Sunset

"Landscape" ("Sunset") may have been painted shortly after Blakelock's release from the Middletown State Hospital for the Insane. The picture relates to his confinements period when he often sketched in the countryside surrounding the hospital. He gave many such works as gifts to friends and acquaintances. These pictures are small in scale and vividly, almost exuberantly, colored. The freely applied strokes of paint and the inclusion of areas of bare support or canvas are common to his late works.