GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS (1882/1925), AMERICAN REALIST PAINTER – His fame came early and has proved long lasting

The most acclaimed American artist of his generation

WESLEY BELLOWS began drawing well before kindergarten. At the age of twenty-three, he attained membership in the National Academy of Design. Along with being a great painter, he was a greatest printmakers, using the technique of lithography to make prints fresh like a charcoal sketch. This son of a devout and building contractor, with a mother who hoped that her son would become a Methodist Bishop, he grew up in Columbus (Ohio). You can admire his painting “Cliff Dwellers” at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

At university he proved a spirited extrovert, singing in theatricals, and producing drawings for the university’s magazine. In 1904 he decided to move to New York City, to study painting. His urban New York scenes always depicted the crudity and chaos of working-class people and neighborhoods. Painting New York, he developed his strong sense of light and visual texture. In 1906 GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS painted his first masterpiece (The Cross-Eyed Boy), then expanded his vision with a series of masterful urban scenes. To see his work “Dempsey and Firpo”, you need to go in New York, at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

His masterpiece was his boxing scene (Stag at Sharkey’s), painting that has become an icon of American art. His series of paintings portraying amateur boxing matches, they are characterized by dark atmospheres, with a strong sense of motion and direction. By the age of thirty his work hung in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. GEORGE WESLEY BELLOWS began to receive portrait commissions from New York’s wealthy elite, also going to summer in Maine, where he painting seascapes. “Men of the Docks” (one of his most famous oil painting on canvas that depict the docks of New York City), was sold to the National Gallery in London in 2014, for $25.5 million.

The intellectual property of the images that appear in this blog correspond to their authors. The sole purpose of this site, is to spread the knowledge of these artists and that other people enjoy their works. To pursue this issue, you can digit: http://www.georgebellows.com/biography