George Bellows: New York’s Great Realist Painter

The following is a blog post from Green-Wood Cemetery historian Jeff Richman:

A century ago, George Wesley Bellows (1882-1925) was one of America’s leading artists. He had risen quickly–from star baseball player and illustrator of the student yearbook at Ohio State University to “the apotheosis of the 100 per cent American artist.”

Without waiting to graduate from OSU, Bellows set out for New York City and fell in love with his new surroundings. Bellows was not interested in following the artistic convention of the time: painting the ideal.

Instead, he studied with Robert Henri and, with other artists trained by him, created the Ashcan School, to capture scenes of New York’s poor. Bellows, like the others, chose not to paint the genteel; instead, he devoted himself to realistically documenting urban scenes.

When he was elected an associate of the National Academy of Design, he was the youngest artist to have been so honored. When he was just 29 years old, The Metropolitan Museum added one of his paintings to its collections. Bellows, who died tragically and much too early in life, is interred at Green-Wood Cemetery. Click to see the rest of this post, with images, on the Green-Wood website.