THE PAINTINGS of George Bellows by HENRY ADAMS
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THE PAINTINGS OF George Bellows BY HENRY ADAMS American painter George Bellows achieved great success at a young age and went on to earn countless honors during his brief lifetime. Here, in an article timed to coincide with an important traveling retro- spective ofBellows's work, the curator of American art at the Nelson- Atkins Museum in Kansas City, Missouri, discusses the artist's life and his interest in systems of color and composition. he career of George Franitig, Ihe Organ Boy. 1907. oil. 48x34'/«. CQI- Bellows (1882-1925) is leolion the Nelson-Atkins one of the great suc- MUGfijm of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. The artist cess stories of Ameri- evokesa whole world can art. Most other through the face of this prominent American realists, even awkward, adolescent T street urchin. Bellows such giants as Winslow Homer and himself was iong-limbed Thomas Eakins, struggled for years and gsngiing and had an odd-shaped face, and lo gain recognition and achieved this painting couid repre- real feme only after their death. Bel- sent a kind of surrogate lows, however, was recognized as a self-portrait. major figure almost from tbe moment he arrived in New York City at the age of twenty-four. He had received every imaginable artis- üc honor before he was thirty and, unlike many prodigies, he continued to produce masterworks up to the üme of his early death. THE EARLY YEARS Early in the fall of 1905, Bellows packed a carpethag and hoarded the Irán from his hometown of Colum- bus, Ohio, to New York City, where he rented a room at the YMCA for Kea week and enrolled in the New ^rk School of Art There, two expe- riences revolutionized his outlook. The first was his encounter with New York City, which was rapidly being transformed into the world's largest city—this was a period of explosive growth, marked by the construction of the first skyscrapers as well as other huge building pro- jects. The heroic scale of the city, its dynamic energy, and the pathos of its poverty all made an indelible impression on this young man from the Midwest Equally significant was Bellows's encounter with Robert Henri, the most charismatic and effective leacher of the time. A foe of the fehionable society portraiture then dominating American painting, Henri was the leader of a group of former newspaper illustrators from Philadelphia who applied to painting the sort of quickly observed, tough- piinded realism they had developed in their newspaper work. It is said Opposite page: Forty-Two Kids, 1907, oii, A2Ve Above: ne Bridge, Btacimeii s island, •\Qi>i, I 6DV1. Coiiection The Corcoran Gaiiery of Art, olt, 34'/is X 44ViG. Collection Toledo Museum that when Henri first looked WashingtoD, DC. Wiiiiam A. Ciark Fund. Per- of Art, Toledo, Ohio. Gift of Edward Drum- «irough the drawings Bellows had haps no other American painter—certainly mond Library. This painting shows the brought with him firom Ohio—ele- none so young—has succeeded in creating Queensborough Bridge soaring overhead like aesthetic unity out of foriy-two active, clearly a cathedral, making tne ships beneath It seem ^t little cartoons and sketches in lit, we 11-characterized figures. The key to the iike smaii toys. "le style of Charles Dana Gibson— unity of this painting ties In the central line of five kids preparing to dive off the pier, wliich nis comment was, "Haven't I seen becomes a kind of study in sequential move- öiese before?" It didn't take Bellows ment, iike one ol Eadweard fLiuybridge's pho- long to get the message. Under tographs of human locomotion. It is as if a singlo boy was first looking down at the Henri's prodding, he abruptly ground, then turhing tovaara the water, then «"•ned from drawing Gibson Girls to running toward It, then taking the cold plunge, and ffnaily bobbing to the surface. stag at S/iafkey's, 1909, oil, 3SVJ x ASVi. Collection Cleveland Museum sketching the life of the streets. a painter. With astonishing speed. ot Art, Cleveland, Ohio. Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, Looking closely, Within a year of his arrival, he was Bellows progressed from portrait we cah recognize the remarkable lib- rapidly turning out paintings that studies to complex figure composi- erties that Bellows took viiith render- remain landmarks in the history of ing the huíTtan figure, yet in some tions. While his early works closely mysterious way he captured perfectly American art followed Henri and other members the savage spirit of these bouts, the anmal violence of two muscular men In 1908, Henri, along with seven of the Eight, within a few years he pounding away at each other with full of his followers, organized an exhibi- had artistically surpassed his teach- force. When someone once criticized tion entitled 'The Eight" at Manhat- ers in terms of both technical and the anatomy, Betiows countered: "I don't know anything about boxing. tan's Macbeth Galleries. Combining emotional power. Im just painting two men trying to kiti Social Realism and a new freedom of Bellows achieved fame far more each other," execution with social radicalism, the quickly than any of Henri's follow- show created a sensation. While the ers, John Sloan, who was over forty artists were denounced as "Apostles before he sold his first oO painting, of Ugliness," crowds streamed in to could never quite hide his annoy- see their work and the exhibition ance at Bellows's success. While was a huge commercial success. As Sloan, George Luks, Everett Shinn, it happened. Bellows was too young to be included in the exhibition of William Glackens, Maurice Prender- the Eight, but he was friendly with gast, and even Henri himself had all the participants and soon, in the great difficulty getting their work words of one New York newspaper, into juried exhibitions. Bellows did "out-eighted the Eight," not, since his technical bravura impressed even conservative land- Both timing and talent made Bel- scape painters. Within a year of nis lows's success possible. The Eight arrival In Manhattan, BeOowshaa had already prepared people for the his paintings hanging at the Annual kind of subject matter tbat he depict- Exhibition of the National Academy ed, but none of tlie other members of Design, a highly competitive of the Eight could match Bellows as juried exhibition; within two years he had begun to gather awards, Leit: Aunt Fanny ¡Old snch as the prestigious Hallgarten Lady In Blackj, prize; within three years he was 1920, oil, 44Vai 341/1. Collec- elected to the National Academy of lion Des Design, the youngest person ever to Maines Art receive such recognition; within Center, Oes Moines, towa. four years he had sold a painting to The composi- the Pennsylvania Academy of the tion for this work was de- Fine Arts; and within five years one rived from a of his paintings had been purchased division otthe for the permanent collecfion of New canvas accord- ing to the meth- York City's Metropolitan Museum of ods of Jay Art—as great an honor then as it Is H am bridge's book Dynamic today Symmetry in Composition. Close values, ellows's first significant combines with an Increased paintings were studies use of glazing of children, such as for shadows, Frankie, the Organ Boy. entiance ttie sense of inti- a portrait of an awk- macy in this ward, adolescent street urchin. iriensely alive B painting ot Bel- These canvases are similar to the lowB's moth- work of Robert Henri but are gener- er's sister, who ally more powerful—less sentimen- did not marry until extremely tal. Henri, for example, would surely late in lite. have attempted to sweeten or tone down Frankie's adolescent awk- wardness. After these portraits. Bel- lows moved on to a series of paint- ings showing figures in a setting: His first were two canvases of boys skinny-dipping in the East River. The second of these swimming scenes is a masterpiece, Forty-Two night: Katherine Rosen. 1921,ail, 53 ï43Ve. Col- Kids, which does indeed contain lection Yale University Art forty-two kids—it makes an interest- Gallery, New Haven, Con- ing game to locate and count them. necticut. Bequest of Stephen Carl ton Clark. Very often with Bellows these figure After Bellows's marriage, compositions seem to refer back to his subject matter shitted from tough, urhan scenes the early portraits—to draw their to intimate portraits and inspiration from them. Forty-Two genre scenes of his Kids, for example, shows boys friends and family. Most of his best late portraits whose gangling physique is identi- depict women rather than cal to that of Frankie; it is as though men, and ttiis wonderfully graceful and romantic we are suddenly confronted with work portrays the daugh- forly-two little "Franldes" in various ter of his neighbor in stages of undress. Woodstock, New York. Not everyone liked Forty-Two Kié when it was first exhibited, but it attracted considerable attention. One critic complained that the boys looked "more like maggots than humans," and labeled the painting a tour de force in absurdity." The Nm York Herald, however, called lie work "one of the most original and vivacious canvases in the shoV and added that "an artist need never leave Manhattan Island if it yields ii'm pictures like this." Bellows's career was launched. Forty-Two Kids was followed by a series of remark- äole paintings of the Hudson River, Right; The Crucito- /oo, 1923, oii, 59V2 X 68V2. Coiiection Lutheran Brother- hood. Minneapoits, Minnesota.