Bellows, George Wesley

Bellows, George Wesley, 1882–1925, American painter, draftsman, and lithographer, b. Columbus, Ohio; son of an architect and builder. In his senior year he left Ohio State Univ. to study painting under Robert Henri in New York City. Bellows never visited Europe and seemed uninfluenced by the currents affecting his European contemporaries, but he actively supported independent art movements in New York City. His work has a direct, unselfconscious realism and has survived because of its humanity and sincere conviction. Forty-two Kids (Corcoran Gall., Washington, D.C.); Up the River (Metropolitan Mus.); Stag at Sharkey's (Mus. of Art, Cleveland); and a portrait of the artist's mother (Art Inst., Chicago) are characteristic paintings. Bellows revived lithography in the United States, and his prints are as important as his paintings. Billy Sunday, Dance in a Mad House, and Dempsey and Firpo are American classics. He was a noted teacher at the Art Students League, New York City.

Bibliography

See collection of his lithographs by E. S. Bellows (1927); studies by P. Boswell, Jr. (1942), C. H. Morgan (1965), and M. S. Young (1973).

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Bellows, George Wesley

Stag at Sharkey's, oil on canvas by George Bellows, 1909; in the …

(credit: Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection)

(born Aug. 12, 1882, Columbus, Ohio, U.S.—died Jan. 8, 1925, New York, N.Y.) U.S. painter and lithographer. He studied with Robert Henri at the New York School of Art and became associated with the artists of the Ash Can school. Best known for his boxing scenes, he achieved notoriety with his painting Stag at Sharkey's (1909), which depicts an illegal boxing match. He was one of the organizers of the Armory Show. From 1916 until his death he produced a series of some 200 lithographs, including the well-known Dempsey and Firpo (1924).