1877 Ralph Albert Blakelock Landscape Oil
GUEST: We were on our way somewhere and my car blew a tire. And I happened to be at Goodwill across the street, so I thought, "Oh, I'll go nose around in the Goodwill." They had just put this out and I saw the frame and I thought, "That's the most beautiful frame I've ever seen." The picture had fallen out of the frame, so it was dropped down. I thought, "Well, I'm buying the frame." It was, I think, $29, $30. My son was looking at it one day. My son's name is Blake.
APPRAISER: Okay.
GUEST: And he's like, "Dad, the guy that painted this painting is named Blake." And I said, "Oh, okay. How can you see that?" Because it's very dark.
APPRAISER: Uh-huh.
GUEST: And he goes, "See, it says Blake," and he goes, "I think his last name is Locke." I typed in "Blake Locke." It came up, and I guess maybe that's this painter.
APPRAISER: Well, the painting is oil on panel by Ralph Albert Blakelock. It's signed there "R.A. Blakelock," 1877. Blakelock was born in New York in 1847. Uh, his father was a physician and he was intended to follow in his footsteps. Thankfully for us, he gave up that career in 1866 pretty early on and decided to be an artist. Blakelock's life is immensely tragic. He struggles almost from the beginning. He has moments of success and then things go sideways. One of his great moments of success was in 1877 when he met and married his wife. And he had the first of nine children.
GUEST: So that's when he painted my painting.
APPRAISER: In 1877, exactly.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: In 1891, Blakelock had the first of a series of serious mental breakdowns. And from 1899 until pretty much his death, he was largely institutionalized. And he didn't die until 1919. Today, they would say that he was essentially having bouts of schizophrenia. What's amazing is that during the very end of his life, he became hugely successful.
GUEST: While he was in the institution?
APPRAISER: But he didn't benefit from it at all because a painting that he had sold for about $500 in 1916 sold for $20,000, which was...
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: ...the most that any painting by a living American artist had ever sold for. And so this record was set while he is in a hospital destitute.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: He didn't get a dime. This is a small scale work and as we said, when he got married. It's also when he's transitioning to a very dark interpretation of the Hudson River School ethos. And they get much darker than this. This work is interesting because it's sort of on the cusp of where they're going to end up.
GUEST: I almost didn't bring it because it's so dark. (chuckles)
APPRAISER: It-- and, the later work is even darker; it's incredibly moody. It's like gothic Hudson River School, almost black and blue, many of them nocturnes. So this work doesn't have that super signature look to it. But for Blakelock, it was about mood, not specific location. At auction right now, we would suggest an estimate on it of about $3,000 to $5,000.
GUEST: Wow. It's better than the frame. (laughs) That's great.
$3,000 - $5,000 Auction
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Understanding Our Appraisals
Executive producer Marsha Bemko shares her tips for getting the most out of ANTIQUES ROADSHOW.
Value can change: The value of an item is dependent upon many things, including the condition of the object itself, trends in the market for that kind of object, and the location where the item will be sold. These are just some of the reasons why the answer to the question "What's it worth?" is so often "It depends."
Note the date: Take note of the date the appraisal was recorded. This information appears in the upper left corner of the page, with the label "Appraised On." Values change over time according to market forces, so the current value of the item could be higher, lower, or the same as when our expert first appraised it.
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