Women in the 19C United States of America: Another American Tonalist, the Tragic Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919)

Thursday, October 6, 2022

Another American Tonalist, the Tragic Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919)

I guess we can look at a few more landscapes, some of you might be bored with my affinity for portraits. Another American Tonalist painter was self-taught landscape painter Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919), whose madness kept him in & out of asylums. (Blakelock is a key figure in the setting of Paul Auster's novel Moon Palace.)

Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1119) Moonlight. 1885 The Brooklyn Museum.
A problem with his work is its uneven quality. He ramped up production when he needed to cover the costs of his rapidly expanding family of 9 children. After his death, Blakelock’s estranged wife wrote to a dealer, “His best work took a long time to complete and in the meantime we had to live.”

Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919) Moonlight Landscape. Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington DC

When he wasn’t taking shortcuts, Blakelock produced landscapes like his “moonlight” series in which the lunar glow has a diffuse quality. His methods foreshadow modernism as in his liberal use of the palette knife with which built up & scraped away layers to create texture.

Ralph Albert Blakelock (1847-1919) Moonlight Sonata. 1889-92. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

One of his many moonlight paintings was sold to the Corcoran at the highest price ever paid for the work of a living American artist at that time. By the way, that Corcoran painting is my favorite. But his rise in public aclaim along with the increase in his art sales never benefited him or his struggling family. By 1903, his works were being widely forged.
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About this blog

In colonial America, men were considered superior to woman in all ways. In a strict patriarchal hierarchy, men controlled not only wealth & political power but also how their children were raised, religious questions, & all matters of right & wrong.

In the early part of the 19Cy, however, many Americans experienced a revolution in gender. The doctrine of “separate spheres” maintained that woman’s sphere was the world of privacy, family, & morality while man’s sphere was the public world -– economic striving, political maneuvering, & social competition. But women were interested in equality.

In 1848, New York passed the Married Woman’s Property Act. Now a woman wasn’t automatically liable for her husband’s debts; she could enter contracts on her own; she could collect rents or receive an inheritance in her own right; she could file a lawsuit on her own behalf. She became for economic purposes, an individual. By 1900, every state has passed legislation modeled after this, granting married women some control over their property and earnings.

In 1870 after the Civi War, the 15th Amendment was ratified, saying, “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” African-Americans could vote, but women could not.

But it was not until 1920, that the 19th Amendment was ratified granting women the right to vote. “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.”