A Rider in the Park

Provenance

The artist
Dr. Maurice C. Ashley, Middletown, New York, acquired from above
David Blakelock
Susielies M. Blakelock, Upland, California
Adamson-Duvannes Galleries, Los Angeles, California
Alexander Gallery, New York, New York
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above, 2001
Private collection, Stonington, Connecticut, acquired from above, 2002
Hawthorne Fine Art, New York, New York
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above, 2016
Private collection, Ohio, acquired from above, 2017

Exhibited

Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius, November 15–December 14, 2005, no. 34.
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns, November 11–December 10, 2016.

Literature

Lynn Gamwell and Nancy Tomes, Madness in America: Cultural and Medical Perceptions of Mental Illness before 1914 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), 149.
Abraham A. Davidson, Ralph Albert Blakelock (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 136–37, fig. 105, 178–80, 183.
Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius (New York: Questroyal Fine Art, 2005), 47, 56, no. 34.

Note

Dr. Maurice C. Ashley was superintendent at Middletown State Homeopathic Hospital from 1902 to 1923. Ralph Albert Blakelock was a patient at the hospital between 1901 and 1919, where he was treated for dementia praecox (schizophrenia).

A Rider in the Park depicts a member of the Middletown staff on horseback in front of the hospital. This work is believed to be the largest of Blakelock’s late paintings.

This painting has been authenticated and catalogued by the University of Nebraska Inventory as NBI-1729, category I.