Nude with Hexagonal Quilt

1924

George Bellows

Painter, American, 1882 - 1925

Media Options

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Bellows executed Nude with Hexagonal Quilt at his studio in Woodstock, New York, in July 1924 at the age of forty-one. He had been an avid practitioner of life drawing since his early student days at the New York School of Art under the tutelage of Robert Henri and often taught life classes himself. Between 1923 and 1924, Bellows devoted a series of lithographs to the female nude. And after finishing Nude with Hexagonal Quilt, he immediately embarked on a painting entitled Two Women that was similar in scale and featured a female nude seated on the same Victorian loveseat.

The meditative attitude and pose of the model in Nude with Hexagonal Quilt recall Michelangelo’s famous allegorical sculpture Night from the tomb of Giuliano de’ Medici (1519–1534, Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo, Florence). By placing his figure in a contemporary setting and seated on a traditional 19th-century American pieced hexagonal silk quilt, Bellows wedded the traditions of American folk art to the legacy of the Italian High Renaissance in a highly original way. The painting was among his most ambitious nude compositions and one of the last works he completed before his premature death from a ruptured appendix in January 1925.

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 129.5 x 160 cm (51 x 63 in.)
    framed: 154.9 x 185.1 x 8.3 cm (61 x 72 7/8 x 3 1/4 in.)

  • Accession

    1983.1.4

More About this Artwork

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

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: Nude with Hexagonal Quilt, 1924

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The artist [1882-1925]; by inheritance to his wife, Emma S. Bellows [1884-1959]; her estate; purchased July 1961 through (H.V. Allison & Co., New York) by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1924

  • Special Exhibition of Paintings by George Bellows, Leon Kroll, Eugene F. Savage, Walter Ufer, Paul Bartlett, Edgar S. Cameron, H. Aimard Oberteuffer, and George Oberteuffer, Art Institute of Chicago, 1924-1925, no. 16, as Venus.

1925

  • Exhibition of Paintings by George Bellows, Charles Hopkinson, Eugene Speicer, Boston Art Club, March 1925, no. 3, as Nude.

  • Memorial Exhibition of the Work of George Bellows, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October-November 1925, no. 59, repro., as Venus.

  • Exhibition of Paintings by George Bellows, Charles Hopkinson, Robert Henri, Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, April 1925, no. 3, as Nude.

  • Exhibition of Paintings by George Bellows, Worcester Art Museum, February-March 1925, no. 11, as Nude.

  • Bellows Exhibition, Durand-Ruel Galleries, February 1925, no. 3, as Nude.

1958

  • George Bellows, H.V. Allison & Co., New York, 1958, no. 14.

1961

  • George Bellows, H.V. Allison & Co., New York, May 1961, no. 15, cover repro.

  • The Nude in American Painting, Brooklyn Museum, October-November 1961, no. 34.

2003

  • Leaving for the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock, Memorial Art Gallery, University of Rochester, 2003, fig. 47, color plate 32.

2012

  • George Bellows, National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2012-2013, pl. 148 (shown only in New York).

Bibliography

1929

  • Bellows, Emma Louise Story. The Paintings of George Bellows. New York, 1929: 138, as Venus.

1965

  • Morgan, Charles H. George Bellows. Painter of America. New York, 1965: 278.

1971

  • Braider, Donald. George Bellows and the Ashcan School of Painting. New York, 1971: 140.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 32, repro.

  • Quick, Michael, Jane Myers, Marianne Doezema, and Franklin Kelly. The Paintings of George Bellows. Exh. cat. Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, 1992-1993. New York, 1992: 87, fig. 88.

2009

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

Inscriptions

lower right: Geo Bellows.

Wikidata ID

Q20192508

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