The fascinating and tragic story of J.T. Blight has captured the imagination of writers and artists over many years. Library member Patricia Wilson Smith writes for us about how Blight‘s story has inspired her…
I’m a visual artist working with both digital and traditional media. I’ve always made short video films as part of my practice, and two years ago I decided to develop my film-making skills, by studying for a Masters Degree in Film Practice. Living in the wilder landscape of West Penwith, I have a great attachment to the moors and coasts, and I discovered the work of John Thomas Blight (1835-1911) through his drawings and engravings of the archaeological sites that I was exploring. I thought his drawings were beautiful, and his ability to record archaeological detail meticulous. In January this year I graduated with Distinction and, with unaccustomed time on my hands, I began to delve into the circumstances of JTB’s life, thinking to make a short experimental moving-image work that embraces certain parts of West Penwith that Blight knew and loved
The Morrab Library has a close connection with JTB. Many of his drawings, paintings, sketchbooks and notebooks are held in the Library archive, as well as copies of his books. I wondered if these might give me an insight into his life, as well as providing rich visual material. I have to thank Lisa Di Tommaso for her advice on books to read and guidance with the archive. My first visit impressed on me the unique value of archives: I was acutely aware of handling delicate and fragile documents and drawings that had been created by JTB nearly 200 years ago.
Blight’s detailed record of a fogou at Trewoofe (undated)
This little watercolour is in one of JTB’s Bodmin notebooks: it shows the drawing room used by gentleman ‘residents’ at Bodmin Asylum and was made during his first summer there in 1871.
As I learn more about Blight, I discover that his story was complicated, and poignant. He has been written about sympathetically, and the most recent biographical account The Dust of Heroes, (2006) written by Selina Bates and Keith Spurgin painstakingly describes the arc of his life in Penzance, and the circumstances that combined to bring about his incarceration in Bodmin Asylum at the age of 36.
John Blight’s story has the ingredients of a Victorian tragedy along the lines of Chatterton. But, unlike Chatterton, Blight died in obscurity at the age of 75. Several of his contemporaries who enjoyed public acclaim (James Halliwell, for example, and William Borlase) did so by relying heavily on Blight’s artistic talents, his passion for detail and his wide archaeological knowledge, and it appears that long before his death in 1911, his drawings, engravings and writing found their way into the hands of those who profited from them much more than he was ever able to.