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Ralph Albert Blakelock was born on October 15, 1847, in New York City. Largely self-taught as an artist, he painted throughout the northeastern United States, including the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Among his earliest known White Mountain subjects is a painting of The Flume with Boulder in Franconia Notch, executed early in his career.

Blakelock began exhibiting at the National Academy of Design in 1868 and continued to exhibit there through 1899. He also exhibited at the Brooklyn Art Association in 1874, 1879, 1880, and 1884. By 1884, he maintained a studio in New York City’s 10th Street Studio Building, one of the nation’s leading centers for American artists. His work was exhibited at the Paris Exposition of 1900, where it received an award. Although he had exhibited at the National Academy for many years, he was elected an Associate Academician in 1913 and a full Academician in 1916.

In 1899, Blakelock suffered a mental collapse and was committed to the State Hospital at Middletown, New York. After many years there, friends secured his release and brought him to a camp in the Adirondacks in the hope that the quiet surroundings would improve his health. Period newspaper accounts reported that his mind cleared during his final hours and that he found comfort in the recognition his work had finally received.

Ralph Albert Blakelock died in the Adirondacks, New York, on August 9, 1919. Funeral services were held at Grace Protestant Episcopal Church in Manhattan and were attended by family, friends, and members of New York’s artistic community. Following the service, he was interred at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. Contemporary accounts also reported that a death mask of the artist was made by Sigurd Arendrup.

His daughter, Marian Blakelock, also became a painter whose work closely resembled that of her father. Some of her paintings have subsequently been identified with forged signatures attributed to Ralph Albert Blakelock.

Blakelock’s work has been preserved at the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the Worcester Art Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Montclair New Jersey Museum of Art, the Hackley Artists Guild in Muskegon, Michigan, the Cincinnati Museum, and the Carnegie Institute.

Obituary From Fall River Globe
Fall River, MA / Monday, August 11, 1919 / Page 2 / BLAKELOCK, WELL KNOWN ARTIST, PASSES AWAY

NEW YORK, Aug. 11. — Ralph A. Blakelock, whose power as a painter was recognized only after he had been committed to the Middletown asylum for the insane, died Saturday at a camp in the Adirondacks, according to word received here Saturday. Born in New York in 1847 and almost wholly self-educated in his art, Mr. Blakelock never realized to the full the fame his work had brought him and received only a pittance of the fortune his talent earned.

In 1899 his mind gave way under the strain and he was taken to Middletown, suffering principally from a delusion that he was the possessor of great wealth.

Images of Ralph Albert Blakelock

Signatures

 

References
Independent research by the authors
New Hampshire Scenery
Who Was Who in American Art