"Bringing the Museum to You"

The Cyber Art Show continues our study of American landscape painters in the Public Domain with three 12-piece Exhibitions of works by George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925).

Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, he was an only child. He attended The Ohio State University from 1901-1904 where he played baseball and basketball. Bellows was encouraged to become a professional baseball player but desired to be a painter. He left Ohio State in 1904 just before he was to graduate and moved to New York City to study art.

 

Bellows studied under Robert Henri at the New York School of Art, becoming of one  Henri's "The Eight" in the Ashcan School, a group of artists who advocated painting contemporary American society in all its forms. In 1909, George taught at the Art Students League of New York. This is when Bellows work first attracted attention at exhibitions. From 1907 through 1915, his series of paintings depicting New York garnered him notoriety.

 

In 1919 Bellows taught at the Art Institute of Chicago, spending the other half of the year in Woodstock, New York. Bellows also made a name for himself as a lithographer, raising the medium to a fine art. From 1921-1924 he collaborated with master printer Bolton Brown on more than a hundred images. He also illustrated books, including several by H.G. Wells.

 

He died on January 8, 1925 in New York City, of peritonitis, after failing to tend to a ruptured appendix.

 

Today, George Bellows’ works are found in the collections of many major American art museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York, the Whitney, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and The Hyde Collection, in Glens Falls, New York.