Forgotten Forest

Provenance

Private collection, Vermont

Related Works 

Moonlight Sonata, ca. 1889–1892, oil on canvas, 30 3/8 x 22 inches, signed lower right: R.A. Blakelock; The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts

A Waterfall, Moonlight, by 1886, oil on canvas, 56¼ x 35 ¾ inches, signed lower right: R.A. Blakelock; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Note

Traces of glowing moonlight filter through the forest trees, framing a path of light—a compositional device Ralph Albert Blakelock frequently employed. Like Blakelock’s Moonlights, Forbidden Forest presents a forest interior that art historian Abraham A. Davidson described as simultaneously “protective and imprisoning.”[1] Nature appears both sheltering and subtly menacing in this painting as Blakelock creates “a strong tunnel effect [that] pulls the viewer backward into shadowy recesses,” heightening the scene’s mysterious atmosphere.[2]

[1] Abraham A. Davidson, Ralph Albert Blakelock (Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996), 87.

[2] Davidson, 85.