George Wesley Bellows
Uploaded by trixxxie15 on Jan 02, 2002
Have you ever seen a painting of two fighters going at it hot and heavy on a stag night? If you have, then chances are that you have just seen a painting of George Bellows’s from Tom Sharkey’s Athletic Club in New York City. Prizefights were among some of his favorite subjects, although he only did few paintings of them. George Wesley Bellows was an American realist painter in the 20th century. He was thought of as an artist of the Ashcan school, although he wasn’t one of “The Eight,” which included George Henri and other well-known artists who painted images of the city and life there. His career included paintings of urban images as well as landscapes and portraits. Although his career was cut short at an early age, his paintings reflected America and everyday life in it.
George Bellows began his painting career in the early 1900s. He painted what was happening in the world at that time and it has been said that there were aspects of Bellows’ work, which were in advance of their time rather than abreast of or behind it. He can be thought of as the true progenitor of the American social realists of the 1930s and 1940s (Lucie-Smith 70). Early in his painting career, his casual scenes of people at leisure shone with the effortless grace that dignified all his work (von Hartz 31).
There were many influences on Bellows in his lifetime. The most significant of these influences was from the painter Robert Henri. Bellows was a pupil of Henri’s at the New York School of Art, and Henri was the dominant influence in his early work. They developed a close relationship and Bellows later called Henri, “my father in art” because he was such an influential and charismatic teacher (Hunter Museum 1). Although he never traveled abroad, through international exhibitions and teachers like Henri, Bellows was somewhat influenced by the art of Europe (Wasserman 81). Thomas Eakins was another artist who had a strong influence on him from the very start and continued to be influential throughout Bellows’s life (Lucie-Smith 69). Later in his life, he painted many memorable portraits of middle-aged and elderly women, which was due to his fascination with women (Oates 65). It can be seen that his wife and daughters inspired him also, as he made many paintings of them (Macmillian 19). At the beginning of his...