RALPH ALBERT BLAKELOCK
1847-1919
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 25.
Person TypeIndividual
BiographyBLAKELOCK, RALPH ALBERT (1847-1919), one of the most tragic figures in the history of American art, grew up in New York City. He studied at Cooper Union, where the mystical subject matter of Albert Pinkham Ryder worked as a strong influence upon him. After graduating from the College of the City of New York (1867), he made his way to the Far West two years later. Traveling over the plains, he sketched through the Rockies and on to the West Coast before returning home. Choosing a powerful and dark impasto technique, Blakelock began to paint an image of an Indian encampment beneath trees that mass, darkly banded, against a crimson sunset or blue-white sky. Repeating the scene time and time again with endless and fascinating variation, this painter decided to stake his whole career on essentially one indelible mental image; however, he was constantly rebuffed in this direction. Finally, in 1899, under the pressure of continual failure, Blakelock lost his mind. In the first decades of the new century, his works (by then owned by others) were destined to experience an almost unprecedented rise in value.
Olpin, Robert S., William C. Seifrit, and Vern G. Swanson. ARTISTS OF UTAH. Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith Publisher, 1999: 25.
