Landscape with Rider, 1892

Provenance

Important American Corporation
Sale, Rago and Toomey & Co. Auctioneers, December 4, 2025, lot 104

Related Works

Moonlight, Indian Encampment, ca. 1885-1889, oil on canvas, 27⅛ x 34⅛ inches; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C

Landscape, ca. 1879-1883, oil on wood, 6 x 9½ inches, signed lower right: R A Blakelock; Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, New York

Note

New York Times critic Roberta Smith observed that many of Blakelock’s paintings depict scenes that seem to be waiting for something to happen, an anticipatory tension created by the charged surfaces themselves.[1] In Landscape with Rider, the light filters through “an elaborate arabesque of trees in silhouette against the sky” and catches on the forms, intensifying the scene’s mysterious quality.[2] Often in Blakelock’s landscapes, tall trees, deep space, and a small human presence recur as motifs to heighten the compositional drama.

[1] Roberta Smith, “Art: The Landscapes of Ralph A. Blakelock,” New York Times, September 11, 1987, 26.

[2] Norman Geske, Beyond Madness: The Art of Ralph Albert Blakelock 1847-1919 (University of Nebraska Press, 2007), 52.