Artist George Wesley Bellows
Illustrator and Painter of Boxing Matches and American Scenes
© Meg Nola
Sep 13, 2008
Born August 19, 1882 in Columbus, Ohio, George Wesley Bellows attended Ohio State as a young man and while there did illustrations and cartoons for the college yearbook. He also joined the University’s baseball and basketball teams, and was so good at baseball that he was scouted by the Cincinnati Reds. Bellows, however, wanted to become an artist, and in 1904 he made his way to New York to study what he knew was his true calling.
Dynamic Realism
At the New York School of Art, Bellows found an ideal mentor and friend in artist Robert Henri. Henri was a well-liked and energetic teacher who urged his students to look beyond cloistered studios to scenes from the real world for inspiration, particularly urban scenes. Henri was also part of a group of painters known as The Eight -- often referred to contemptuously by critics as The Ash Can School of artists, because they presumably found beauty in trash cans or grubby, gritty subject matter.
Bellows did not become an official member of The Eight, but he eagerly adopted their theories and often noted how Henri’s teachings had changed his life. Bellows had many interests and used his athletic intensity to bring strength and vigor to his art, proclaiming that "[t]he 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..."
Ringside Seat
Although Bellows’ talents were diverse and not limited to sports-related art, his depictions of boxing matches are quite famous. Before 1910, boxing was illegal in New York but nonetheless attracted huge crowds at private matches. People from all walks of life would attend these fights, just like the fighters themselves were of various racial and ethnic groups.
In such paintings as Both Members of This Club (1909), Bellows showed a fierce battle between two boxers along with the almost bloodthirsty eagerness of the spectators around them. Bellows was also merging classical methods with an excellent knowledge of human physiology to vividly capture the happenings of his own time. Other celebrated Bellows’ boxing scenes are Stag at Sharkey’s (1909) and Dempsey and Firpo (1924), the latter featuring challenger Firpo from Argentina knocking American champion Jack Dempsey completely out of the ring.
A Spectator of Life
Bellows’ continuing belief that fascinating subjects were all around, in “children at the river edge, polo crowds, prize fights, summer evening and romance" and that “an artist must be a great spectator of life,” led him create a wide range of work. Beyond his paintings -- which ranged from prizefighters to city scenes to landscapes to loving portraits of his wife and daughters -- he ventured into lithographs and illustrations. Bellows worked with journalist John Reed to illustrate Reed's article on the wild antics of preacher Billy Sunday, and a few years later, Bellows produced a series of prints to express distress over the carnage of World War I. Bellows also taught at New York’s Art Students’ League and The Art Institute of Chicago, carrying on the same spirit of passion and focus that he had learned from Robert Henri.
Legacy
Unfortunately, George Bellows’ manly attitudes may have led him to shrug off early symptoms of appendicitis, which quickly became serious and led to his death in 1925 at the age of forty-three. While his career was cut short, Bellows nonetheless has emerged as one of America’s great artists, with his works forming the collections of such major institutions as The National Gallery of Art, The Whitney Museum of Art, The Cleveland Museum of Art and The Columbus Museum of Art -- among many others.
Sources:
- The Powerful Hand of George Bellows -- Traditional Fine Arts On-Line
- Stag at Sharkey’s -- Cleveland Museum of Art
 |
 |
 |
 |
