A LIFE TOO SHORT: GEORGE BELLOWS
by Joan K. Yanni
A strikingly beautiful portrait, installed during the summer in the 20th-century gallery, demands that we stop and look. It is Anne in White by George Bellows, on long-term loan from the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh. A lovely, golden-haired young girl in a white dress sits on a rocking chair and gazes pensively out of the picture. A large black hat dangles from her left hand, and she holds a colorful round fan on her lap. To her left is a dark drapery, punctuated by swatches of color; to her right a view of the Catskills can be seen through the window. The arresting portrait is a fascinating complement to Bellows’s Evening Group, from the MAG collection, which hangs across from it.
Evening Group (47.13) pictures the Bellows family enjoying their rented summer house on Monhegan Island, halfway up the Maine coast. The artist’s wife Emma sits on a chair on top of a hill with their daughter Anne (the girl in the portrait) sitting on the grass at her feet. The artist walks up the hill towards them, a cat in his arms. To the right of the painting are two unidentified children, probably neighbors. At the bottom of the hill, behind the house, wash is hanging out to dry. Is that a woman putting the clothes on the line? It is hard to tell. Boats, two in full sail, and a canoe can be seen in the harbor. The composition forms an equilateral triangle, with the higher sail at the tip, Anne and her mother at the bottom left angle, and the other children at the right. Bellows is at the center of the triangle. The sun is stetting, and the sails stand out against the water and sky. (In addition to the painting, MAG owns Study for Evening Group (93.23), a pencil, charcoal and black crayon drawing.
Both these paintings are a contrast to the works for which the artist is best known to the public. Bellows (1882-1925) was a prolific painter and lithographer. He was a member of the Ashcan School. Although not one of The Eight, he did show his work at the Exhibition of Independent Artists in 1910. He was known for his scenes of the New York City streets—crowded sidewalks, ragged children, and, particularly, pictures of prizefights, such as Both Members of the Club, Stag at Sharkey’s, and Dempsey and Firpo. (Prize fights were illegal in NYC, but were permitted in private clubs, such as Sharkey’s.) In each of these he captures the savagery and drama of the fight ring.
George Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of an architect and building contractor. He said that he grew up among Methodists and Republicans, but his mind was always open to new ideas in religion and politics as well as art. He seemed to have in innate talent for both drawing and athletics. At first athletics seemed to win out, for he left the university to play semi-professional baseball. Then he sold a few drawings and decided to pursue art.
In 1904 he entered the New York School of Art, where William Merritt Chase was the director. Robert Henri was his teacher, and Henri and Bellows began what was to be a lifelong friendship. By 1905 Bellows had opened his own studio.
By 1908 both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Metropolitan Museum had purchased one of Bellows’s paintings; a year later, at 27, he was the youngest member ever elected to the National Academy of Design. He was one of the organizers as well as an exhibitor in the 1913 Armory Show, which introduced the new “radical” European art to America. Bellows was fascinated by this art and found it stimulating, but he continued to paint in his own way.
In 1910 he married Emma Louise Story and moved into a brownstone house at 146 East 19th Street, which remained his home until his death. Here his two daughters were born and most of his work was done in a studio in the house. Wherever he was, he painted. He and his family spent summers in Maine, in Woodstock, NY, in California and Santa Fe, returning again and again to Woodstock. He captured it all in paint.
In 1916 Bellows began to make lithographs. He chose this medium rather than etching because it gave him the sweep and spontaneity of drawing, which he loved. When Bolton Brown (See May 1993 article.) became his printer, his lithographs assumed new tone and depth. Brown could reproduce in print after print the exact values of the originals. Brown’s control over the finished print gave Bellows new freedom to refine and enrich the values in his drawings. (MAG own seven Bellows lithographs, including Stag at Sharkey’s and Dempsey and Firpo, which was printed by Brown.)
Bellows was always a precise draughtsman, and careful composition can be seen in his work. His pictures were built on a geometrical framework, which he had learned from a course in “Dynamic Symmetry” taught by Jay Hambridge. He was always willing to experiment. He used a palette knife as well as a brush to get the effect he wanted. In his drawings he used crayon along with pencil and ink wash.
Though many artists of his day sought success by traveling to Europe, Bellows never went abroad. Often regarded as the most American of artists, he represented the American temperament of the day—restless, vigorous, adventurous, spontaneous. He found his subjects in American scenes and subjects.
He particularly liked Woodstock, in the Catskills. He build a home here, and between 1920 and 1924 was working for nearly six months out of the year in his Woodstock studio. Anne in White was painted during the first summer that the family lived here. Both the critics and the public consistently admired his work. He was only 43 when he died in New York of a ruptured appendix.
The Gallery is planning an exhibit of the later works of Bellows, scheduled to open in April 2003. Leaving for the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock will include Anne in White, Evening Group, and Autumn Brook, a Bellows painting recently acquired by the Gallery.
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