Ralph Albert Blakelock

Moonlight, about 1883-1893

oil on canvas

12 x 16 in.

Gift of George C. Calvert

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Ralph Blakelock was born in New York City and attended the College of the City of New York with the intention of becoming a physician, but instead began a brief art education at Cooper Union. Declining his father’s offer to pay for more advanced art training, Blakelock wondered for three years through the America West on horseback spending time with Native Americans.  Without additional formal training, Blakelock painted scenes of Native American life and western landscapes, which were shown at the National Academy of Design. A great artist, but a poor businessman, Blakelock lived with his wife and family of nine children in poverty.  Forced to accept meager sums for his work, Blakelock suffered a breakdown and was committed to a mental institution.  While the artist languished in an asylum, whose staff viewed his belief that he was a great artist as signs of his mental state, his paintings began to receive recognition and their prices rose. Unfortunately none of this benefitted Blakelock’s family or himself.  His paintings became so valued that they were forged to such an extent that Blakelock became the most forged artist in America. Originally a Hudson River School painter, Blakelock developed a unique style of luminous, introspective, nocturnal scenes bathed in an eerie moonlit atmosphere. The artist is best known today as a romantic visionary who exhibited modernist tendencies that were unique for his time. 

Blakelock conveyed his moody, emotional outlook through many murky landscapes.  The subdued tone and quiet, simplified composition of Moonlight is similar to the work of French Barbizon School painters.  While the panel is based on sketches made at night, Moonlight was almost certainly completed in the studio, where the artist worked to instill the scene with mystery and poetry.  Blakelock was something of a technical experimenter and his unorthodox methods have jeopardized the existence of many of his works.  The thorough crackled surface of Moonlight is probably due to Blakelock’s use of bitumen, a dark asphalt-like medium that never completely hardens.

Reference

Karen O. Janovy, Janice Drie  The Unknown Blakelock, Lincoln, Nebraska: Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, 2008. ISBN-13: 978-0977802876