Published in conjunction with a major retrospective exhibition, this landmark volume documents the artist’s short life and career from his youthful, meteoric rise in New York City in the early part of the twentieth century to the largely unexplored period preceding his death. Mentored by Robert Henri, leader of the Ashcan School, George Bellows (1882–1925) skillfully and provocatively portrayed the modern world in his brilliantly rendered paintings of street children, tenements, athletes, urban and rural landscapes, seascapes, war, and family. The startling originality of his first and most famous boxing canvases, Stag at Sharkey’s among them, set the stage for many later and similarly ambitious works such as New York, Riverfront, No. 1, and Elinor, Jean and Anna. Bellows was also an equally accomplished graphic artist whose insightful illustrations and lithographs addressed a wide array of social, religious, and political subjects.
Abundant reproductions from every phase of Bellows’ career are accompanied by a series of thematic essays by leading art and social historians. They offer in the aggregate a substantial reconsideration of the artist by drawing comparisons not only to Homer and Eakins but also to Manet, Goya, El Greco, and Picasso, and by relating Bellows’ rise to the later emergence of his friend and contemporary, Edward Hopper. This volume, rounded out by a chronology and an essay devoted to the artist’s personal record books, reveals the full range of Bellows’ remarkable artistic achievements and illuminates his unique and dynamic role in the history of both American art and Western art in general.
348 pages | 9.6 x 11.5 inches
