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The famous series of six oil paintings that Bellows devoted to the sport of prizefighting has had indelible entreatment as a prepare of images that captures the essence of early on 20th-century urban American life. [one] [1]
John Wilmerding has observed that, "They were among his about popular pictures in his lifetime and take remained compelling for audiences to this twenty-four hour period." John Wilmerding, "Bellows' Boxing Pictures and the American Tradition," in Eastward. A. Carmean, John Wilmerding, Linda Ayres, and Deborah Chotner, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures (Washington, DC, 1982), 13. Executed in Baronial and September 1907, Order Night is the starting time of iii similar boxing subjects that the precocious Bellows painted in his mid-20s [fig. 1] [fig. 1] Entry from artist'southward Tape Volume well-nigh Gild Night, The Ohio Country 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. ii] [fig. 2] George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey's, 1909, oil on sheet, The Cleveland Museum of Fine art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Drove 1133.1922. © The Cleveland Museum of Art and Both Members of This Club . Although Bellows fabricated a number of lithographs devoted to the subject area get-go in 1916 [fig. 3] [fig. 3] George Bellows, The White Hope, 1927, lithograph, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Andrew West. Mellon Fund , he did non produce another boxing scene in oil until 1923, when he painted Introducing John 50. Sullivan (Whitney Museum of American 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 development of professional person boxing in the United States.

Bellows showtime called this painting A Stag at Sharkey's and named his second boxing subject field Club Dark. When the Cleveland Museum purchased the latter in 1922, he switched their titles at the museum's request. [2] [two]
The change in championship 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 championship Stag at Sharkey's and asked George if he would mind switching the names . . . Bellows readily agreed." Bramhall shared this reference in a letter to Franklin Kelly, deputy manager and main curator, National Gallery of Art, dated Feb ten, 2013. The original title was derived from a bar called Tom Sharkey's Athletic Club that was across the street from Bellows's studio in the Lincoln Arcade Edifice at Broadway and 66th Street in New York City. The Irish-built-in proprietor, Tom "Sailor Tom" Sharkey, was a former heavyweight champion who staged private boxing contests in the dorsum room of his saloon. Boxing had been legalized in New York State with the passage of the Horton Constabulary in 1896. Merely that act was repealed in 1900 and replaced by the Lewis Police, which prohibited the sport. [three] [3]
Boxing remained illegal until the passage of the Frawley Human activity in 1911, simply even then only ten-circular, 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 individual "clubs," where attendees paid membership ante instead of access fees and so that they could gamble on the outcome of the events. To maintain the human activity, boxers were announced in the ring every bit "both members of this guild." 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 middle- and upper-grade men who frequented New York'due south demimonde [fig. four] [fig. 4] Henry "Hy" Mayer, "A Knockout past the Law," from Rupert Hughes, The Real New York (New York, 1904), 145, Library of Congress . Simply men were admitted to prizefights at this fourth dimension. [4] [4]
This had changed by 1916, when Bellows represented a grouping of upper-course women and their escorts attending a boxing lucifer at Madison Foursquare Garden in his lithograph Preliminaries (run across Lauris Bricklayer, The Lithographs of George Bellows: A Catalogue Raisonné, rev. ed. [San Francisco, 1992], cat. 24).

Bellows was first introduced to Sharkey's by a boxer named Mosey King, who was a friend of Bellows's roommate, Ed Keefe. [5] [v]
Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 69. Male monarch had held the New England featherweight and lightweight titles before retiring in 1906 (he later had a 46-year career as the boxing autobus at Yale University). The artist subsequently remembered: "Before I married and became semirespectable, I lived on Broadway contrary the Sharkey Athletic Club, where it was possible nether constabulary to become a 'Fellow member' and see the fights for a price." [half dozen] [half-dozen]
George Bellows to William Milliken, June ten, 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 get-go documented the activities there in The Knock Out [fig. 5] [fig. v] George Bellows, The Knock Out, 1907, pastel, ink, and graphite, Crystal Bridges Museum of Fine 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 Forty-two Kids before returning to the prizefighting theme with Gild Night.

Bellows was non the starting time American artist to depict boxing matches. As the sport grew in popularity during the 2d one-half of the 19th century, it increasingly appealed to folk artists, illustrators, and political cartoonists, besides as to academic painters. Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 - 1916), an creative person that Bellows later pronounced "i of the best of all the world's masters," [seven] [vii]
Unspecified letter of the alphabet to Robert Henri of late 1917, quoted in Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 215. For a give-and-take of Eakins'due south boxing paintings, run across Carl South. Smith, "The Boxing Paintings of Thomas Eakins," Prospects 4 (1979): 403–420, and Martin A. Berger, Man Made: Thomas Eakins and the Construction of Gilded Age Manhood (Berkeley, CA, 2000), 112–120. dealt with the bailiwick in a series of 3 major paintings: Salutat (1898, Addison Gallery of American Fine art, Phillips University, Andover, MA), Taking the Count [fig. 6] [fig. 6] Thomas Eakins, Taking the Count, 1899, oil on canvas, Yale University Art Gallery, Whitney Collections of Sporting 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, simply, characteristic of his generation, he eschewed Eakins's noble, idealized interpretation of pugilism in favor of the gritty realism advocated past his friend and mentor Robert Henri (American, 1865 - 1929). Bellows's boxing paintings accept more than in common with his contemporary William Glackens's illustrations for H. R. Durant's story "A Sucker" in Cosmopolitan (May 1905), for example A Right-hand Hook [fig. 7] [fig. 7] William Glackens, "A correct-hand claw 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 subject The Wrestlers (1905, Boston Museum of Fine Fine art, MA). [8] [8]
For a survey of American antecedents to Bellows's battle series, come across 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'southward illustrations are discussed by Marianne Doezema in George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 80–82.

In addition to Eakins, Bellows'southward boxing paintings as well pay homage to the European painters recommended to him by Henri. Whereas Bellows after drew inspiration from the rich black tonalities and bitter satire of the 17th-century Castilian chief Francisco Goya (Castilian, 1746 - 1828) for Both Members of this Club, the smoky, atmospheric haze that envelops the scene in Guild Night and Bellows'due south painterly technique and rendering of the oversupply owes much to the corking 19th-century French painter and caricaturist Honoré Daumier (French, 1808 - 1879). The critic James G. Huneker succinctly described the visceral effect of Society Nighttime:

It is a roughshod boxing match (surely four ounce gloves) about to degenerate into a assure and a mixup [sic]. I pugilist is lunging in the deed of delivering a "soaker" to his adversary. You hear, you feel the irksome impact of the blow. A sodden ready of fauna mugs ring the circle—upon the platform the low-cal is full-bodied. It is not pleasing, this, or edifying, merely for the artists and apprentice the play of muscles and the various attitudes and gestures are absolutely exciting. [9] [9]
"Academy Exhibition—Second Detect," New York Sun, Dec. 23, 1907; quoted in Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 67, northward. 1.

Further heightening the drama of the composition, Bellows has used a depression viewpoint, creating the impression that the spectator observes the struggle from just behind the audition that is gathered around the raised platform. Additionally, the harsh electric lite dramatically illuminates the contestants' muscular bodies then that they stand out in relief against the nighttime background.

Bellows, who in his 1909 copyright application but described Club Night as "two prize fighters [sic], one on the right lunges blow at crouching opponent on the left," [10] [10]
East. 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 boxing experts criticized him for depicting stances and gestures that real pugilists would never have used, he replied, "I don't know annihilation almost battle. I'm simply painting 2 men trying to impale each other." To another such criticism he responded: "Who cares what a prize fighter looks like? It'southward his muscles that count." [eleven] [11]
Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 77. Bellows's lack of involvement in the technical aspects of boxing did not detract from his ability to convey a vivid impression of the temper at Sharkey's. Huneker's comment in a higher place is remarkably similar to the bystander account of French traveler Paul Charles Joseph Bourget, who attended a boxing lucifer during the early 1890s:

The blows fall more heavily as the fight progresses. The bodies bend to avoid them. The two men are furious. 1 hears their animate and the ho-hum thud of the fists as they fall on the naked flesh. After several blows of harder delivery, the 'claret' is drawn, as they say, the blood flows from the eyes, the nose, the ears, it smears the cheeks and the mouth, information technology stains the fists with its warm and red flow, while the public expresses its please by howls, which the hitting 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 Mod Life, 1885–1915 (New York, 1994), 234.

Even though its unsavory subject defied the era's bourgeois social mores, Club Night was accepted for exhibition at the National Academy of Design'due south "Wintertime Exhibition" that opened on December 14, 1907. Despite being disadvantageously hung over a doorway, the painting attracted considerable attending and commentary. A critic observed that "if the extreme of realism is sought, it may be institute over the door of the Vanderbilt Gallery, equally if placed there for the do good of persons accustomed to looking upward from ringside. Its title, 'A Stag at Sharkey'southward,' suggests a recent police problem." [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 (then still called Club Dark) as an outright condemnation of prizefighting:

It may be difficult for many to run into why an artist who had the temperament to paint…other canvases with so much refinement should choose to pigment such a subject equally a prize fight, a large canvas chosen 'Guild Night.' On a closer written report of this painting, however, we discover no endeavour to glorify prize fighting; it is, rather, a painting inspired by disgust for such an exhibition; everything in the whole canvass reeks of deposition. There can be magnificence in a certain stage of roughshod force; there is eloquence in physical encounter which intoxicates to the extent of blinding one to the depravity of the proceedings. Lines, muscles, and action in a painting can convey this eloquence, merely in the 'Club Night' we witness a prize fight shorn of all eloquence. Even the lines, although wonderful in their expressiveness, lack all dignity, portraying only the real quality of such a contest. One is convinced the author of the painting was inspired by the depravity of the scene rather than past the upshot of such a competition. The aforementioned tin can be said of the composition. The leering faces of the men who are sitting around the raised platform are all and then powerfully suggestive of the artist'due south attitude of mind. I should be very much surprised if Mr. Bellows denied this. [14] [14]
"The Art of George Bellows," Aesthetics 3 (Oct. 1914–July 1915): 53.

Bellows had already stated in 1910, "I am not interested in the morality of prize fighting. But let me say that the atmosphere around the fighters is a lot more immoral than the fighters themselves." [15] [fifteen]
Letter of the alphabet from Bellows to Katherine Hiller, 1910, quoted in Thomas Beer, George W. Bellows: His Lithographs (New York, 1927), xv. The heavily caricatured treatment of the spectators in the Gallery'southward Society Night, some of whom wear formal apparel in an allusion to the wealthy men who "slummed" by attending these events, suggests a caste of social criticism. Caught upwardly in the frenzied, violent atmosphere, they leer up at the pugilists, and their exaggerated facial expressions suggest that they derive a vicarious—and perhaps even voyeuristic—thrill from the sadistic match. [16] [16]
For a give-and-take of the possible homoeroticism of Stag at Sharkey's, see Robert Haywood, "George Bellows's Stag at Sharkey'southward: Boxing, Violence, and Male person Identity," Smithsonian Studies in American Art 2 (Spring 1988): three–15.

Bellows's battle images were censored numerous times during their exhibition in his dwelling state of Ohio. A quondam schoolmate, the sports reporter Charlie Grant, bundled for Lodge Night to be displayed in the dining room of the Cleveland Able-bodied Club in 1908 in the hope that it might be acquired by that institution. Although a local paper called the painting "a remarkable specimen of the realist school," [17] [17]
Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America (New York, 1965), 89–90. the buy was somewhen rejected on the grounds that the bailiwick was offensive to female guests. In Columbus in 1911, Bellows's boxing cartoon The Knock Out was quarantined in a dissever gallery away from women and children.

Critics reacted with simultaneous adoration and revulsion for the morally ambiguous spectacle of 2 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 interpretation of the subject and the public'southward response to it reflect the uncertain status of battle at the time. While many Americans found prizefighting a savage 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 skilful boxing and openly advocated the sport. Marianne Doezema has discussed how Bellows'due south boxing subjects evolved in an era when "concerns about the affect of industrialization and urbanization . . . were expressed as fear of overcivilization and degeneracy, but fundamentally every bit anxiety most virility in American life." [18] [18]
Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 68. The period's fascination with athletic activities in general and boxing in particular was a manifestation of concerns about declining masculinity, and Bellows'due south sensational paintings attracted notoriety because they "flaunted the prim codes of effete society and brandished one of the most key manifestations of masculine hardness." [19] [nineteen]
Marianne Doezema, George Bellows and Urban America (New York, 1992), 69. In a more humorous vein, Bellows, who was probably sensitive to these social bug because he was an accomplished athlete, subsequently ridiculed the national mania for physical fitness in such lithographs every bit Business-Men'southward Class (1916, M. 20). He derived this particular lithograph from an analogy that he had made for The Masses in April 1913. Two other lithographs, The Shower-Bath (1917, 1000. 45) and Business-Men'south Bath (1923, K. 145), deal with the same theme.

Critics also considered Bellows's choice of subject field matter and artistic fashion to exist directly influenced by his own masculinity. One allowed that the boxing subjects of Stag at Sharkey's and Both Members of This Order were undeniably brutal, but that "they hit you between the eyes with a vigor that few living artists known to us can control. Accept whatever of these Parisian chaps, beginning with Henri Matisse, who make a specialty of movement—well, their piece of work is ladylike in comparison with the crimson 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 Club Night was shown at the National Academy of Pattern's winter exhibition in 1908, a critic commented that it was one of two pictures by the artist in which "he has presented passing phases of the town in a manly, uncompromising mode." [21] [21]
J. Nilsen Laurvik, "The Winter Exhibition at the National Academy of Design," International Studio 33 (February. 1908): cxlii. By early 1911, when Bellows had his first solo exhibition at the Madison Fine art Galleries, his reputation had go and so inextricably bound to his boxing pictures that one critic used pugilistic terminology to describe his unabridged oeuvre: "The strong arm method of painting is what George goes in for, and he has got art pounded to a frazzle here in this 20-iv-round competition. Two dozen heavyweight pictures and a knock-out [sic] dial in every one!" [22] [22]
Undated clipping, mayhap from the New York World, Jan. 1911, in Bellows'southward scrapbook, Bellows Papers, Amherst College 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 back on Order Nighttime and pronounced it "non much practiced." [23] [23]
Letter from Bellows to William Milliken, June 10, 1922, curatorial files, Cleveland Museum of Art, OH. It had been his outset endeavour to pigment a major sheet devoted to the theme of prizefighting, and he probably felt that the idea was better developed in the more than dramatic and energetic Stag at Sharkey's and Both Members of This Club. Even today, the latter 2 paintings have profoundly overshadowed their lesser-known predecessor. Nevertheless, Social club Night is a powerful prototype in which Bellows recorded his initial impressions of the barbarous fights in the backroom of Sharkey'southward Athletic Lodge and established the basis for further explorations of what would become his about famous subject.

Robert Torchia

September 29, 2016

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

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