It’s a fun show, in part because he was such a wild and unpredictable artist. Everyone knows the painting to the left, of course, the famous Stag at Sharkey’s. But then there’s the painting below, made in response to the First World War. It sits in a room of war images that verge on the sadistic, filled with highly specific forms of cruelty which Bellows (who never left the United States) knew only second hand. Or imagined. His career is eclectic, filled with idiosyncrasy, and a lot of spectacular painting.
Credits: Top: George Bellows
Stag at Sharkey’s, 1909
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection
Below: George Bellows
The Germans Arrive, 1918
National Gallery of Art, Washington, Promised Gift of Ian and Annette Cumming
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