Jean
Artist
Bellows, George Wesley
(American, 1882 - 1925)
Date1917
OriginUnited States of America
MediumOil on panel
Dimensions24 × 20 in. (61 × 50.8 cm)
ClassificationsPainting
Credit LineCarolyn K. and Richard F. Barry III Art Purchase Fund
Object number2018.16
Label TextGeorge Wesley Bellows, (American, 1882-1925)
Portrait of Jean Bellows
Oil on panel, 1917
Carolyn K. and Richard F. Barry III Art Purchase Fund
Like his teacher and friend Robert Henri (1865-1929) and other New York Realists, Bellows focused his attention on the modern urban experience in New York City, painting its gritty and rough underside (later known as the “Ashcan School”) rather than the more picturesque squares and parks portrayed by Impressionist artists. In these works, his style consisted of the dynamic realist approach typical of the Ashcan School, while also reflecting the influences of the art of French Impressionist Edouard Manet and that of Baroque Masters, especially Dutch painter Franz Hals (1582-1666) and his Spanish contemporary Diego Velázquez (about 1599-1660).
In this intimate portrait of his younger daughter as a two-year-old toddler, Bellows has seized a fleeting moment of repose while the child is sitting in a chair. Jean, clutching a doll, is captured with vigorous brushwork that expresses both her lively personality and physical likeness. While later paintings of his subject are far more formal in composition and execution, they reflect Bellows’ passionate conviction that artists should draw their material from their immediate surroundings. He once told an interviewer: “I paint my life.”
Status
On view
Buttersworth, Thomas
ca. 1835
