At the beginning of the 20th century, when the influence of impressionism and its smeared images of French landscapes still dominated the art world, George Bellows was focusing on real life.
The Columbus-born artist and one-time student of The Ohio State University made a name for himself after moving to New York City, where he documented American life without the filters of the aristocracy. Now, the Columbus Museum of Art has created a home for his art right where it all began.
“He’s a hometown boy,” says Nannette Maciejunes, director of the museum. “Bellows was part of the revolutionary, groundbreaking generation of American artists that led the charge in both realism and modernism. He was really one of the most talented painters of his generation.”
CMA has long been home to the world’s largest collection of Bellows’ works, but the George Bellows Center, supported by the Teckie and Don Shackelford family, will solidify the museum as a center of scholarship and study related to the artist and the Ashcan School movement that he was part of.
The Ashcan artists – including Robert Henri, William Glackens and George Luks – focused on realistic paintings that captured the realities of urban and lower-class life in America. The cohort’s name came from a Bellows drawing titled Disappointments of the Ash Can, which some criticized for the raw view of life it depicted.
The artists’ work favored city scenes and crowded streets. Despite capturing the sometimes-rugged realities of life at the time, the Ashcan School generally avoided overt political messages.
“What’s so memorable about so many of the pictures is this idea of trying to capture American life,” Maciejunes says, “particularly American life in New York.”
She points to Snow Dumpers, a 1911 oil painting of workers dumping snow into New York City’s East River, as a valuable document of early 20th century life.
“It’s really about city workers that would clear the streets of New York,” Maciejunes says. “I just find the breadth of (his work) is so important; you begin to understand the time.”
Bellows is particularly well-known for his documents of boxing and other sports. Bellows actually played semi-professional baseball before committing himself to art.
During his artistic heyday, prizefighting was largely illegal but still practiced through various loopholes or discreet operations. That makes the fights portrayed in works such as Stag at Sharkey’s, one of Bellows’ most iconic pieces, all the more intriguing.
Maciejunes says that even in his art Bellows’ sporting tendency showed through.
“In the art world, you call it the gift of the hand,” she says. “He painted very rapidly. He had a very athletic way of painting.”
The CMA collection highlights the breadth of Bellows work and goes beyond the most recognizable paintings.
“He was an incredibly important printmaker,” Maciejunes says. “People don’t know this.”
Bellows practiced lithography, in which a drawing is made onto a stone that is then used to print onto another surface. Though considered a lower art at the time, he helped to restore lithography’s reputation, Maciejunes says.
“He really was committed to figuring out how to recapture lithography for artists,” she says. “He was a very experimental lithographer and was particularly committed to it.”
The museum’s collection places an emphasis on that work, his boxing lithographs especially. CMA also co-owns, with OSU, Bellows’ record book. In the book, Bellows documented all of his artwork, drawing small sketches beside the listings to remind him of the compositions.
Having attended OSU from 1902-1904 before moving to New York City, Bellows never forgot Columbus. He and fellow Ashcan artist Henri hosted a 1911 show, titled Exhibition of Paintings by American Artists in Columbus, aimed at bringing great contemporary work to Bellows’ hometown.
“The museum didn’t even have any property at the time,” Maciejunes says. “We were living in rented rooms. This exhibition was held at the library.”
As the centennial of Bellows’ death approaches – the artist lived from 1882-1925 – CMA looks to revisit that exhibition as part of the anniversary. While the Bellows Center will primarily serve as a hub for research and scholarly work, public programming will be a focal point as well.
The center opened with a talk by Mark Cole, the curator of American painting and sculpture at the Cleveland Museum of Art, on Bellows’ depiction of sports in relation to society. In the spring, the center plans to host a lecture on the artist by Charles Brock, associate curator of American and British paintings at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
Cameron Carr is the associate editor. Feedback welcome at ccarr@cityscenemediagroup.com.
