Ashcan artists – my daily art display

Fourteenth Street School of Artists

Part 2. Isabel Bishop

“…I hope my work is recognizable as being by a woman, though I certainly would never deliberately make it feminine in any way, in subject or treatment. But if I speak in a voice which is my own, it’s bound to be the voice of a woman…”

-Isabel Bishop

Isabel Bishop, 1959. Photo by Budd ( New York N.Y.). Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

The Ashcan School of painters was the artistic movement that depicted Urban Realism in America during the late 19th and early 20th century. A few decades later another group of American realist painters, who were also based in New York city, began to focus on everyday life in the city. For these artists, it was all about the bustling area which centred around 14th Street and Union Square in Lower Manhattan during the Depression era. They became known as the Fourteenth Street School of Artists. One of these artists was Isabel Bishop.

Female Head by Isabel Bishop

Isabel Bishop was the youngest of five children born on March 3rd 1902 in Cincinnati, Ohio, to John Renson Bishop and Anna Newbold Bishop. Her parents were descendants from East coast mercantile families but although they came from “old money” they were considered middle-class and often struggled financially. Isabel’s parents were both highly educated individuals. Her father was a Greek and Latin scholar and had a Ph.D in history. Her mother was a writer and an activist for women’s suffrage. The family frequently moved from town to town for financial reasons and to gain employment. Wherever they set up home, Isabel’s father, John, would find work at the local school where he often rose to become its principal and in some cases took ownership of the school.

Ice Cream Cones by Isabel Bishop

In 1887 the couple had their first children, twins, a boy and a girl, Mildred and Newbold and in 1890 another set of twins, once again a boy and a girl, was born, Remson and Anstice. This enlargement of the family caused financial hardship and her father had to continually look for better paying jobs. Isobel did not remember much about the two sets of twins as by the time she was born they were away at boarding school or college. According to Isabel her parents were very different in temperament. Her mother was a free spirit but very strong-willed and in her 1987 interview she recalls an incident that had repercussions on her father’s life:

“…It was hard on my father that she was strong. For one thing, in Detroit, Michigan, women were not supposed to be strong. She simply liked what she liked and that was it. One time she was asked to go down to the court and testify in some case. She went down, but she wouldn’t swear to be telling the truth. She was asked by the court why she wouldn’t and she said, “I don’t believe in God.” It was in the Detroit papers with the headline:

“SCHOOL PRINCIPAL’S WIFE DOESN’T BELIEVE IN GOD”

I really felt for my father. I mean, a school principal! His life was pretty impossible after that…”

Two Girls with a Book by Isabel Bishop

Although born in Cincinatti Isobel and her parents moved to Detroit a year after she was born. In 1914, when she was twelve years of age, Isabel was enrolled in Saturday morning life drawing classes at the John Wicker Art School in Detroit. From there, at the age of sixteen, and once she had graduated from High School, she left Detroit and went to New York. It was here that she enrolled at the School of Applied Design for Women, where she studied illustration. In 1920, aged eighteen, Isabel, wanting to enhance her artistic knowledge and skills, attended the Art Students League where her first tutor was Max Weber, whom she disliked and who gave her a hard time. Later she was tutored by Kenneth Hayes Miller, another artist associated with the Fourteenth Street School who couldn’t be more different than Weber. Other tutors were Guy Pène du Bois, Robert Henri and Frank Vincent DuMond.

Portrait of Isabel Bishop by Guy Pene du Bois (1924)

According to Helen Yglesias’ 1989 biography Isabel Bishop, although Weber treated Isabel harshly and she felt intimidated by Robert Henri, in Kenneth Hayes Miller she found a mentor who, in her words, was “intellectually stimulating, not stultifying, a fascinating person who presented all sorts of new possibilities, new points of view.”

Isabel Bishop’s 9 West 14th Street Studio (no longer extant) highlighted in red, 14th Street, north side, west from Fifth Avenue. June 11, 1933.

Another friend she made at the Art Students League was Reginald Marsh, who made fleeting visits to the classes at the Art Students League whilst she was student there and this friendship led to her being witness to the working-class life of the city. In 1926, she went to live at 9 West Fourteenth Street, which was a short distance from where Marsh lived and it was in this vicinity that she kept her studio that overlooked Union Square at Broadway and East Fourteenth Street and remained there until 1982. From the windows of her studio she was able to witness the daily activities in Union Square. Fourteenth Street in the 20s and 30s was referred to as “The Poor Man’s Fifth Avenue.” It was a bustling center for bargain shopping and bawdy entertainment in the form of burlesque shows and movie theatres for everyday working-class New Yorkers.

Still Life with Orange #1 by Isabel Bishop

Her friendship with fellow student, Reginald Marsh, encompassed many lunch or dinner dates when they discussed their day’s work. She affectionately recalled that they each paid for their own fifty cent meal and occasionally Marsh would take her to a Coney Island dance marathon or backstage at Minsky’s Burlesque. She recalled that it was great going with Reggie, and whilst there he would sketch the goings-on at the Burlesque show. She said that there were a number of occasions, the owner, Minsky bought Reggie’s work.

The Artist’s Table by Isabel Bishop

Isabel loved the area around Union Square and would regularly visit the Square itself, sketching for hours on end. She remembered those days saying:

“…I adored it. Drawing nourished my spirit; it was like eating. I got ideas there, for drawing is a way of finding out something, even though it might only be the discovery of a simple gesture…”

If she liked one of her sketches, she would turn it into an etching or make a painting from it. She soon became known for depicting urban life and was a leading member of the Fourteenth Street School of artists.

14th Street by Isabel Bishop

The Great Depression began in 1929 and nobody seemed to want to spend money buying the work of an unknown female artist, especially one who had not even had a solo show. Money was tight, people were losing their jobs and America had fallen into the grip of the worst depression in history and most Americans were worried about how they could survive the disaster that had befallen the nation. Isabel went from art gallery to art gallery hoping that they would accept her paintings but with little luck. It was a very depressing and frustrating time in Isabel’s life. A turning point came when Isabel met Alan Gruskin. Gruskin had hoped to become an artist, but while still a student realized that his talents were better suited to art administration than painting. On graduating from Harvard he worked at a New York gallery that specialized in the works of the Old Masters. He left there and returned home hoping to start a career as an author but that never came to fruition so he returned to Manhattan and, in 1932, opened the Midtown Galleries at 559 Fifth Avenue. He specialised in artwork by living American artists and in that year he staged a solo exhibition of Isabel’s paintings.

Dante and Virgil in Union Square by Isabel Bishop (1932)

Isabel Bishop’s paintings focused on the ordinary people of New York City, and in particular, those in her neighbourhood around Union Square and 14th Street. However, her 1932 painting entitled Dante and Virgil in Union Square was extraordinary with her inclusion of Dante, in the red cloak, and Virgil, with a laurel wreath on his head, which makes this work memorable. Isabel said she was motivated when she read the translation of Dante’s Inferno, the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy with its tales of life in the underworld. In her depiction, Isabel likened the hordes of poor souls that confronted Dante and Virgil in the various levels of hell with the hordes of human beings that daily passed through Union Square at rush hour. In the painting we see a crowd of people at Union Square, the equestrian statue of George Washington in the centre framed by the Union Square Savings Bank and other buildings in the background. It is a very busy scene a woman leading her child by the hand, pairs of women walking away from the crowd, and a number of working class men, portrayed in darker colours, facing into the Square seem completely unaware of the classical figures, who stand in the shadowed foreground of the sidewalk, as if embodying the evaluating gaze of another era.

At the Noon Hour by Isabel Bishop (1936)

In Ellen Wiley Todd 1993 book, The “New Woman” Revised: Painting and Gender Politics on Fourteenth Street, she describes the New Woman of the 1920s and 1930s as:
“…being a moderate sort, who hoped to capitalize on new job possibilities and to make herself attractive with the mass-produced products of the clothing and cosmetics industry…”

Hearn’s Department Store-Fourteenth Street Shoppers by Isabel Bishop (1927)

The entrance to Hearn’s Department Store was right across the street from Isabel Bishop’s studio and she realised that it was the perfect place to find and observe this “New Woman.” Isabel Bishop’s Hearn’s Department Store—Fourteenth Street Shoppers was completed in 1927, the same year that she enrolled in Kenneth Hayes Miller’s mural painting class at the Art Students League. It depicts the city’s middle-class shoppers who are wearing the latest fashions and who visit the shops around Union Square in order to pick up the latest bargains.

Two Girls by Isabel Bishop (1935)

In 1935 Isabel completed her painting entitled Two Girls. It was yet another of her works which depicted young working women. In this painting we see a close-up of two smartly dressed figures seemingly engaged discussing the contents of a letter. Isabel used two models for this depiction and for this work she used Rose Riggens, a server at a restaurant where Isabel often had breakfast, and Riggens’ friend Anna Abbott. The work exudes both warmth and tranquillity which counters the dire economic circumstances of the Great Depression in the 1930s. This painting which took her twelve months to complete was one of Isobel Bishop’s most well-known works and was originally shown at the Midtown Galleries in New York. It is now part of the city’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Encounter by Isabel Bishop (1940)

In her 1940 painting entitled Encounter we witness an exchange occurring between a man and a woman though the circumstance of this meeting remains unclear. From many of her paintings we can deduce that Isabel was an insightful observer of everyday activities of young women who visited offices and stores in her neighbourhood. Her works present working women as vivacious subjects for the American Art Scene, which centred on the daily lives of the city’s population. At a time of great unemployment Isabel found it easy to employ young unemployed clerical workers to pose for her. In this work, she depicts a young woman and her boyfriend, with whom she is having a rather stormy romance. The painting can be seen in the St Louis Art Museum.

Tidying Up by Isabel Bishop (1941)

In her 1941 painting Tidying Up, we see a woman, perhaps a secretary or salesperson, using a pocket mirror to check her teeth for lipstick smudges. Isabel liked to depict working-class women during their idle moments away from their jobs. She spent more than a decade depicting secretaries, salesclerks, and blue-collar workers who lived and often worked in and around Union Square. She favoured subjects of women who were simply going about their everyday lives, eating, talking, putting on makeup, and taking off their coats. It was these mundane actions along with facial expressions that Isabel Bishop believed divulged the character and temperament of the people she portrayed. This painting is part of the Indianapolis Museum of Art collection.

Girl Reading by Isabel Bishop (1935)

Bishop remained on Union Square, where she kept a studio until the end of her life. The area around Fourteenth Street and Union Square remained foremost as the subject matter for her paintings. She received many awards during her life and she was elected an associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1940 later in 1941 she was elevated to full Academician. She received a Benjamin Franklin Fellow at the Royal Society of Arts in London and was also elected a Member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1944 and was the first woman to hold an executive position in the National Institute of Arts and Letters as vice-president. In 1979, she was awarded the Outstanding Achievement in the Arts Award presented to her by President Jimmy Carter.

Self portrait by Isabel Bishop (1927)

Isabel Bishop died on February 19th 1988 two weeks before her eighty-sixth birthday.

Most of the information for this blog came from the following excellent websites:

The Art Story

incollect

Isabel Bishop

Hellenica World

Off the Grid

Oral history interview with Isabel Bishop,
1987 November 12-December 11

Annex Galleries

Reading and Art

George Benjamin Luks

The artist I am looking at today is an American who was mainly known for his social-realist paintings and illustration. Today’s painter supported several of his contemporaries in their philosophy of painting subjects which challenged the traditional approaches put forward at the time by the National Academy of Design and the established art circles in America. This art renegade is George Benjamin Luks and he became a leading figure in the New York art world in the early part of the 20th century.

Bear by George Luks (1904)

George Luks was born on August 13th, 1867, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Emil and Bertha Luks who were both amateur painters and both encouraged their son’s inherent artistic talent by providing him with his earliest artistic tutoring. When George was still a young child, the family moved some fifty miles south-east to Pottsville, a town in the heart of Pennsylvania’s coal region. It was here that his father, a physician, tried to help the coal-miners and their families and was a supporter of a group known as the ‘Molly Maguires’, a secret organization of Irish-Americans that tried to improve conditions for the area’s miners. As George grew up, he became aware of the poverty-stricken lives of the miners and their families. This early exposure to the hard lives of the mining community had an effect on Luks and his works of art which often depicted impoverished families in naturalistic surroundings.

Portrait of Miss Ruth Breslin by George Luks (1925)

George Luks’ earliest job was in vaudeville. He and his brother took part in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey vaudeville circuits while still in their teens. However, even as a teenager, he was determined to become a professional artist and so his vaudeville career ended. In 1884, at the age of seventeen, he enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he was tutored by the painter, Thomas Anshutz, but his rebellious nature resisted the rigors of formal study, and he withdrew after a short stay.

London Bus Driver by George Luks (1889)

Luks then visited Europe and set about visiting Germany, England and France attending several of the city’s art schools. One such school was the Kunstacademie in Dusseldorf, but his stay there as a pupil did not last long for the same reason that he departed the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts – his dislike of the high standards and inflexibility of the rules of the establishment. This mindset would stay with him all his life. He then headed for Paris and London. Throughout his European sojourn he was greatly influenced by European painters such as Velazquez, Manet, Rembrandt but in particular the Dutch painter, Frans Hals.

The Little Madonna by George Luks (1907)

On his return to America in 1890 he began to earn money as a newspaper illustrator and in 1894 he started at the Philadelphia Press and Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, where he produced “at-the-scene sketches” which later became illustrations to go alongside the news stories. This was Luks’ forte as he was both a talented draftsman and had a meticulous eye for recording details of events.

Havana by George Luks (1896)

He and fellow illustrator at the Philadelphia Press newspaper, Everett Shin, moved into a one-room flat in the city. Whilst working at the newspaper Luks became friends with the artists John Sloan and William Glackens. These four painters and illustrators would have weekly get-togethers at the studio of Robert Henri, a renowned artist who was several years their senior, and who emboldened his younger friends to ponder over the necessity for a new style of painting. Henri’s vision was that this new artistic style would express the essentials of their own time and experiences and would counter the limitations imposed by the present conservative art establishment. Henri told his friends that they should be depicting scenes of ordinary life and discard the current trends of portraying life as a genteel existence. Robert Henri and his four new friends with their new ideas regarding the direction of American art, collectively became known as the Philadelphia Five.

In 1896, the Philadelphia Press sent Luks to Cuba to cover the Spanish-American War as a newspaper correspondent/war artist. On his return to America, he re-located to New York and joined the newspaper, New York World, under publisher Joseph Pulitzer. Luks began at the newspaper employed to draw the comic strips, such as The Yellow Kid and Hogan’s Alley. It was during this period that Luks began to devote more time to hone his painting skills, and six years later, in 1902, he abandoned newspaper work to concentrate all his energies to painting.

Street Scene (Hester Street) by George Luks (1905)

One of his most famous paintings was his 1905 work entitled Street Scene (Hester Street). The setting is a push-cart market on Hester Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, an area of the city which was packed with recent Jewish immigrants. From our viewpoint looking down the street we see a crowd of shoppers, both men and women and in the foreground we see children, milling around a toy pedlar, searching for bargains. Many art historians have judged the depiction to be a compassionate pictorial essay of Jewish life. We see the people in profile, and Luks has paid particular attention to skin colour and the physical features of the people in the crowd, while the subject matter relates to a series of caricatures of Jewish peddlers. It is a congested depiction and we only get small glimpse of the blue sky in the middle background. In the middle-ground we see the darkly oppressive inexpensive tenement blocks, in which were apartments that were so designed to house hundreds of these people, maximising the profits of the landlords.

Allen Street by George Luks (1905)

Another of George Luks’ 1905 Lower East Side paintings was entitled Allen Street. Between 1880 and 1920, more than twenty million immigrants came to America, making it the greatest period of mass migration in American history. At the time Luks painted these Lower East Side street scenes it was home to approximately half a million Jewish immigrants, who had fled economic hardship and political violence within the Russian Empire. At the time it was the most densely populated place on earth. Sadly, with this sudden influx of Jews into the area came a rise in nativism, the protection of the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against those of immigrants, and anti-semitism.

Luks had produced antisemitic caricatures, above is an example, for several publications during the 1890s, and the emphasis on racist stereotypes about Jewish physiognomy can be seen in the painting, Hester Street.

The Spielers by George Luks (1905)

Despite the hardship of life whilst living in the overcrowded tenement block Luks also wanted to depict a modicum of joy displayed by some of the younger residents. His 1905 painting entitled The Spielers (from the German word spielen – to play) was one of his favourites works and when, in 1907, he gave it to his dealer, William Macbeth to sell, he said he wanted $2000 for it. His dealer was dismayed at such a high price. When it was displayed at Luks’ 1910 solo exhibition at the Macbeth Gallery in New York, critics called it an artistic masterpiece. Luks sold it direct to a collector but it is not known whether he achieved his $2000. In an article in the New York Times Magazine on February 6^th, 1916, the art critic James Huneker praised the work in his article George Luks, Versatile Painter of Humanity wrote:

“…The east side is yet to boast its Dickens. And Dickens would have enjoyed the picture of the little tousled Irish girl with her red locks who dances with the pretty flaxen-haired German child, surely a baker’s daughter of Avenue B. Now you might suppose that this vivid art, this painting which has caught and retained the primal jolt and rhythm of the sketch, might be necessary rude and unscientific in technique. It is the reverse. This particular picture is full of delicious tonalities. The head of the blonde girl might be from an English eighteenth century masterpiece…”

This simple painting of two girls dancing together more than any other work by Luks, made his reputation.

The Wrestlers by George Luks (1905)

Some art critics had voiced an opinion on Luks’ figurative work saying that he was not good at depicting human anatomy. It is thought that Luks’ baulked at this sleight on his ability and in 1905 produced a complex painting of two nude wrestlers, so as to counteract their criticism. The painting is now housed in the Museum of Fine Art, Boston, which described the work:

“…The artist’s perspective was radical for the time. Luks’s composition effectively presses the viewer to the edge of the wrestling pit, thereby emphasizing the down-at-heels setting. The jarring vantage point also evokes the sweaty underbelly of modern urban life, a theme for which he and fellow members of the Ashcan School would become known. Luks’s scene of entangled human flesh under duress is reminiscent of the sporting scenes that fellow Philadelphian Thomas Eakins painted, in particular Eakins’s 1899 Wrestlers (Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Whereas Eakins depicted a wrestling hold with the impassive eye of a painter rendering a studio model, Luks conveys the passion exuded by the heaving torsos. Eakins applied carefully blended strokes of pigment, building up solidly modelled forms after the manner of his studio training with the French academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme. Luks, in contrast, enlivens his figures with energetic brushwork and thick impasto. Luks’s familiarity with the popular press, gained from his work for illustrated periodicals, may have inspired the sense of immediacy he suggested—brilliantly illuminated flesh is thrown into relief against the dark background as though caught in a reporter’s flashbulb. The opponent at the left also recalls the terrifying visages of the early-nineteenth-century Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s so-called Black Paintings (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), in which humans are transformed into ghouls. Luks portrays a distinctive type among the multitudes in New York City, in this case an aggressive athlete. Once again, his training as a newspaper illustrator likely honed his astute sensitivity to physiognomy, and here the thickly furrowed brow, devilish eyes, and flushed complexion suggest the bellicose personality befitting a pugnacious wrestler…”

Known originally as The Five, of which Luks became a member. Then it became collectively known as The Eight, which was made up of the original five members with the addition of Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson, and Maurice Prendergast. Then The Eight eventually became known as the Ashcan School. . The name “Ashcan” was originally coined by critics of the movement to deride the surplus of refuse bins in the artists’ pictures and the perceived dirtiness of the subjects at large. Robert Henri, the leader of the movement and its spiritual father was blunt of what he wanted to achieve. He said he wanted art to be akin to journalism… he wanted paint to be as real as mud, as the clods of horse-shit and snow, that froze on Broadway in the winter. Many of this group’s works were rejected when submitted to exhibitions of the powerful, conservative National Academy of Design and this motivated The Eight to form their own exhibiting group. Their exhibition at the Macbeth Galleries in New York in January, 1908 was a significant event in the promotion of twentieth-century American art.

Feeding the Pigs by George Luks

Following the success of the New York exhibition John Sloan organized a traveling exhibition that brought their paintings to Chicago, Indianapolis, Toledo, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Bridgeport, and Newark. These travelling exhibitions had people talking the new realism that the Ashcan School represented. George Luk’s paintings Feeding the Pigs and Mammy Groody were seen as examples of this new ‘earthiness’ that many art lovers were not yet ready to accept. The Ashcan movement threw down the gauntlet and confronted the academic art institutions, and as a result, during the 1910s the authority of the National Academy of Design as a cultural authority began to wane. The Ashcan painters played a an essential role in developing the nation’s sense of what were to be considered suitable subjects for free artistic expression.

Gramercy Street by George Luks (1905)

As a member of The Eight, George Luks created works in vivid bravura manner that captured the spirited energy of the tenement districts of New York and their occupants. The American Art historian, Milton Brown wrote about George Luks’ works in his 1955 book, American Painting from the Armory Show to the Depression:

“…In his art and in his character, he symbolized the spirit of American dynamism; as aggressive as a tycoon, as brash and boastful as a ‘drummer’. . . he was a swashbuckler in paint. This was not, of course, the cultured tradition of American life; it was rather the expression of a cruder side of America, an echo of the frontier…”

Hannaford.s Cove by George Luks (1922)

George Luks is best known for his depictions of New York City life, but he also painted many landscapes.

Old Gristmill, The Berkshires by George Luks (1925)

There are several landscapes of the Berkshire Mountains in Massachusetts that follow the Impressionist tradition. One such work is his painting Old Gristmill, The Berkshires which he completed in 1925. However, Luks was far happier living a city life.

Foggy Night by George Luks (c.1925)

Luks’ painting Foggy Night which he completed around 1925 captures his urban vision during his many walks around the city. He was fascinated by what he saw. In this depiction of an overcast night in New York, there is an eerie stillness about the scene. We see a lone cab driver who has stopped his horse-drawn carriage on an otherwise empty bridge. In the distance we can just make out shadowy buildings and the spire of a church. The city has been overwhelmed by the misty atmosphere and darkened by the nocturnal setting.

Spring Morning Houston and Division Streets by George Luks (1922)

George Luks was married twice but had no children. He was as famous for his paintings as he was with his mood. He was said to be loud, boastful of his boxing prowess but a good-humoured man, and was a notoriously heavy drinker. On October 29th, 1933, he was found dead in a Manhattan doorway at 6th Avenue and 52nd Street, a casualty of a bar-room brawl. He was 66. Luks was buried at Fernwood Cemetery in Royersford, Pennsylvania. He was dressed in an 18th-century embroidered waistcoat, which was one of his most valued possessions. His death was reported in the New York Times and the reporter wrote:

“…His canvasses were invariably virile; his versatility was astonishing, and he painted as he lived, contemptuous of conventionalities, impatient with snobbishness and full of joy of life that so many of his paintings reflected…”

Blue Snow, The Battery by George Bellows

A few days ago I featured the art of Samuel Luke Fildes who in his early artistic days was a Social Realist painter. His paintings and illustrations for The Graphic magazine dwelled on the plight of the poor in his native England and what they had to endure. Today I am featuring an American artist of around the same era who wanted to paint pictures of real life in New York City. He is George Wesley Bellows, the American realist painter.

George Bellows was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1882 and after passing through the various school years arrived at Ohio State University at the age of nineteen. It was here that his sports prowess came to the fore and at one time it was thought that he may take up baseball professionally. During his time at the university he funded himself by working as a commercial illustrator. However Bellows had one aim in life and that was to become an artist, so much so, that he quit the university just before he was due to graduate and moved to New York to study art.

He enrolled in the New York School of Art and became a student of Robert Henri. It was through Henri that Bellows came into contact with a group of artists known as The Eight and later became paert of The Ashcan School. The Eight was a group of artists whose fame derives from, and for what they will always be remembered for, their one and only joint exhibition in 1908 at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. The exhibition was a sensation and it is now looked upon as one of the most important events in the development of twentieth-century American art

The Aschcan School was a loose collection of realist painters associated with Robert Henri. The term “Ashcan” was first used by Art Young the American socialist writer and cartoonist when he was writing about this art movement. They were however unified with their desire to be truthful with their art and depict the city of New York and its working-class neighbourhoods as it was and not just an idealised and formal portrayal of these suburbs. They wanted us to see life in the raw. The scenes of the city painted by Bellows highlighted the crudity and disorder of life amongst the working class. This was American Realism, and he and his fellow Ashcan artists believed that their art should be similar to journalism showing the city as it was, “warts and all”. In a way this group, including Bellows was determined to rebel against American Impressionism which was so popular at the time. Their art did not focus on light but in general their art was darker in tone and brought the seamier side of life to the fore with subjects such as prostitution, drunks and overcrowded tenements cluttered with lines of washing. Bellows also painted pictures of boxing matches which with their dark and atmospheric backgrounds brought out the bloody savagery of the sport. In some of their works they depicted the poor and their struggle with everyday life. These were the equivalent to the English Social Realism genre of art of which Samuel Luke Fildes was a leading figure.

The painting of George Bellows I am featuring today is not one of his Social Realism paintings. My featured painting of George Bellows is entitled Blue Snow, The Battery which he completed in 1910. The setting for the painting is Battery Park which lies adjacent to the financial district of the city. There is a breathtaking beauty about this work of art. His imaginative and powerful use of blue energizes the scene of the southern tip of Manhattan. Bellows painted a number of scenes with New York City under snowfall and as with my featured painting it is amazing how he has developed a strong sense of light and visual texture contrasting the white and blue of the snow and the dark grimy outline of the old buildings. It is a beautiful strong composition which is normally housed at the Columbus Museum of Art.

Bellows went on to teach at the Art Institute of Chicago but spent half the year at the home he built in Woodstock, New York. He illustrated novels including a number for H G Wells. In 1925, at the young age of 42 he died of peritonitis after failing to tend to a ruptured appendix.

I hope to see some of his art when I visit the National Gallery in London tomorrow where thay have a small exhibition of works by George Bellows and the Ashcan painters, entitled An American Experiment.