 13 pages of
lithographs and more than 80 woodcut engravings. Views were of
land formations of the California deserts and mountains, and also of
the San Diego Bay and missions in San Gabriel and San Diego. Some
of these reproductions were by Koppel and others by Blake, and among
Blake's works were over seventy woodcuts, many of them outline sketches
and regarded as not being as artistically accomplished as work by
Koppel. It was written that : "Possibly of these Blake sketches
the most interesting are Mission of San Gabriel and San Diego from the Bay. (Taft 257)
In
1864, William Blake became a professor of mineralogy at the institution
that became the University of California-Berkeley in 1868. From
1895 to 1905, he was professor of mineralogy and geology and Director
of the School of Mines of the University of Arizona in Tucson and also
acquired extensive mining interests in that state.
He died on May 22, 1910 in Berkeley, where he had returned to receive an honorary degree, awarded to him several days earlier.
Sources:
Robert Taft, Artists and Illustrators of the Old West, 1850-1900
Peggy and Harold Samuels, Illustrated Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West
Edan Hughes, Artists in California, 1786-1940 |
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