Blue Morning

1909

George Bellows

Painter, American, 1882 - 1925

From under an elevated train track, we look at a cluster of people hammering and working on the far side of a wooden fence, all against a silvery-blue building that fills most of the background in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted mostly in tones of hazy and saturated blues, so many of the details are indistinct. About a quarter of the way in from the right edge of the composition, a thin iron column holds up the train platform. The column nearly spans the height of the painting, and the track it supports runs across the top edge of the canvas. At the foot of the column, along the bottom edge, are two parallel tracks embedded in an area otherwise painted with short, diagonal strokes in topaz blue, olive green, and straw yellow. Just beyond the tracks, the split-rail wooden fence runs across most of the painting, though there is an opening at the left edge of the canvas. A man sits with his back to us on the railing to our right of center. He wears a dark cap, a lapis-blue shirt, and navy-blue pants. Several men work on or near a mound-shaped form, perhaps a piece of machinery, just beyond the fence, near the center of the painting. One man holds a hammer high overhead while another reaches down or strikes the mound with his feet planted wide. More people work together to our left, and a man to our right stands near a crane. The people and these areas are painted with broad strokes and touches of cobalt blue, charcoal gray, khaki brown, and a few swipes of shell pink and bright white. A puff of white smoke billows up behind the central group, before the land drops precipitously away. The chasm is painted with shimmering tones of aquamarine and cerulean blue. A sky-blue, rectangular building perches at the far edge. A few windows are outlined in royal blue to our left but the rest of the building is loosely painted with long, vertical strokes so no architectural details can be made out. Behind this structure are more city buildings, suggested with strokes of muted rust red, parchment and bright white, and cobalt blue. The ice-blue sky fills the band between the top of the buildings and the train track running overhead. The artist signed his name near the lower left corner, “BELLOWS.”

Media Options

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Blue Morning is the last of four paintings that George Bellows executed from 1907 to 1909 depicting the construction site of the Pennsylvania Station railroad terminal in New York City. Undertaken by the Pennsylvania Railroad and designed by architectural firm McKim, Mead, & White, Pennsylvania Station (more commonly known as Penn Station) was an enormously ambitious project that helped transform New York into a thriving, modern, commuter metropolis. The building project was of considerable interest to the public, and throughout the years that Bellows worked on these paintings, newspapers and magazines regularly reported on the station’s progress.

The three other paintings in the Penn Station series all focus on the gaping excavation pit, and the two that were publicly exhibited at the time, Pennsylvania Excavation and Excavation at Night, were criticized for their “brutal crudity” and “grim ugliness.” Bellows seems to have addressed these criticisms in Blue Morning, because it is a far more aesthetic and impressionistic rendering of the subject. The unusual backlit composition minimizes the pit and instead focuses on the laborers working in the foreground. McKim, Mead, & White’s partially completed terminal building is visible in the distance.

On View

West Building Ground Floor, Gallery G6

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Chester Dale Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 86.3 x 111.7 cm (34 x 44 in.)
    framed: 102.9 x 135.6 x 6 cm (40 1/2 x 53 3/8 x 2 3/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1963.10.82

More About this Artwork

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Blue Morning, 1909

This nearly square painting shows an industrial area with buildings, storage silos, a smokestack, and railroad tracks. A mound of brown dirt or other material is in shadow in the lower left corner of the painting. Next to the mound, railroad tracks extend diagonally from the lower center of the painting into the distance to our right. The tracks end at a white building with staggered gray rooflines to our right in the distance. A tall terracotta-red smokestack rises high beyond the white building, smoke pouring out of its top and blending into the clouds above. Just beyond the mound of dirt, piles of white material, perhaps in unseen bins, line the railroad track to our left and lead back to a row ten interconnected, coral-orange silos. The horizon comes about halfway up the painting, and it is lined with a row of long white and gray warehouses. The artist signed and dated the work with brown paint in the lower right corner: “Sheeler 31.”

Scholarly Series:  American Paintings, 1900–1945

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1882-1925]; by inheritance to his wife, Emma S. Bellows [1884-1959]; purchased June 1956 through (H.V. Allison & Co., New York) by Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1910

  • Exhibition of Independent Artists, Galleries at 29-31 West 35th Street, New York, 1910, no. 128 (in Paintings Galleries).

1940

  • Thirty-Six Paintings by George Bellows, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Ohio, 1940, no catalogue [according to records of paintings included in the exhibition; this exhibition not listed in the artist's Record Book].

1949

  • Paintings by George Bellows, H.V. Allison & Co., New York, 1949, unnumbered catalogue.

1956

  • Paintings by George Bellows, H.V. Allison & Co., New York, 1956, no. 5.

1957

  • George Bellows: A Retrospective Exhibition, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., January-February 1957, no. 11, repro.

  • Paintings by George Bellows, Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Ohio, March-April 1957, no. 8.

1965

  • The Chester Dale Bequest, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1965, unnumbered checklist.

2010

  • From Impressionism to Modernism: The Chester Dale Collection, National Gallery of Art, Washington, January 2010-January 2012, unnumbered catalogue, repro.

2012

  • George Bellows, National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2012-2013, pl. 22 (shown only in Washington).

Bibliography

1965

  • Paintings other than French in the Chester Dale Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 50, repro.

  • Morgan, Charles H. George Bellows. Painter of America. New York, 1965: 93, repro. 321.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 14, repro.

1971

  • Braider, Donald. George Bellows and the Ashcan School of Painting. New York, 1971: 49.

1973

  • Young, Mahonri Sharp. The Eight. New York, 1973: 48, color pl. 14.

1980

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1980: 17, no. 54, color repro.

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 25, repro.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: color repro. 166, 202.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 168, no. 61, color repro.

1990

  • Kelly, Frankin. "George Bellows' Shore House." Studies in the History of Art 37 (1990): 121-122, 126, repro. no. 5.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 28, repro.

  • Doezema, Marianne. George Bellows and Urban America. New Haven and London, 1992: 49, 52-55, fig. 19, color pl. 4.

1997

  • Setford, David, and John Wilmerding. George Bellows: Love of Winter. Exh. cat. Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; The Newark Museum, New Jersey; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio, 1997-1998. West Palm Beach, 1997: fig. 15, no. 22.

2007

  • Haverstock, Mary Sayre. George Bellows: An Artist in Action. Columbus, Ohio, 2007: 31, color repro.

2009

  • Peck, Glenn C. George Bellows' Catalogue Raisonné. H.V. Allison & Co., 2009. Online resource, URL: http://www.hvallison.com. Accessed 16 August 2016.

2012

  • Brock, Charles, et al. George Bellows. Exh. cat. National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2012-2013. Washington and New York, 2012: 9, 23, 89, 92-93, 111, pl. 22.

2013

  • Corbett, David Peters. The American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters, with Katherine Bourguignon and Christopher Riopelle. London, 2013: 37-39, 46, color fig. 17.

2015

  • Wolner, Edward W. "George Bellows, Georg Simmel, and Modernizing New York." American Art 29, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 114-116, color fig. 6.

Inscriptions

lower left: BELLOWS

Wikidata ID

Q20191213

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