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The art collector from Chicago was glad that he visited the Middletown, N.Y. asylum that day in 1916. It was a privilege to talk with Artist Ralph Albert Blakelock, whose moonlit lakes and forests were bringing up to $20,000 apiece. And the painter seemed perfectly all right, too--at least, until the moment when he drew what looked like a roll of bills from his pocket and gave three to his visitor. "Take this back to Chicago," Blakelock soberly advised him. "Don't spend it, but live off the interest." The bills turned out to be three little green landscapes, which Blakelock had painted to look like paper money.

Blakelock, self-taught, had spent most of his life fanatically painting bigger, better landscapes, and trying to support his family in the slum-infested fringes of Manhattan by peddling the pictures to framers, Third Avenue junk dealers, and auction houses for a few dollars apiece. Intermittently, his work was exhibited at the National Academy; but conventional critics of the 1870s and '80s did not like the misty, moody landscapes--empty of human life--which Blakelock did best. Storytelling in painting was the fashion.

In 1891, obsessed by failure, Blakelock's mind began to crumble. He took to wearing multicolored sashes about his waist, tucking an antique dagger in his belt, bedecking himself with gaudy beads and trinkets. And while his growing family was forced to scrimp for food, he began to imagine himself a millionaire. Finally, in 1899, on the day that his ninth child was born, he was committed to an asylum. There, hopelessly insane, he spent most of the last 20 years of his life.

Only when Blakelock was beyond help were his paintings rescued from obscurity, and recognized as first-rate of their kind. In 1900, one of his landscapes won a prize at the Universal Exposition in Paris. His pictures (along with forgeries of them) were resold to museums and collectors across the country. Neither he nor his family profited.

Last week Manhattan's Whitney Museum, the nation's top sponsor of U.S. art, was celebrating the 100th anniversary of Blakelock's birth with a retrospective show of his work. His, said the catalogue, was "one of the most tragic artists' lives ever recorded. Before we congratulate ourselves that it could not happen today, let us be sure that we have gained enough wisdom to recognize our gifted individuals no matter how far they may diverge from the norm."

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