The Pow Wow
by Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847–1919)5 x 8⅝ inches
Signed lower right in arrowhead: RA Blakelock
Information
Provenance William Doyle Gallery, New York, 1978 Private collection Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, acquired from above, 2012 Private collection, Bloomington, Illinois, acquired from above, 2013
Exhibited Questroyal Fine Art, LLC, New York, New York, Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns, November 11–December 10, 2016
Literature Ralph Albert Blakelock: The Great Mad Genius Returns (New York: Questroyal Fine Art, 2016), plate 45.
Note: This painting has been authenticated and catalogued by the University of Nebraska Inventory as NBI-936, 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