Captive
by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919)7 x 11⅝ inches
Signed lower right: R. A. Blakelock; on verso in arrowhead: R. A. B.
Information
Provenance
C. W. Dilworth, by 1916
Stremmel Galleries, Reno, Nevada, by 1980
Private collection, Oregon, acquired from above, 1982
Sale, O’Gallerie, Portland, Oregon, September 21–23, 2009, lot 754, from above
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above
Private collection, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, acquired from above, 2009
Exhibited
Young’s Art Galleries, Chicago, Illinois, Catalog of the Works of R. A. Blakelock, N. A. and of his daughter Marian Blakelock, April 27–May 13, 1916, no. 72
Sierra Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Nevada, In the Barbizon Mood, February 16–March 9, 1980
Literature
J. W. Young, Catalog of the Works of R. A. Blakelock, N. A. and of his daughter Marian Blakelock (Chicago: Young’s Art Galleries, 1916), 44, no. 72.
Related Work
The Captive, 1879, oil on canvas, 15 15/16 x 23 13/16 inches, signed and dated lower right in arrowhead: R. A. Blakelock 1879; Brooklyn Museum, New York
Note: This painting has been authenticated and catalogued by the University of Nebraska Inventory as NBI-984, category II.
A note attached to the verso of the painting reads “This picture of a captive tied to tree on right – and group of Indians in center – a beautiful piece of color I identify as the work of my husband / Mrs. R. A. Blakelock.”
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
