Indian Encampment

The mysterious mood, nocturnal setting, and a unique personal style exhibited in this painting typify the canvases of Blakelock. The artist received no formal training but by 1869 had already exhibited at the National Academy of Design in New York. Instead of crossing the Atlantic for official training in Europe, as had so many of his contemporaries, he went west, visiting California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming.

Blakelock used pigments containing bitumen, or coal tar, which darkens with age to enhance the shadowy areas of his canvases. He built up the surfaces of his paintings with thick layers of impasto, juxtaposing dark, silhouetted trees against luminous or moonlit skies. The nervousness of the forms suggests the mental breakdown that the artist experienced in the early 1890s. The mental anguish became so difficult that the artist was confined to a mental hospital, where he continued to paint.