Paintings of George Bellows

Best remembered for his sporting scenes, American realist painter George Bellows had an enormous range of subject interests, as revealed by this splendid catalogue of a touring exhibition. Bellows's late, joyful landscapes, done shortly before his death from appendicitis in 1925, are delirious explosions of color. His purest seascapes crystallize nature's elemental power, recalling one of his principal influences, Winslow Homer. Frequently portraying a mix of ethnic and social classes in the modern metropolis, Bellows contributed to the socialist magazine The Masses and occasionally assumed the role of social critic, as in Cliff Dwellers , a chaotic street scene crowded with immigrants. In incisive essays complemented by 210 plates (75 in color) five noted scholars of American art examine the evolution of Bellows's exuberant realism, his experimental response to the New York scene, his simultaneous attraction to and fear of the sea and his portraiture as a repository for intangible values.