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George Bellows: Love of Winter
12/6/1997 - 2/15/1998
The exhibition is generously underwritten in part by SunTrust
and American Express Company.
Organized and circulated by the Norton Museum of Art, George
Bellows: Love of Winter breaks new ground in the study of Bellows'
development. This is the first exhibition to concentrate exclusively
on Bellows' winter paintings, made between 1907 and 1915. It was in
these paintings that Bellows first mastered issues of color,
composition and paint application which later become central to his
art as a whole. In the winter paintings, we see for the first time
the important early American Modernist. Bellows himself realized the
importance of the winter paintings to his development as a painter,
writing in 1914, "There has been none of my favorite snow. I must
always paint the snow at least once a year."
George Bellows' winter paintings were inspired by many different
locations in and around New York. The largest group, including the
Norton's painting Winter Afternoon, depicts the Hudson River and
Riverside Park, with the Palisades in the distance. Another group
portrays the East River and the new bridges spanning it, of which
New Yorkers were very proud. A further group of paintings represents
the New York Docks, which by Bellows' day were part of the largest
port in the world. A small series of paintings represent other New
York City scenes, including street scenes. Finally, a group which
has never before been shown in any major exhibition since Bellows'
death, concentrates on the landscape around Zion, New Jersey, where
Bellows went on a working holiday in January, 1909. Ironically, this
greatly ignored group shows Bellows making new strides in color
and treatment of paint.
Never before have so many of Bellows' winter paintings been shown
at one time. Examination of the group of work as a whole
demonstrates Bellows' great feeling for color and composition, as
well as his virtuosity as a handler of paint. In fact, John
Wilmerding, the leading scholar of the art of this period, has
pointed out that, " ... his handling of paint in its luscious,
tumultuous, elegant purity would not find reincarnation in American
art for another half-century or more ...'
The Exhibition Catalogue
George Bellows: Love of Winter is accompanied by a major 112 page
catalogue published by the Norton Museum of Art. This includes an
essay by John Wilmerding entitled George Bellows and the American
Winter, in which Professor Wilmerding outlines the development of
the winter genre in the history of Art, as well as in Bellows'
work. David Setford, Chief Curator of the Norton Museum of Art, and
curator of this exhibition, has contributed an article to this
catalogue entitled George Bellows: Love of Winter, which outlines Bellows' developing methods, examines the locales which inspired
Bellows's winter paintings, and determines their importance in
Bellows' total oeuvre. The publication also includes an illustrated
catalogue of the exhibition; an illustrated checklist of all
Bellows' known winter paintings; and the checklist of an associated
exhibition Blanketed in Snow: American Winter Scenes which
examines the winter paintings of Bellows' contemporaries. The
catalog is underwritten by the Richard and Jane Manoogen Foundation
and the Ronald H. Cordarer Family Foundation.
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