House by a Stream, 1870
by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919)5 x 11¾ inches
Initialed and dated lower left in arrowhead: R.A.B. 1870
Information
Provenance
Private collection, New Jersey
Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York
Private collection, New York, 2011
Note: This painting has been authenticated and catalogued by the University of Nebraska Inventory as NBI-2141, category II.
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