Questroyal 2009

The Blakelock Effect— In the Opinion of Critics [Blakelock was] one of the greatest artists America has produced. . . . By every right he deserves a niche equal in importance to the positions held byWinslow Homer, Albert P. Ryder, and Thomas Eakins. edward allen jewell, art critic of The NewYork Times , 1942 4 Whatever else may be said about late-nineteenth-century American painting, it must be admitted that it produced a small group [Homer, Blakelock, Eakins, and Ryder] of about the strongest individualists in the history of art. robert m. coates, art critic of The NewYorker , 1947 5 He was a combination of painter and musician. . . . Blakelock was a mystic and colorist . . . a soul so sensitive, so fiery, highly wrought, that he could scarcely be at home on earth. harriet moore, art critic, 1913 6 Blakelock: A New Horizon Blakelock stood at the outer edge of imagination, near the supernatural. In defiance of Ruskin’s principles and accepted convention, he painted an image altered by the passage through the innermost chambers of his mind. He did not find his vision from what he saw but rather from what he felt, perceived, and imagined. He progressively deviated fromthe accepted norm, undeterred by the ever-increasing risk of condemnation as he facilitated the complete unmitigated transfer of his intellect to canvas; with each re- bellious stroke, the coordinates that would lead American art to modernism were calibrated in oil and pigment. On two separate occasions the sale of Blakelock paintings broke an Amer- ican record, and in 1916 paintings by this insane but incredibly creative American outsold those by Botticelli, Renoir, Monet, Rembrandt, and Pissarro. The art world was stunned that Blakelock had risen above Europe’s most iconic painters. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, a magnificent Blakelock was auc- tioned at Sotheby’s in New York, where it sold for $3,530,000 , one of the highest prices paid for an American painting in recent years. — lms Blakelock’s works are in nearly every major American museum, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, National Gallery of Art, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. 1 Glyn Vincent, The Unknown Night, the Genius and Madness of R. A. Blakelock, an Amer- ican Painter (NewYork: Grove Press, 2003 ), pp. 303 – 305 ; Warhol andWyeth referenced in “FactoryWork: Warhol, Wyeth, and Basquait,” http://www.tfaol.com/aa/ 6 aa/ 6 aa 349 . htm (accessed August 7, 2009 ). 2 Gail R. Scott, ed., On Art by Marsden Hartley (NewYork: Horizon Press, 1982 ), p. 168 . Quoted in Diane P. Fischer, Paris 1900 : The “American School” at the Universal Exposition (New Brunswick, N. J.: Montclair Museum, 1999 ), p. 190 . 3 Quoted in “Plans Exhibition to Aid Blakelock,” New-York Tribune , March 21, 1916. 4 Edward Allen Jewell, “BlakelockWork Put in Exhibition,” The NewYork Times , January 13, 1942 . 5 Robert M. Coates, “The Art Galleries, Blakelock,” The NewYorker (May 3, 1947 ): 70 . 6 Harriet Moore, “An Appreciation,” in Moulton & Ricketts Galleries, Catalogue of the Loan Exhibition of ImportantWorks by George Inness, AlexanderWyant, Ralph Blakelock (Chicago: Moulton & Ricketts Galleries, 1913 ). Quoted in Vincent, p. 10 . 7 Macbeth Gallery, Art Notes , no. 13 (April 1900 ): 199 .