Dated Web objects 1880-1919

George Bellows

Date: after 1904

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Gift of Seymour and Elaine Diamond

Object number: C1991.4

Text Entries: Parke-Bernet Galleries, Inc., New York, New York (Sale 1077, May 26, 1949): lot 91. Ill. lot 91, p. 39 (black & white).<br><br> <i>Old Fisherman, </i>George Bellows. Collection Cameo sheet, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, June 1993. Ill. (black & white).<br><br> Lévy, Sophie, et al. <i>Twarze Ameryki: Portrety z kolekcji Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940/Faces of America: Portraits from the collection of the Terra Foundation for American Art, 1770–1940</i>. (exh. cat. International Cultural Center). Cracow, Poland: International Cultural Center, 2006. Ill. p. 111 (color).

George Bellows

Date: 1909

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Art Acquisition Endowment Fund

Object number: 1999.5

Text Entries: A symphony of paint, this larger-than-life portrait displays George Bellows' predilection for capturing an individual's psychological state of being. Bellows makes no attempt to romanticize or sentimentalize his depiction of the (hired) model Miss Leslie Hall. His "fleshy" rendering, in fact, achieves quite the opposite effect-she appears more real than ideal. This is further emphasized by Bellows' inclusion of shoes, a ring and hair accessory on Miss Leslie Hall; she becomes "naked" and not "nude," in contrast to Robert Henri's symbolic female in Figure in Motion. Removing her body from the privileged status as a canonical work of art to the realm of the "real," Bellows created a psychological portrait of a woman whose direct gaze confronts the viewer.

George Bellows

Date: 1909

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1999.10

Text Entries: In the spring of 1904 at the age of twenty-two, George Bellows turned down an opportunity to play professional baseball for the Cincinnati Reds opting instead to move to New York to pursue a career as an artist. Supporting himself by playing baseball for various leagues around New York, Bellows enrolled at The New York School of Art where he studied under Robert Henri. Henri encouraged his students to seek out "real" subjects, and Bellows' exuberant paintings of teeming waterfronts, bloody prize fights, smoky tenements, crowded evangelical tent meetings, buxom nudes, and the open American landscape throb with a palpable energy. Unlike most of his contemporaries Bellows never traveled to Europe, finding artistic instruction, support and subjects at home in the United States. As early as 1907, Bellows had received acclaim for his depictions of winter scenes, and the largest group extant is the Hudson River series, consisting of eleven paintings. The Palisades is one such work and offers a view across the Hudson River toward the Palisade cliffs of New Jersey. The thick layers of glistening paint-a hallmark of Bellows' work-seem to capture the vitality and rawness of the season. As one visitor to Bellows' studio recalled, "He [Bellows] would stand ten feet or more from the canvas, study it carefully, then rush forward almost on the run and work at the canvas rapidly and with large, free strokes of the brush." It is to this, perhaps, that one could attribute the seemingly inherent sense of freshness and immediacy that the painting exudes.