New York

1911

George Bellows

Painter, American, 1882 - 1925

George Bellows

We look slightly down onto a crush of pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, wagons, and streetcars enclosed by a row of densely spaced buildings and skyscrapers opposite us in this horizontal painting. The street in front of us is alive with action but the overall color palette is subdued with burgundy red, grays, and black, punctuated by bright spots of harvest yellow, shamrock green, apple red, and white. Most of the people wear long dark coats and black hats but a few in particular draw the eye. For instance, in a patch of sunlight in the lower right corner, three women wearing light blue, scarlet-red, or emerald-green dresses stand out from the crowd. The sunlight also highlights a white spot on the ground, probably snow, amid the crowd to our right. Beyond the band of people in the street close to us, more people fill in the space around carriages, wagons, and trolleys, and a large horse-drawn cart piled with large yellow blocks, perhaps hay, at the center of the composition. A little in the distance to our left, a few bare trees stand around a patch of white ground. Beyond that, in the top half of the painting, city buildings are blocked in with rectangles of muted red, gray, and tan. Shorter buildings, about six to ten stories high, cluster in front of the taller buildings that reach off the top edge of the painting. The band of skyscrapers is broken only by a gray patch of sky visible in a gap between the buildings to our right of center, along the top of the canvas. White smoke rises from a few chimneys and billboards and advertisements are painted onto the fronts of some of the buildings. The paint is loosely applied, so many of the people and objects are created with only a few swipes of the brush, which makes many of the details indistinct. The artist signed the work with pine-green paint near the lower left corner: “Geo Bellows.”

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Completed in February 1911, New York is a large, ambitious painting in which George Bellows captures the essence of modern life in New York City. Although the viewer looks uptown toward Madison Square from the intersection of Broadway and 23rd Street, Bellows did not intend to represent a specific, identifiable place in the city. He instead drew on several bustling commercial districts to create an imaginary composite, an impossibly crowded image that would best convey a sense of the city’s frenetic pace.

By assembling all of these diverse elements into one scene, Bellows revolutionized the conventions of the traditional American urban vista and surpassed the efforts of other contemporary urban realists, like Robert Henri and John Sloan. A critic commented that New York is full of “motion, of stirring existence. Trucks are darting through the crowd. Men and women are hurrying across the streets, trolleys are clanging their way in and out, a policeman is keeping people from being run over, you feel the rush, you hear the noise, and you wish you were safely home.”

New York (English)
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On View

East Building Ground Level, Gallery 106-B

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon

  • Dimensions

    overall: 106.7 x 152.4 cm (42 x 60 in.)
    framed: 134.6 x 181.8 x 10.1 cm (53 x 71 9/16 x 4 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1986.72.1

More About this Artwork

Video:  George Bellows's "New York" (ASL)

This video provides an ASL description of George Bellows's painting, New York. 

Scholarly Article:  American Paintings, 1900–1945: New York, 1911

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]; her estate; purchased 1961 through (H.V. Allison & Co., New York) by Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1986 to NGA.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1911

  • Eighty-Sixth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, March-April 1911, no. 2.

  • Special Exhibition and Sale of Oil Paintings by George Bellows, Marshall Field & Company, Chicago, October 1911, no. 9.

1912

  • A Catalogue of Paintings by George Bellows, Art Students League of Columbus, Public Library, Columbus, Ohio, November 1912, no. 17, repro.

  • Paintings by George Bellows, N.A., Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio, December 1912, no. 17.

1913

  • Gimbel Brothers, New York, 1913 [according to the artist's Record Book].

  • Special Exhibition of Paintings by George Bellows, N.A., Detroit Museum of Art, 1913, no. 17.

1915

  • A Catalogue of Paintings, Gallery of Fine Arts, Panama-California Exposition, San Diego, 1915, no. 47, repro.

1916

  • "Los Angeles Circuit", 1916 [according to the artist's Record Book].

1921

  • Paintings and Drawings by George Bellows, Montross Gallery, New York, 1921, no. 2.

1925

  • Memorial Exhibition of Paintings by George Wesley Bellows, Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, December 1925, no. 5 (travelled to six venues, including Denver, and probably Buffalo, listed separately under 1926 in this exhibition history).

  • Memorial Exhibition of the Work of George Bellows, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, October-November 1925, no. 13, repro.

1926

  • Memorial Exhibition of the Work of George Bellows, 1882-1925, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, 1926, no. 5.

1948

  • Museum of the City of New York, Summer 1948.[1]

1962

  • Modern American Painting: 1915, The Fine Arts Gallery of San Diego, 1962-1963, no. 3, repro.

1986

  • Gifts to the Nation: Selected Acquisitions from the Collections of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1986, unnumbered checklist.

1992

  • The Paintings of George Bellows, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, 1992-1993, fig. 12.

1995

  • Metropolitan Lives: The Ashcan Artists and Their New York, National Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; New-York Historical Society, 1995-1996, unnumbered catalogue, figs. 1 and 82, frontispiece (shown only in Washington).

1997

  • George Bellows: Love of Winter, Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach; The Newark Museum; Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art, 1997-1998, no. 21, fig. 38.

1999

  • An Enduring Legacy: Masterpieces from the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1999-2000, no catalogue.

2005

  • Moving Pictures: American Art and Early Film, 1880-1910, Williams College Museum of Art, Williamstown; Reynolda House, Museum of American Art, Winston-Salem; The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., 2005-2007, unnumbered catalogue, fig. 200.

2012

  • George Bellows, National Gallery of Art, Washington; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2012-2013, pl. 24.

2013

  • George Bellows and the American Experience, Columbus (Ohio) Museum of Art, 2013-2014, no catalogue.

Bibliography

1965

  • Morgan, Charles H. George Bellows. Painter of America. New York, 1965: 129-130, 132, repro. 328.

1971

  • Braider, Donald. George Bellows and the Ashcan School of Painting. New York, 1971: 69.

1988

  • Wilmerding, John. American Masterpieces from the National Gallery of Art. Rev. ed. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1988: 168, repro.

1990

  • Kelly, Frankin. "George Bellows' Shore House." Studies in the History of Art 37 (1990): 131, repro. no. 20.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 30, 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: 21, 31, 33, 42, 97, 111-114, fig. 12.

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: fig. 3, no. 21.

2001

  • Southgate, M. Therese. The Art of JAMA II: Covers and Essays from The Journal of the American Medical Association. Chicago, 2001: 2-3, 206, color repro.

2004

  • Newman, Sarah. "George Bellows's New York and the Spectacular Reality of the City." American Art 18, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 92-99, color fig. 1.

2006

  • Zurier, Rebecca. Picture the City: Urban Vision and the Ashcan School. Berkeley, 2006: 32-33, 56, pl. 2.

2007

  • Haverstock, Mary Sayre. George Bellows: An Artist in Action. Columbus, Ohio, 2007: 70, 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, 24, 26, 31, 40, 41, 87, 95, 111, pl. 24.

2013

  • Smith, Roberta. "The Listings: Jan. 25-31." New York Times 162, no. 56,027 (January 25, 2013): C-16, color repro.

  • McClew, Mason. "George Bellows and the American Experience (Columbus, Ohio)." American Art Review 25, no. 5 (September-October 2013): 133, color ill.

2015

  • Wolner, Edward W. "George Bellows, Georg Simmel, and Modernizing New York." American Art 29, no. 1 (Spring 2015): 109-113, 120 nn. 8 and 11, color fig. 2.

Inscriptions

across bottom: Geo Bellows; upper left reverse: "NEW YORK" / GEO BELLOWS / 146 E 19 / N.Y.

Wikidata ID

Q20191569

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