Ralph Albert Blakelock
(American, 1847-1919)

"Indian Encampment"

oil on canvas
signed lower right.
Framed.
16" x 24", framed 24-1/4" x 32-1/4"

Provenance: Mary Helen Tandy Morrison (1880-1972), Tulsa, Oklahoma and San Antonio, Texas; to her son Lucian Leeds Morrison (1906-1986), San Antonio, Texas; to his son Lucian Leeds Morrison III (1937-2014), Houston, Texas; Estate of Nancy Reed Morrison (1936-2021), Houston, Texas.

Notes: But the man was a born colorist, and he secured tones and combinations of pigment that few have discovered. His process was slow and laborious; some times years would elapse from the beginning to the end of his pictures, and many years at that. He piled on pigment and he scraped, he varnished and he repainted…

Unidentified Critic
Frederick W. Morton, "Work of Ralph A. Blakelock", Brush and Pencil, Volume IX, No. 5, February 1902

A native New Yorker, Blakelock attended the Free Academy of the City of New York and had his first exhibition at the National Academy of Design in 1867. In 1869 he embarked on a trip to the Western territories of the United States, traveling alone by railcar and coach. This trip was to irrevocably alter the trajectory of his career. The young man was inspired equally by the lushness of the landscape, so vastly different from anything he had so far experienced, and the lives of the indigenous peoples he encountered. He spent time with the tribes of the Great Sioux Nation, feverishly sketching. Upon his return to New York, he began a series of paintings of Native American Encampments of which the painting offered here is one. These mystically moody landscapes were rendered in thickly applied layers of deeply pigmented paint which were then pumiced, creating the distinct surface and texture for which the artist has become so well-known.

**Previously relined. Signs of inpainting upper right (sky) and along right edge. Surface abrasions and small accretions of gilt along edges, small area of loss mid-lower edge. White diagonal surface mark lower center. Craquelure pattern visible in upper half. Frame with losses, marks, nicks and abrasions. Please ask for additional images. NOTE: This painting is NOT recorded in the Ralph Blakelock archives.