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Ellis W. Ruley

King Going Up the Military Academy, 1940-1959

Description

Maker

  • Ellis W. Ruley, 1882-1959, American

Title

King Going Up the Military Academy

Year

1940-1959

Medium

Oil on paperboard

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • oil paint

Supports

  • paperboard

Dimensions

55.9 x 71.1 cm (22 x 28 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed on back in pencil: :King going up the military academy

Type

  • Paintings

Credit

Museum purchase: Mary B. Jackson Fund and gift of Alice K. Miles

Object Number

1996.102

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Recent Acquisitions

February 18 - April 16, 2000

Ellis Ruley was an unschooled African-American artist who worked as a laborer near his home in Norwich, Connecticut. The son of a slave who had come north after the Civil War, he probably began painting in the 1930s when his settlement from a traffic accident allowed him to buy a secluded 3-acre property on a hilltop overlooking Norwich's harbor. He often painted while sitting on his bed with the afternoon sun on his easel, using house paint and poster board as medium and support. Many of his subjects -- harvests, waterfalls, lions, hunters, moose -- were taken from nature, but others, like King Going Up the Military Academy, appear to interpret images from popular magazines or from movies. Although Ruley sold some of his paintings at local art fairs, the unique qualities of his artistic imagination did not become known and appreciated until after his death.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in Copyright. This object is King Going Up the Military Academy with the accession number of 1996.102. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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