Biography
Sarah Blakeslee was born in Evanston, IL in 1912 She began her art studies in classes for young people at the Art Institute of Chicago. After he family moved to Washington, DC she attended the Corcoran School of Art (1929-1930) and studied privately with Catherine C. Critcher. After finishing high school Blakeslee enrolled at the Chester Springs branch of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Known as the "Country School," it was regarded as one of the best plein aire schools in the country. She subsequently studied with Francis Speight at the Philadelphia branch of PAFA (1931-1934).
Blakeslee won two Cresson Traveling Scholarship in the years 1933 and 1934 for study in Europe. It was there she was introduced to the art Cezanne, which had a major influence on her work. Returning to the United States she exhibited at the Art Institute and in the Corcoran Biennial, and took additional classes at the Corcoran. In 1936 she married her former teacher, Speight.
From 1936-1961 the couple lived in Bucks County, PA. In 1937 Blakeslee exhibited in the Forty-Eighth Annual Exhibition at the Art Institute and the Fifteenth Biennial Exhibition at the Corcoran. She had a solo exhibition at the Greenville, North Carolina, Museum of Art the same year. She exhibited regularly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1938-1964.
Blakeslee's Post Office mural for Strasburg, VA, "Apple Orchard," was completed in 1938. Her work was part of the Golden Gate International Exposition (San Francisco) and the World's Fair (New York) in 1939. In 1940 she won PAFA's Mary Smith Prize. And she received the Ranger Fund Purchase Prize from the National Academy of Design. Additional prizes were garnered from the Woodmere Gallery in Chestnut Hill, PA (1952) and the National Exhibition in Ligonier, PA (1961).
Sarah and Francis had two children, a son Thomas born in 1939 or 1940, and a daughter Elisabeth born in 1943. In 1961 Speight took a job at East Carolina College, and the couple moved to North Carolina, where they lived from 1961 to 1998. Blakeslee had a solo exhibition at the Greenville Museum of Art in 1963, and received the North Carolina Award in 1994. Speight died in 1989, and Blakeslee moved to Philadelphia in 1998 to be near her daughter Elisabeth. She died there in 2005.
Critical Analysis
Blakeslee was known for her landscapes, still lifes, and portraits, particularly those of children. She had an Impressionistic style, which she used to great effect in her landscapes. Consider, for example her "Old Factories, Greenville." Her skillful use of light and shade evokes the heat of a Southern summer. She captures the topography of the North Carolina Coastal Plain with a strong horizontal line across the bottom of the painting. The large tree in the foreground and the vertical lines of the smokestack and the water tower only emphasize the feeling of a broad horizontal expanse. Her colors capture very accurately the impression of a hundred fading barns that one sees along roads in the area, their metal roofs slowly rusting away. And the factory on the right, if not already in a state of decay, looks like it's ready to go that way.
Another landscape, from a very different part of the country, is her "Along the River." This depicts a Pennsylvania scene, where the dominant element is vertical, not horizontal. Blakeslee shows houses packed together, in typical Pennsylvania style, along a hill above a river. The perspective is from high above, which emphasizes the verticality of the landscape. Blakeslee hints at the rocks in the river and the string of mills on the far side, just to let the viewer know exactly where they are.
The colors of these two landscapes are also very specific to the locales Blakeslee depicts. The Pennsylvania scene is lush with vegetation, while the North Carolina painting has a lot of green, but it's more of a burned-out hue, consistent with the relentless Carolina sun. Overall each painting conveys an instant sense of place. The elements of each painting were likely very familiar to Blakeslee, and she presents them in a way that feel very familiar to the viewer, if the viewer has ever seen the regions described.
Murals
- Strasburg, Virginia - Post Office: Apple Orchard
References
- Blakeslee, Sarah (Greenville Museum of Art).
- Blakeslee, Sarah (1912–2005) (The Johnson Collection).
- Sarah (Speight) Blakeslee (askART).
- Sarah Blakeslee (Wikipedia).
- Sarah Blakeslee (1912-2005) (Gallery C).