George Wesley Bellows | Biography | Hollis Taggart Galleries

George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925)

Renowned for his gritty scenes of urban life, George Wesley Bellows was an accomplished lithographer and draftsman as well as a dynamic painter. A member of the Ashcan school, he built his reputation on depictions of athletes, including boxers and polo players, which captured the energy and intensity of early twentieth-century sports. Although he did not exhibit in 1908 with The Eight American painters group, which included John Sloan, William Glackens, Robert Henri, George Luks, and Everett Shinn, Bellows shared their interest in the New York streetscape and use of a muted palette.

Born in Columbus Ohio, Bellows attended Ohio State University but withdrew to play semi-professional baseball. When he began selling his drawings, he left for New York to study art. In 1904 he enrolled at William Merritt Chase’s New York School of Art where he studied under Robert Henri. After boarding for several years at the YMCA, Bellows moved to a studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building, where Eugene O’Neil and Rockwell Kent also had residences. Across the street was the Sharkey Athletic Club, which inspired his famous paintings of boxing matches Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909 and Both Members of this Club, 1909. Both featured boxers at the moment of collision and were remarkable for their raw power and brutal realism.

In 1923, The New York Evening Post commissioned a painting of the popular fighters Dempsey and Firpo. In contrast to Bellow’s earlier works, the composition of his late painting is smoother, more geometrically balanced, and modeled using a color scheme of green, red, and orange. His new technique was the result of careful study of Jay Hambridge’s compositional system, “dynamic symmetry” that he and Henri began to investigate in 1918. Two years earlier, Bellows had also begun making prints on his own lithography press and in partnership with the printer George C. Miller. This resulted in a body of lithographs that renewed interest in this method of printmaking among American artists.

Throughout his career, Bellows was committed to promoting anti-academic artistic developments. In 1910 he assisted with the Exhibition of Independent Artists and in 1913 helped with organization of the Armory Show, where he also exhibited a series of paintings and drawings. That same year he was elected an academician at the National Academy of Design. Although Bellows is most well known for his views of the city, he also painted numerous portraits, landscapes, and costal views. He died in New York City in January 1925. He was commemorated with a memorial exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.