The Mountain Lake, 1876
by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919)14⅜ x 20 inches
Signed and dated lower right in arrowhead: R. A. Blakelock / 1876
Provenance
Private collection
Vose Galleries, Boston, Massachusetts, acquired from above, 1957
Private collection, acquired from above, 1958
[With] T. Gilbert Brouillette, Staten Island, New York
Corporate collection
Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, October 13, 2016, lot 346
Exhibited
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns, November 11–December 10, 2016
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
