George Wesley Bellows

Born Aug. 12, 1882, in Columbus, Ohio; died Jan. 8, 1925, in New York. American painter and graphic artist.

As a student of R. Henri and the most important realistic artist in the USA at the beginning of the 20th century, Bellows provided a broad and varied dramatic picture of American life in its true colors, depicting jails and slums, boxing matches, lynchings of Negroes, and scenes of work and carousals (Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909, Cleveland Museum of Art; Blessing in Georgia, 1916, Gallery of Fine Arts, Columbus; The Sand Team, 1917, Brooklyn Museum, New York). Bellows’ pictures, including his landscapes and portraits (Elinor, Jean, and Anna, 1920, Albright Gallery, Buffalo), are characterized by a free style of painting as well as by acute observation and a quality of the unexpected in the composition.