The Unknown Night: The Madness and Genius of R. A. Blakelock, an American Painter

by Glyn Vincent, Ralph Albert Blakelock

This remarkable biography--unprecedented in its comprehensiveness and authority--chronicles the life, times, and madness of one of America's most celebrated and exploited painters. Ranging from Blakelock's childhood in Greenwich Village, his youthful journeys among the Sioux and Uinta Indians, and the years in which he struggled to support his family by peddling his canvases door-to-door and playing piano in vaudeville theaters, this book is also a portrait of a vanished world.

In it, we are introduced to the New York of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries--a city of artists' studios and spiritualists' salons, shantytowns and Millionaries' mansions.

Impressively researched, filled with human drama and vivid period detail, and in the tradition of A Beautiful Mind and The Professor and the Madman, The Unknown Night is a seductive mixture of scholarship and storytelling.

380 pages, Hardcover

First published November 30, 2002

Reviews

[Steve · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating narrative biography of Ralph Blakelock, a great American landscape painter on the late Nineteenth-century who deserves to be remembered and studied by more than just art historians. A truly interesting life that will leave you frustrated at how close he came to success and, even when he achieved it, it was not his to enjoy.

While his contemporaries went to Europe to study "the masters", Blakelock went West and traveled alone with Native tribes, giving us some of the best depictions of a life on the verge of extinction, devoid of sentimentality, but full of dignity and respect. While many of his contemporaries were enthralled with realistic depictions of the Hudson River, he was painting the Shanty Towns in New York (which became the only visual record we have of them). After years of toil and poverty, his Moonlight paintings finally hit pay dirt (setting a record sales price at the time for an American artist) - only he was locked away in an asylum, unaware of what was happening. Until a con artist saw a way to use him for her own ends, and got him out.

It's a tale about celebrity craze and manipulation of the media. A tale about newly-minted millionaires and growing industry trying to come to terms with the great American wilderness that was lost. It's about New York becoming an art capital and buyers looking closer to home, rather than to Paris. It's about American art coming into its own for the first time.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have always been drawn to Blakelock's paintings, because of their beauty and the hint of brooding and darkness. His landscapes often depict a stark twilight silhouette of trees with a fiery sky as backdrop. Vincent tells us that Blakelock struggled with madness and upon that was swindled and went unappreciated for many years. His story is reminiscent of Van Gogh and his struggle with madness and failure.

[Kodiaksm · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book went in deep to describe the abuse of the mentally ill. Even a talented artist praised by the public had no rights in the early 1900s.
The author presented Blakelock and his art beautifully. However, the text included terms that sometimes were meaningless:
1. "Tomboy" for Cora?
2. "out west"-- Pacific ocean or ?
3. "back east" -- Montana?

Very interesting! The book was full of art business/fraud as well as the human consequences.

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was so interesting, maybe because I never took an American Art class. Def. need to re-read!