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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.”

George Bellows, New York, 1911, oil on canvas, Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Mellon, 1986.72.1

George Bellows moved to New York City to become an artist. He loved to walk around the city and observe its crowded streets and construction sites. Then he would go back to his studio and paint everything he saw: people walking down the street, horses pulling carts, skyscrapers, streetcars, and more. 

LOOK

What color do you see the most? What other colors do you see?

What kinds of buildings do you see? Describe them.

What are the people doing? Make a list of their activities.

What time of day might it be? What season is it? How can you tell?

How would you describe the overall mood or feeling of this painting?

Choose one person in the painting to take a closer look at. What do you think that person might see and hear, smell or taste? How might that person feel? 

READ

New-Home

A New Home (Spanish language version: Un Nuevo Hogar)

by Tania de Regil

A boy moving from New York to Mexico City and a girl moving from Mexico City to New York express their fears about leaving home to live in a new and unfamiliar place.

Bellows-Painters-Punch

George Bellows: Painter with a Punch!

by Robert Burleigh

This book offers a biography of the life and work of artist George Bellows.

MAKE: Create a city scene

You will need:

  • Oil pastels
  • Heavyweight paper
  • Colored paper or cardstock
  • Scissors
  • Glue

Close your eyes and imagine a big city. What kinds of buildings are there? What is the traffic like? What are the people doing?

Make the background of your city scene first. Cut rectangles or other building shapes out of colored paper or cardstock, and glue them to your heavyweight paper. Add details to the buildings with oil pastels. Then, add people to your scene by drawing with pastels. Try to capture the energy of the city in your work!

VOCAB BANK

  • pastel
  • scene

Art Tales: Coloring and Cut-Outs booklet (PDF, 3.5 MB)

Art Tales for Pre-K (PDF, 7.2 MB)

Primeros Pasos En El Arte (PDF, 7.5 MB)

Primeros Pasos En El Arte: Colorear y Recortes (PDF, 3.7 MB)

An Eye for Art: George Bellows teaching resource (PDF, 9.4 MB)

Register for the Art Tales pre-K school tour

Send images of your students' projects that follow these activities - email [email protected]