The Unknown Night
The Genius and Madness of R. A. Blakelock, an American Painter
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
“The best book yet written about this neglected and fascinating American painter” who anticipated abstract expressionism by more than fifty years (Gail Levin, The New York Times Book Review).
At the dawn of the 20th century, Ralph Blakelock’s brooding, hallucinogenic paintings were a striking departure from the prevailing American tradition—and as sought after as the works of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent. In 1916, the record-breaking sale of Blakelock’s Brook by Moonlight made him famous. Yet at the time of his triumph, the troubled painter had spent fifteen years in a psychiatric hospital while his family lived in poverty. Released from the asylum, Blakelock fell into the dubious care of an eccentric adventuress, Beatrice Van Rensselaer Adams, who kept him a virtual prisoner while siphoning off the profits of his success, until his mysterious death.
In this acclaimed biography, Glyn Vincent offers the first complete chronicle of Blakelock’s life. Vividly portraying New York in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the narrative begins with his childhood in Greenwich Village and the years he spent peddling his canvases door-to-door and playing piano in vaudeville theaters. Vincent also delves into Blakelock’s journeys among the Sioux and Uinta Native Americans; his mental illness; and the way his exploration of mysticism informed his radical shift away from the Hudson River School of art.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
American painter Ralph Albert Blakelock's tragic life story has all the trappings of a Victorian mystery: kidnapping, madness, seduction, forgery and betrayal. In this spellbinding narrative, playwright and journalist Vincent shows how Blakelock (1847 1919), whose dreamy and haunting landscapes are precursoers to the Abstract Expressionist movement that would follow in 50 years, became one of the country's most innovative and controversial artists. At the height of Blakelock's fame in 1916, however, he had already been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and locked up in a public New York sanatorium, leaving his wife and children destitute. These facts alone would be excitement enough for most "mad artist" biographies. In this case, they represent only the beginning of an increasingly unbelievable story. Beatrice Adams, a seductive and glamorous New York socialite with a shady past, set up a charitable fund to liberate Blakelock from the sanatorium and, supposedly, to provide money for his family. It was a ruse that allowed Adams to gain legal and financial control over the easily manipulated artist and his family, bringing Blakelock's delusional fantasies of persecution to bizarre fruition. Over the next couple of years, using her enormous influence and apparently unstoppable powers of persuasion, Adams isolated Blakelock from his family and retained the profits of his increasingly valuable paintings (here reproduced on eight four-color pages) for herself. Blakelock, eventually fearful of the manipulative and sometimes violent Adams, made repeated attempts to escape from her clutches. The artist's somewhat mysterious death while still under Adams's care only adds to the drama as does Adams's own eventual diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. Compellingly and empathetically told, this chronicle is a must for art lovers and anyone with a passion for turn-of-the-century history and culture.
