A Spring Garden
by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919)6¼ x 8¼ inches
Signed lower right in arrowhead: R A Blakelock; on verso: A Spring Garden
Provenance
Macbeth Gallery, New York, New York
Private collection, acquired from above, 1889
Alexander Gallery, New York, New York
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above, 2002
Private collection, Cleveland Heights, Ohio, acquired from above, 2003
Exhibited
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius, November 15–December 15, 2005
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns, November 11–December 10, 2016
Literature
Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius (New York: Questroyal Fine Art, 2005), 32, plate 17.
Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns (New York: Questroyal Fine Art, 2016), plate 11.
Related Work
The Artist’s Garden, ca. 1880–82, oil on canvas, 16 x 24 inches; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Artist Biography
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, in the backwoods of Upstate New York, he languished in a mental institution as his paintings began to break American records. So great was his fame that at an auction in the Plaza Hotel ballroom the total realized for his paintings exceeded the totals for the Monets, the Rembrandts, the Renoirs, the Pissarros, and the Botticellis.
Forever true to his own vision, he lived in abject poverty in the years before he was institutionalized, and even then he never ceased painting, pulling out his own hair for brush bristles and using tobacco juice to augment the meager
