How Much Time at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art

The famous serial of six oil paintings that Bellows devoted to the sport of prizefighting has had enduring entreatment equally a set of images that captures the essence of early on 20th-century urban American life. [i] [1]
John Wilmerding has observed that, "They were among his most popular pictures in his lifetime and accept remained compelling for audiences to this day." John Wilmerding, "Bellows' Boxing Pictures and the American Tradition," in E. A. Carmean, John Wilmerding, Linda Ayres, and Deborah Chotner, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures (Washington, DC, 1982), thirteen. Executed in August and September 1907, Club Nighttime is the first of three like boxing subjects that the precocious Bellows painted in his mid-20s [fig. i] [fig. 1] Entry from artist's Record Book about Club Night, The Ohio State University Libraries' Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and the Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio . He returned to the theme in 1909 with Stag at Sharkey'due south [fig. 2] [fig. 2] George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's, 1909, oil on canvas, The Cleveland Museum of Fine art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection 1133.1922. © The Cleveland Museum of Art and Both Members of This Club . Although Bellows made a number of lithographs devoted to the subject get-go in 1916 [fig. 3] [fig. 3] George Bellows, The White Promise, 1927, lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew W. Mellon Fund , he did not produce another battle scene in oil until 1923, when he painted Introducing John 50. Sullivan (Whitney Museum of American Fine art, New York). In 1924 he produced the two final pictures of the series: Ringside Seats (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC) and Dempsey and Firpo (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York). In addition to their art historical significance, these paintings are important documents that illustrate the evolution of professional boxing in the United States.

Bellows outset chosen this painting A Stag at Sharkey's and named his second battle subject Order Night. When the Cleveland Museum purchased the latter in 1922, he switched their titles at the museum's request. [ii] [2]
The alter in title was explained by Bellows's married woman Emma in an interview she gave in February 1955 to Kib Bramhall for his senior thesis on Bellows at Princeton. Bramhall wrote: "An interesting sidelight . . . was explained to me by Mrs. Bellows. . . . In 1922 the Cleveland Museum . . . preferred the colorful title Stag at Sharkey's and asked George if he would listen switching the names . . . Bellows readily agreed." Bramhall shared this reference in a letter of the alphabet to Franklin Kelly, deputy director and chief curator, National Gallery of Art, dated February ten, 2013. The original championship was derived from a bar chosen Tom Sharkey's Athletic Society that was across the street from Bellows's studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building at Broadway and 66th Street in New York City. The Irish-born proprietor, Tom "Crewman Tom" Sharkey, was a quondam heavyweight champion who staged private boxing contests in the back room of his saloon. Battle had been legalized in New York State with the passage of the Horton Law in 1896. Just that act was repealed in 1900 and replaced past the Lewis Law, which prohibited the sport. [3] [3]
Battle remained illegal until the passage of the Frawley Act in 1911, but even then only ten-round, no-decision bouts were allowed, in which the contestants used eight-ounce gloves. Sharkey and others circumvented the Lewis Constabulary by staging bouts in their private "clubs," where attendees paid membership ante instead of admission fees and so that they could gamble on the outcome of the events. To maintain the human action, boxers were announced in the band as "both members of this club." Professional boxing was a proletarian sport, and its practitioners were mainly poor immigrants who lived in squalid urban neighborhoods. Habitués of places like Sharkey's were from more socially diverse groups, such as neighborhood regulars and heart- and upper-grade men who frequented New York's demimonde [fig. 4] [fig. 4] Henry "Hy" Mayer, "A Knockout by the Police force," from Rupert Hughes, The Real New York (New York, 1904), 145, Library of Congress . Merely men were admitted to prizefights at this fourth dimension. [four] [four]
This had changed by 1916, when Bellows represented a group of upper-class women and their escorts attending a boxing lucifer at Madison Square Garden in his lithograph Preliminaries (see Lauris Mason, The Lithographs of George Bellows: A Catalogue Raisonné, rev. ed. [San Francisco, 1992], true cat. 24).

Bellows was first introduced to Sharkey'south by a boxer named Mosey Rex, who was a friend of Bellows'southward roommate, Ed Keefe. [5] [5]
Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 69. King had held the New England featherweight and lightweight titles earlier retiring in 1906 (he later had a 46-year career as the boxing jitney at Yale University). The artist subsequently remembered: "Before I married and became semirespectable, I lived on Broadway opposite the Sharkey Able-bodied Lodge, where information technology was possible under police to become a 'Member' and run across the fights for a price." [half dozen] [half dozen]
George Bellows to William Milliken, June x, 1922, curatorial files, Cleveland Museum of Fine art, OH; quoted in Marianne Doezema, "The 'Real' New York," in Michael Quick, Jane Myers, Marianne Doezema, and Franklin Kelly, The Paintings of George Bellows (Fort Worth, TX, 1992), 105. Bellows offset documented the activities there in The Knock Out [fig. 5] [fig. 5] George Bellows, The Knock Out, 1907, pastel, ink, and graphite, Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, Bentonville, Arkansas. Image: Dwight Primiano , a detailed pastel-and-ink drawing in which a referee attempts to restrain the victor from inflicting further damage on an opponent who lies dazed on the floor. He then painted Twoscore-two Kids before returning to the prizefighting theme with Lodge Night.

Bellows was not the kickoff American artist to describe boxing matches. As the sport grew in popularity during the second half of the 19th century, it increasingly appealed to folk artists, illustrators, and political cartoonists, as well as to academic painters. Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 - 1916), an artist that Bellows later pronounced "one of the best of all the world's masters," [seven] [7]
Unspecified letter to Robert Henri of belatedly 1917, quoted in Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 215. For a discussion of Eakins'southward boxing paintings, see Carl S. Smith, "The Boxing Paintings of Thomas Eakins," Prospects 4 (1979): 403–420, and Martin A. Berger, Human being Fabricated: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilt Age Manhood (Berkeley, CA, 2000), 112–120. dealt with the field of study in a series of three major paintings: Salutat (1898, Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips University, Andover, MA), Taking the Count [fig. 6] [fig. 6] Thomas Eakins, Taking the Count, 1899, oil on sail, Yale University Art Gallery, Whitney Collections of Sporting Fine art, Given in Memory of Harry Payne Whitney, B.A. 1894, and Payne Whitney, B.A. 1898, by Francis P. Garvan, B.A. 1897, M.A. (Hon.) , and Between Rounds (1899, Philadelphia Museum of Art). Bellows would certainly have been familiar with these works, but, feature of his generation, he eschewed Eakins'southward noble, idealized interpretation of pugilism in favor of the gritty realism advocated by his friend and mentor Robert Henri (American, 1865 - 1929). Bellows's boxing paintings take more in common with his contemporary William Glackens'south illustrations for H. R. Durant's story "A Sucker" in Cosmopolitan (May 1905), for example A Right-hand Hook [fig. 7] [fig. vii] William Glackens, "A right-hand hook had landed squarely on the indicate of his mentum. It was all over," from H. R. Durant, "The Sucker," Cosmopolitan 39, no. 1 (May 1905): 90, Library of Congress , and George Luks's related bailiwick The Wrestlers (1905, Boston Museum of Fine Art, MA). [8] [8]
For a survey of American antecedents to Bellows's battle series, see John Wilmerding, "Bellows' Boxing Pictures and the American Tradition," in E. A. Carmean, John Wilmerding, Linda Ayres, and Deborah Chotner, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures (Washington, DC, 1982), 13–25. Glackens'due south illustrations are discussed by Marianne Doezema in George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), eighty–82.

In addition to Eakins, Bellows's battle paintings likewise pay homage to the European painters recommended to him by Henri. Whereas Bellows later drew inspiration from the rich black tonalities and biting satire of the 17th-century Spanish master Francisco Goya (Castilian, 1746 - 1828) for Both Members of this Club, the smoky, atmospheric haze that envelops the scene in Order Night and Bellows'southward painterly technique and rendering of the crowd owes much to the smashing 19th-century French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumier (French, 1808 - 1879). The critic James One thousand. Huneker succinctly described the visceral effect of Club Night:

It is a vicious boxing lucifer (surely four ounce gloves) about to degenerate into a assure and a mixup [sic]. Ane pugilist is lunging in the act of delivering a "soaker" to his adversary. You lot hear, you lot feel the dull impact of the blow. A sodden set of brute mugs ring the circle—upon the platform the light is concentrated. Information technology is not pleasing, this, or edifying, but for the artists and amateur the play of muscles and the various attitudes and gestures are absolutely heady. [9] [ix]
"Academy Exhibition—Second Notice," New York Sun, Dec. 23, 1907; quoted in Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 67, n. 1.

Further heightening the drama of the limerick, Bellows has used a low viewpoint, creating the impression that the spectator observes the struggle from only backside the audience that is gathered effectually the raised platform. Additionally, the harsh electrical low-cal dramatically illuminates the contestants' muscular bodies so that they stand out in relief against the dark background.

Bellows, who in his 1909 copyright application simply described Social club Night as "ii prize fighters [sic], one on the right lunges blow at crouching opponent on the left," [10] [10]
E. A. Carmean, John Wilmerding, Linda Ayres, and Deborah Chotner, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures (Washington, DC, 1982), 29. based the painting on his personal observations of the unsavory proceedings at Sharkey's, and and so executed it from memory in his studio. When battle experts criticized him for depicting stances and gestures that existent pugilists would never have used, he replied, "I don't know annihilation almost battle. I'm just painting two men trying to kill each other." To another such criticism he responded: "Who cares what a prize fighter looks similar? It's his muscles that count." [11] [11]
Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 77. Bellows'southward lack of interest in the technical aspects of boxing did not backbite from his power to convey a vivid impression of the atmosphere at Sharkey's. Huneker's comment above is remarkably similar to the eyewitness account of French traveler Paul Charles Joseph Bourget, who attended a boxing friction match during the early 1890s:

The blows autumn more heavily as the fight progresses. The bodies curve to avoid them. The two men are furious. One hears their breathing and the dull thud of the fists equally they fall on the naked flesh. After several blows of harder delivery, the 'claret' is drawn, as they say, the claret flows from the eyes, the nose, the ears, it smears the cheeks and the rima oris, it stains the fists with its warm and cherry-red flow, while the public expresses its delight past howls, which the striking of the gong alone stops. [12] [12]
Paul Bourget, Outre-Mer: Impressions of America (New York, 1895), 334–335; quoted in Barbara Weinberg, Doreen Bolger, and David Park Curry, American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915 (New York, 1994), 234.

Even though its unsavory subject defied the era's conservative social mores, Club Night was accepted for exhibition at the National Academy of Design's "Wintertime Exhibition" that opened on December 14, 1907. Despite being disadvantageously hung over a doorway, the painting attracted considerable attention and commentary. A critic observed that "if the farthermost of realism is sought, it may be found over the door of the Vanderbilt Gallery, equally if placed in that location for the benefit of persons accustomed to looking up from ringside. Its title, 'A Stag at Sharkey's,' suggests a recent police trouble." [13] [13]
"National Academy's Exhibition Opened," New York Herald, Dec. 14, 1907; quoted in Marianne Doezema, "The 'Real' New York," in Michael Quick, Jane Myers, Marianne Doezema, and Franklin Kelly, The Paintings of George Bellows (Fort Worth, TX, 1992), 104.

Another reviewer would later interpret Stag at Sharkey's (and then still called Club Nighttime) as an outright condemnation of prizefighting:

It may be difficult for many to see why an artist who had the temperament to paint…other canvases with so much refinement should choose to paint such a bailiwick as a prize fight, a large canvas chosen 'Club Night.' On a closer study of this painting, nonetheless, nosotros detect no attempt to glorify prize fighting; it is, rather, a painting inspired by disgust for such an exhibition; everything in the whole canvas reeks of degradation. There can be magnificence in a certain phase of vicious strength; there is eloquence in physical encounter which intoxicates to the extent of blinding one to the depravity of the proceedings. Lines, muscles, and activeness in a painting can convey this eloquence, but in the 'Order Night' nosotros witness a prize fight shorn of all eloquence. Fifty-fifty the lines, although wonderful in their expressiveness, lack all nobility, portraying only the real quality of such a competition. One is convinced the author of the painting was inspired past the depravity of the scene rather than by the outcome of such a competition. The aforementioned tin be said of the composition. The leering faces of the men who are sitting around the raised platform are all so powerfully suggestive of the artist'south attitude of mind. I should exist very much surprised if Mr. Bellows denied this. [14] [14]
"The Art of George Bellows," Aesthetics iii (Oct. 1914–July 1915): 53.

Bellows had already stated in 1910, "I am not interested in the morality of prize fighting. Merely let me say that the atmosphere around the fighters is a lot more than immoral than the fighters themselves." [xv] [15]
Letter from Bellows to Katherine Hiller, 1910, quoted in Thomas Beer, George W. Bellows: His Lithographs (New York, 1927), 15. The heavily caricatured handling of the spectators in the Gallery's Club Night, some of whom wear formal dress in an allusion to the wealthy men who "slummed" past attending these events, suggests a caste of social criticism. Caught up in the frenzied, violent atmosphere, they leer upwardly at the pugilists, and their exaggerated facial expressions suggest that they derive a vicarious—and possibly even voyeuristic—thrill from the sadistic match. [xvi] [16]
For a word of the possible homoeroticism of Stag at Sharkey's, see Robert Haywood, "George Bellows'south Stag at Sharkey's: Boxing, Violence, and Male Identity," Smithsonian Studies in American Art two (Leap 1988): 3–15.

Bellows's battle images were censored numerous times during their exhibition in his home state of Ohio. A former schoolmate, the sports reporter Charlie Grant, bundled for Club Nighttime to be displayed in the dining room of the Cleveland Athletic Club in 1908 in the promise that information technology might be acquired by that institution. Although a local newspaper called the painting "a remarkable specimen of the realist school," [17] [17]
Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 89–ninety. the purchase was eventually rejected on the grounds that the subject was offensive to female person guests. In Columbus in 1911, Bellows's boxing cartoon The Knock Out was quarantined in a carve up gallery away from women and children.

Critics reacted with simultaneous admiration and revulsion for the morally ambiguous spectacle of two heroic prizefighters locked in a titanic struggle within the confines of a sleazy, smoke-filled dorsum room of a New York saloon. Both the artist's estimation of the subject and the public's response to information technology reflect the uncertain status of boxing at the time. While many Americans found prizefighting a brutal and vicious pastime, others thought that recreational boxing, and even settling disputes with fisticuffs, was a natural manifestation of masculinity. No less a person than President Theodore Roosevelt practiced battle and openly advocated the sport. Marianne Doezema has discussed how Bellows'southward battle subjects evolved in an era when "concerns well-nigh the impact of industrialization and urbanization . . . were expressed as fear of overcivilization and degeneracy, but fundamentally as anxiety most virility in American life." [18] [18]
Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 68. The period's fascination with able-bodied activities in general and boxing in item was a manifestation of concerns about declining masculinity, and Bellows's sensational paintings attracted notoriety because they "flaunted the prim codes of effete society and brandished one of the most primal manifestations of masculine hardness." [xix] [xix]
Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 69. In a more than humorous vein, Bellows, who was probably sensitive to these social problems because he was an accomplished athlete, later ridiculed the national mania for concrete fitness in such lithographs every bit Business-Men'due south Class (1916, Grand. 20). He derived this particular lithograph from an illustration that he had made for The Masses in April 1913. 2 other lithographs, The Shower-Bath (1917, M. 45) and Business organization-Men's Bath (1923, Yard. 145), deal with the aforementioned theme.

Critics also considered Bellows'south selection of subject matter and artistic style to be direct influenced by his own masculinity. 1 allowed that the boxing subjects of Stag at Sharkey's and Both Members of This Club were undeniably brutal, but that "they striking you lot between the eyes with a vigor that few living artists known to us tin command. Take whatsoever of these Parisian chaps, beginning with Henri Matisse, who make a specialty of move—well, their work is ladylike in comparison with the ruddy blood of Bellows." [20] [20]
Unspecified newspaper review from The Sun, quoted in Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 104. When Society Nighttime was shown at the National Academy of Pattern'southward winter exhibition in 1908, a critic commented that it was 1 of two pictures past the artist in which "he has presented passing phases of the town in a manly, uncompromising manner." [21] [21]
J. Nilsen Laurvik, "The Wintertime Exhibition at the National Academy of Design," International Studio 33 (Feb. 1908): cxlii. Past early on 1911, when Bellows had his offset solo exhibition at the Madison Fine art Galleries, his reputation had become so inextricably spring to his boxing pictures that one critic used pugilistic terminology to describe his entire oeuvre: "The strong arm method of painting is what George goes in for, and he has got art pounded to a exhaust here in this twenty-4-round contest. Two dozen heavyweight pictures and a knock-out [sic] punch in every one!" [22] [22]
Undated clipping, perchance from the New York World, Jan. 1911, in Bellows'south scrapbook, Bellows Papers, Amherst Higher Library, quoted by Marianne Doezema, "The 'Real' New York," in Michael Quick, Jane Myers, Marianne Doezema, and Franklin Kelly, The Paintings of George Bellows (Fort Worth, TX, 1992), 109.

In 1922, Bellows looked dorsum on Order Nighttime and pronounced it "not much good." [23] [23]
Letter from Bellows to William Milliken, June 10, 1922, curatorial files, Cleveland Museum of Fine art, OH. Information technology had been his starting time try to paint a major sheet devoted to the theme of prizefighting, and he probably felt that the thought was better adult in the more dramatic and energetic Stag at Sharkey's and Both Members of This Lodge. Fifty-fifty today, the latter two paintings accept greatly overshadowed their lesser-known predecessor. Nevertheless, Club Night is a powerful paradigm in which Bellows recorded his initial impressions of the cruel fights in the backroom of Sharkey's Athletic Lodge and established the ground for further explorations of what would become his most famous discipline.

Robert Torchia

September 29, 2016

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Source: https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.61247.html

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