Background

George Bellows was born on August 12, 1882 in Columbus, Ohio, United States. He was the only child of George Bellows and Anna Wilhelmina Smith Bellows. The family spent their summer vacations in Sag Harbor, Long Island, where George's maternal grandfather, a whaling captain, based.

Education

George Bellows draw well since his early years and he was often asked by his elementary school teachers to decorate their classroom blackboards at holidays, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. At the age of ten, the painter trained himself to become a baseball and basketball player. George was good at both sports and a baseball scout from the Indianapolis team made him an offer, which he declined.

In 1901, Bellows entered Ohio State University, leaving the educational establishment in 1904, one year before his graduation. At the university, he played for the baseball and basketball teams and also produced illustrations for the Makio, a student yearbook of the university.

After leaving the university in 1904, Bellows left for New York City in order to continue his education as an artist. There, in New York, George attended the New York School of Art (present-day Parsons School of Design), where Robert Henri was one of his mentors.

Career

Bellows’s early works show the influence of Robert Henri in their dark, tonal palette, vigorous brushwork and urban subject matter. This peiod of George's career is best exemplified by such work, as "Forty-Two Kids" (1907), a painting of slum children, swimming and diving in the East River. Bellows’s most famous, dramatic, evocative paintings, such as "Stag at Sharkey’s" and "Both Members of This Club" were produced during this period as well.

By 1906, Bellows and Edward Keefe established a studio at Broadway Street in New York City. Between 1907-1915, Bellows produced a series of paintings, showing New York City during a period of heavy snowfall. He became obsessed with chiaroscuro, as developing a contrast between the gritty cityscapes, teeming with workers, and the quiet beauty of snowy expanses in the park. During the period from 1909 till 1911, Bellows held the post of a teacher at the Art Students League of New York. At that time, his fame continued to grow, as he contributed to nationally recognized juried shows.

In 1913, Bellows acted as a member of the organizing committee for the famed Armory Show. The new European movements, which were exhibited there, may have had an unsettling influence on him, as they did on many progressive American painters, who discovered, that their innovations had been in subject matter rather, than in method or form.

Some time later, in 1916, George turned to lithography, because its immediacy attracted him. His nearly 200 lithographs deal with a wide variety of subjects-genre scenes, nudes, portraits, landscapes, literary illustrations and humorous or satiric commentaries. Also, Bellows was deeply and emotionally affected by World War I and recorded his reactions in a series of powerful and painful prints, that have been compared to those of Goya.

In 1918, he became interested in Jay Hambidge's theory of dynamic symmetry, which provided a geometric system of composition for controlling the artist's work. Hambidge and Bellows believed, that it was followed by many of the great artists of antiquity.

In 1919, the painter was appointed a teacher at Art Institute of Chicago. His sojourn there was remembered as a whirlwind of enthusiasm and activity. In 1920, he began to spend nearly half of each year in Woodstock, New York, where he built a home for his family.

In his later years, the painter illustrated numerous books, including those, written by H. G. Wells and Don Byrne. George's illustrations are rich in action, characterization and imagination. Also, Bellows's finest late works are undoubtedly the portraits of his wife, two small daughters, mother and aunt. Brilliantly painted, with solid structural design and probing characterization, they are among the triumphs of American Realism. Less successful are some of the late landscapes and the large Crucifixion, his only religious work.

Achievements

• George Bellows was a noted painter, who gained prominence for his paintings of action scenes and for his expressive portraits and seascapes. "Stag at Sharkey’s" and "Both Members of This Club" are his most famous works. Also, George was one of the organizers of the Armory Show of 1913, which introduced European modernist art to American artists and critics.
  
  In 2007, the White House acquired Bellows's painting "Three Children" (1919). Now, this work is displayed in the Green Room. Also, some of his other works were sold at high prices, including the painting "Polo Crowd", sold for $27.5 million to billionaire Bill Gates.
  
  George received several awards, including Second Hallgarten prize in 1908, Sessnan Medal in 1913 and others.
  
  His works are kept in the collections of numerous museums and galleries, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City, Columbus Museum of Art in Columbus and others.

Works

More photos

• painting

  • Snow Dumpers, East River, Brooklyn Bridge, New York

    (Amazon.com : 24x36 Poster; George Wesley Bellows - Snow D...)

    1911

  • Polo at Lakewood

  • Stag at Sharkey’s

  • Pennsylvania Station Excavation

  • Shore House

  • Emma at the Piano

  • The Palisades

  • Tennis at Newport

  • Dempsey and Firpo

  • The Cliff Dwellers

  • Blue Snow, The Battery

  • Love of Winter

  • New York

  • Excavation at Night

  • Massacre at Dinant

  • Both Members of This Club

  • Mrs. T in Cream Silk, No. 2

  • Cliff Dwellers

  • Tennis at Newport

  • Beach at Coney Island

  • The Big Dory

  • North River

  • Pennsylvania Excavation

  • Rain on the River

  • The Studio

  • Forty-two Kids

  • Paddy Flannigan

  • Churn and Break

Politics

Bellows maintained an interest in social and political activism, and was a regular contributor to the socialist publication The Masses. Also, he was associated with a group of radical artists and activists, called "the Lyrical Left", who tended towards anarchism in their extreme advocacy of individual rights.

Views

Quotations: "The artist is the person who makes life more interesting or beautiful, more understandable or mysterious, or probably, in the best sense, more wonderful."

"Try everything that can be done. Be deliberate. Be spontaneous. Be thoughtful and painstaking. Be abandoned and impulsive. Learn your own possibilities."

"The ideal artist is he who knows everything, feels everything, experiences everything, and retains his experience in a spirit of wonder and feeds upon it with creative lust."

"I found myself in my first art school under the direction of Robert Henri. My life began at this point."

"Art strives for structure, and aspires for magnificence."

Membership

In 1909, George became an associate member of the National Academy of Design and was elected a full academician in 1913. Also, in the early 1900's, he was a member of "The Eight", a group of 20th century artists, who held a show in January 1908 at the MacBeth's Gallery in New York City.

• 

  associate member

  National Academy of Design , United States

  1909

• full academician

  National Academy of Design , United States

  1913

Connections

George married Emma Story Bellows in 1910. Their marriage produced two daughters — Anne and Jean.

Father:

George Bellows

Mother:

Anna Wilhelmina Smith Bellows

child:

Anne Bellows

child:

Jean Bellows

Wife:

Emma Story Bellows

mentor:

Robert Henri

References

• An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters This book introduces the artists of the Ashcan School and the key characteristics and themes of their work.
  2011
• George Bellows: An Artist in Action This book brings together the most important works of Bellows's short, but prolific career, combining them with an in-depth biography of the artist. Photographs of family and friends, as well as of Bellows himself throughout his life are included.
  2007
• The Paintings of George Bellows A comprehensive look at the work of the twentieth-century painter, complemented by the commentary of four leading art historians, features more than two hundred reproductions and offers new insights into Bellows's finest works.
  1992