Although always a progressive artist, George Wesley Bellows enjoyed early success and has attained classic status for his vigorous paintings and lithographs of the America of his day. He was raised in Columbus, Ohio. He enrolled in Ohio State University and remained until the beginning of his senior year, when, in 1904, he enrolled in the New York School of Art. He studied there with ROBERT HENRI, with whom he became closely associated. Although he was not chosen to be a member of the independent exhibiting group The Eight, the vigorous execution and urban subject matter of Bellows’s early work are closely related to the paintings of the members of that group associated with the Ash Can school. Bellows’s work received early recognition, and he was elected the youngest associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1909. He continued to win prizes and to support the avant-garde. In 1913, the year he was elected an academician, he also exhibited in the Armory Show. He married in 1910. While maintaining a studio in New York, he often summered away from the city, in Maine, in Woodstock, New York, or elsewhere. He also had a distinguished career as a lithographer. Bellow’s career was cut short by death following an appendectomy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Index 20th Cent. Artists 1 (March 1934): 81-94; 1 (September 1934): I; 2 (September 1935): III; 3 (August-September 1936): V; reprint, pp. 117-30, 133, 135, 137 § Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America, with introduction by Daniel C. Rich (New York: Reynal, 1965) § Lauris Mason, The Lithographs of George Bellows: A Catalogue Raisonné, (Millwood, N.Y.: KTO Press, 1977), assisted by Joan Ludman, with foreword by Charles H. Morgan, bibliography, list of works in museums, concordances § Washington, D.C., National Gallery of Art, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures, exh. cat., 1982, with essays by E. A. Carmean, Jr., John Wilmerding, Linda Ayres, and Deborah Chotner, catalogue by Ayres and Chotner, chronology by Trinkett Clark § Jane Myers and Linda Ayres, George Bellows, the Artist and His Lithographs, 1916-1924 (Forth Worth, Tex.: Amon Carter Museum, 1988), with introduction by Jean Bellows Booth, additions to print catalogue raisonné, list of print exhibitions, bibliography, published in conjunction with an exhibition held at the Amon Carter Museum, Forth Worth, and others, 1988-90.