Ralph Albert Blakelock
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Ralph Albert Blakelock (October 15, 1847 – August 9, 1919) was a
romanticist Romanticism (also known as the Romantic movement or Romantic era) was an artistic, literary, musical, and intellectual movement that originated in Europe towards the end of the 18th century, and in most areas was at its peak in the approximate ...
American painter known primarily for his
landscape paintings Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, trees, rivers, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent composi ...
related to the
Tonalism Tonalism was an artistic style that emerged in the 1880s when American artists began to paint landscape forms with an overall tone of colored atmosphere or mist. Between 1880 and 1915, dark, neutral hues such as gray, brown or blue, often domina ...
movement.


Biography

Ralph Blakelock was born in New York City on October 15, 1847, the son of Caroline Olinarg (Carry) and Ralph B. Blakelock, who was born in England.. His father was a successful physician. Blakelock initially set out to follow in his footsteps, and in 1864 began studies at the Free Academy of the City of New York (now known as the City College). He dropped out after his third term, opting to forgo formal education. From 1869–72 he traveled alone through the American West, wandering far from American settlements and spending time among the American Indians. Largely self-taught as an artist, he began producing competent landscapes, as well as scenes of Indian life, based on his notebooks he filled while traveling and on his personal memories and feelings. Blakelock's works were exhibited in the
National Academy of Design The National Academy of Design is an honorary association of American artists, founded in New York City in 1825 by Samuel Morse, Asher Durand, Thomas Cole, Martin E. Thompson, Charles Cushing Wright, Ithiel Town, and others "to promote the f ...
. In 1877 Blakelock married Cora Rebecca Bailey; they had nine children. In art, Blakelock was a genius, yet, in business dealings and in monetary transactions he proved a failure. He found it difficult, if not crushing to maintain and support his wife and children. In desperation he found himself selling his paintings for extremely low prices, far beneath their known worth. In hopes of lifting his family from abject poverty, reportedly on the day his 9th child was born, Blakelock had offered a painting to a collector for $1000. The collector made a counter offer and after refusing the proposed sum Blakelock found himself in a bitter argument with his wife. After the domestic dispute, Blakelock returned to the patron and sold the painting for a much lesser sum. Defeated and frustrated, it is said he broke down and tore the cash into pieces. And so it was after such repeated failed business transactions that he began to suffer from extreme depression and eventually show symptoms of mental frailty. Blakelock suffered his first mental breakdown in 1891, while living with his brother in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. For financial assistance, he began selling his paintings, including 30 to 40 to vaudeville performer Lew Bloom between 1889 and 1892.Vincent, Glyn. ''The Unknown Night: The Genius and Madness of R. A. Blakelock, an American Painter''. New York: Grove Press, 2003: 200. His depression manifested in schizophrenic delusions in which he believed himself immensely wealthy – perhaps a compensation for his long struggle to provide for his family. In 1899, he suffered his final breakdown and spent almost the entire remaining twenty years of his life in mental institutions. Almost as soon as Blakelock went into the first psychiatric hospital, his works began to receive recognition. Within a few years the paintings he had once sold for next to nothing were resold for several thousand dollars. In 1916, Blakelock was made an Academician of the National Academy of Design. Meanwhile, Blakelock languished in the mental asylum of
Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital (also known as Middletown State Hospital or Middletown Psychiatric Center) was a hospital for the treatment of mental disorders located in Middletown, New York. It opened on April 20, 1874, and was the fir ...
, whose administration and staff were unaware of his fame as an artist, and who viewed his belief that his paintings were in major museums as one more sign of his illness. While confined he continued to paint in ink, painting on the backs of cardboard and various supports, substituting bark and his own hair for brushes.Harrison Smith, "Genius in the Madhouse", originally published in ''The Saturday Review'', March 31, 1945, reprinted in ''The Saturday Review 50th Anniversary Reader: The Golden Age'', Richard L. Tobin and S. Spencer Grin, eds., Bantam Books, 1974. In 1916, one of Blakelock's landscapes sold at auction for $20,000, setting a record for a painting by a living American artist. It was this impressive price that captured the imagination of Sadie Filbert, who had reinvented herself as the socially prominent Beatrice Van Rensselaer Adams so that she could swindle the wealthy by persuading them to donate to charitable causes that would, in fact, serve to enrich herself. She founded and milked the Blakelock Fund, which was supposed to support the impecunious artist and his needy brood. She informed Harrison Smith, then a young reporter with the '' New York Tribune'', of Blakelock's whereabouts, and he went to see Blakelock in the asylum. He found him largely lucid, although under the delusion that an imagined "diamond of the Emperor of Brazil" had been stolen from him. Smith explained to the asylum director who Blakelock was, and managed to arrange to bring Blakelock and the director to
Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
, where a major gallery retrospective of Blakelock's work was taking place. Blakelock was awed by the changes in the city in the two decades since he had last seen it, and thrilled to see the recognition his work had received. Smith scored himself a major news story. (In a 1945 account, Smith added that Blakelock had quietly informed him that several of the paintings were forgeries, but Smith chose not to put that in his story because of the question of how far he could rely on the word of the less than fully sane Blakelock.) These events led to Blakelock's release from the asylum, in the "care" of Sadie Filbert, alias Beatrice Van Rensselaer Adams, who milked him for all he was worth. He continued painting until his death at the age of 71 on August 9, 1919.


Work

Blakelock taught himself to paint through trial and error, and continued to use improvisation as an artistic method throughout his life. He was also an accomplished musician, and would use his improvised piano compositions as inspiration for his paintings. He would work on paintings for years, building layers and then scoring, scraping, or rubbing them away. Blakelock's early
landscapes A landscape is the visible features of an area of land, its landforms, and how they integrate with natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionary''. A landscape includes the p ...
have their genesis in the style of the
Hudson River School The Hudson River School was a mid-19th century American art movement embodied by a group of landscape painters whose aesthetic vision was influenced by Romanticism. The paintings typically depict the Hudson River Valley and the surrounding area ...
of painters. In time, he developed a more subjective and intimate style. His favorite themes were those depicting the wilderness and solitude; evocative and emotional paintings of illuminated moments in nature, of moonlight landscapes and twilight hours and Indian camps in the solitude of nature. He was also heavily influenced by the French
Barbizon School The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name ...
, whose painters also favored dark forests and heavily worked surfaces. Blakelock's technique was highly personal and through his individualistic style his paintings summoned the viewer into a luminous, almost other worldly realm. In the majority of his paintings, space is given depth by the use of light; moonlight most often. Along with his contemporary
Albert Pinkham Ryder Albert Pinkham Ryder (March 19, 1847 – March 28, 1917) was an American painter best known for his poetic and moody allegorical works and seascapes, as well as his eccentric personality. While his art shared an emphasis on subtle variations of ...
, Ralph Albert Blakelock was one of the most individual American painters of his time. One of his many paintings entitled ''Moonlight'' was sold at the highest price ever paid for the work of a living American artist at that time. Sadly, his rise in public notoriety along with the increase in his art sales never benefited his family or himself. By 1903 his works were being forged, so much so, that he remains today as "perhaps the most forged" artist in America. Such was the final ironic touch to one of the most tragic stories in
American art Visual art of the United States or American art is visual art made in the United States or by U.S. artists. Before colonization there were many flourishing traditions of Native American art, and where the Spanish colonized Spanish Colonial arc ...
. File:Solitude by Ralph Albert Blakelock.jpg, ''Solitude'', 1869,
Tucson Museum of Art , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...
File:Indian Encampment by Ralph Albert Blakelock.jpg, ''Indian Encampment'', 1870, Midwest Museum of American Art File:Blakelock, Ralph Albert - Above the Clouds - Google Art Project.jpg, ''Above the Clouds'', c. 1875,
Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It ...
File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Sunset, Navarro Ridge, California Coast - 1909.7.6 - Smithsonian American Art Museum.jpg, ''Sunset, Navarro Ridge, California Coast'', 1870–1879, Smithsonian American Art Museum File:Brooklyn Museum - Edge of the Forest - Ralph Albert Blakelock - overall.jpg, ''Edge of the Forest'', 1880–1890, Brooklyn Museum File:Ralph Albert Blakelock, Evening, between 1880 and 1890, Haggin Museum.jpg, ''Evening'', 1880–1890,
Haggin Museum The Haggin Museum is an art museum and local history museum in Stockton, San Joaquin County, California, located in the city's Victory Park. The museum opened in 1931. Its art collection includes works by European painters Jean Béraud, Rosa Bo ...
, Stockton File:Ralph Albert Blakelock, The Canoe, between 1880 and 1890, Haggin Museum.jpg, ''The Canoe'', 1880–1890,
Haggin Museum The Haggin Museum is an art museum and local history museum in Stockton, San Joaquin County, California, located in the city's Victory Park. The museum opened in 1931. Its art collection includes works by European painters Jean Béraud, Rosa Bo ...
, Stockton File:Canadian Indian Hunters by Ralph Albert Blakelock, 1881.jpg, ''Canadian Indian Hunters'', 1881, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Moonlight, Indian Encampment - 1929.6.3 - Smithsonian American Art Museum.jpg, ''Moonlight, Indian Encampment'', 1885–1890, Smithsonian American Art Museum File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Moonlight (c. 1885-1890).jpg, ''Moonlight'', 1885-1890,
Columbus Museum of Art The Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in downtown Columbus, Ohio. Formed in 1878 as the Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts (its name until 1978), it was the first art museum to register its charter with the state of Ohio. The museum collect ...
File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - The Signal Fire - 2001.74 - Smithsonian American Art Museum.jpg, ''The Signal Fire'', 1885–1890, Smithsonian American Art Museum File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Moonlight Sonata - 45.201 - Museum of Fine Arts.jpg, ''Moonlight Sonata'', 1889–1892, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Moonlight - 2014.136.20 - Corcoran Gallery of Art.jpg, ''Moonlight'', 1886–1895,
Corcoran Gallery of Art The Corcoran Gallery of Art was an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, that is now the location of the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design, a part of the George Washington University. Overview The Corcoran School of the Arts & Design ...
File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Moonlight - Google Art Project (27466953).jpg, ''Moonlight'', c. late 1880s–1890s,
Phillips Collection The Phillips Collection is an art museum founded by Duncan Phillips and Marjorie Acker Phillips in 1921 as the Phillips Memorial Gallery located in the Dupont Circle neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Phillips was the grandson of James H. Laughlin ...
File:Moonlight on the Brook, by Ralph Albert Blakelock, c. 1886-1895, oil on canvas mounted on panel - Krannert Art Museum, UIUC - DSC06274.jpg, ''Moonlight on the Brook'', 1886–1895,
Krannert Art Museum The Krannert Art Museum (KAM) is a fine art museum located at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in Champaign, Illinois, United States. It has of space devoted to all periods of art, dating from ancient Egypt to contemporary photography ...
File:Ralph Albert Blakelock - Morning Light - 73.105.1 - Indianapolis Museum of Art.jpg, ''Morning Light'', 1902,
Indianapolis Museum of Art The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, the Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It ...


Friendship with Harry Watrous

Around or after 1886, Blakelock was befriended by the younger painter
Harry Watrous Harry Willson Watrous (17 September 1857 – 10 May 1940) was an American artist who received an academic education in France. His paintings included genre scenes, stylized figural works, landscapes, nocturnes, portraits, religious subjects, and ...
, and often used his studio in the Sherwood Studio Building. "Over the years, when Blakelock was in financial need, Watrous handled his work for him, selling it to art dealers and collectors, something Blakelock often could not manage for himself." Watrous was Blakelock's "most faithful supporter, both during the productive decades of the 1880s and 1890s and during the period of his confinement" for mental illness. Around and after the time of Blakelock's death, Watrous began painting landscapes and nocturnes which "in their evocative mood, boldly designed compositions, and use of light and dark contrasts…resemble the work of his friend Blakelock," and may be seen as elegiac tributes. Some anecdotes about Watrous and Blakelock are related i
''American Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Vol. III''
File:Watrous--Twilight--c1918-1923-and-Blakelock--Moonlight-c1888--Yale (renamed).jpg, Left: ''Twilight'' (c. 1919-1923, private collection), one of
Harry Watrous Harry Willson Watrous (17 September 1857 – 10 May 1940) was an American artist who received an academic education in France. His paintings included genre scenes, stylized figural works, landscapes, nocturnes, portraits, religious subjects, and ...
' nocturnes that pays posthumous homage. Right: Blakelock'

(c. 1888,
Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...
).


In popular culture

Blakelock is a key figure in the setting of
Paul Auster Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include '' The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), '' The Music of Chance'' (1990), '' The Book of Illusions'' (2002), ''The ...
's novel '' Moon Palace''. In particular, one of his many ''Moonlight'' paintings, specifically the 1885 painting (68.7 by 81.3 cm) in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (see picture in Artworks section below), is referred to in the novel. Blakelock's paintings are a key plot point in the 2020 movie '' I'm Thinking of Ending Things''.


Artworks


Notes


Sources

* * * Davidson, Abraham. ''Ralph Albert Blakelock,'' Penn State University Press, 1996. * Geske, Norman. ''Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius'', Questroyal Fine Art, Inc. 2005. * Vincent, Glyn. ''The Unknown Night: the madness and genius of R. A. Blakelock, an American painter'', Grove Press 2002, .


External links


''Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns''
catalog for the 2016 exhibition at Questroyal Fine Art, New York
Ralph Blakelock: The Artist and the Archives
at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln
"Ralph Blakelock, Mad Artist, Dies"
''New York Times'' obituary

for ''Ralph Albert Blakelock'' by Abraham Davidson
Blakelock works
at the
Utah Museum of Fine Arts The Utah Museum of Fine Arts (UMFA) is the region's primary resource for culture and visual arts. It is located in the Marcia and John Price Museum Building in Salt Lake City, Utah on the University of Utah campus near Rice-Eccles Stadium. Works ...

Blakelock works
at the Figge Art Museum
Blakelock works
at the
Sheldon Museum of Art The Sheldon Museum of Art is an art museum in the city of Lincoln, in the state of Nebraska in the Midwestern United States. Its collection focuses on 19th- and 20th-century art. History Sheldon Art Association In 1888, The Sheldon Art Assoc ...

Blakelock at Artcyclopedia
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blakelock, Ralph Albert 1847 births 1919 deaths 19th-century American painters American male painters 20th-century American painters Modern painters American landscape painters Painters from New York City City College of New York alumni Burials at Kensico Cemetery Hudson River School painters 19th-century American male artists 20th-century American male artists