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Lot Essay
George Bellows arrived on Monhegan Island, Maine, in July 1913 for a four-month stay that would be the most productive season of his career. Although Monhegan had been a fishing village for one hundred years, it became better known as an artist’s colony during the first decade of the twentieth century. By 1913, artists had carved half a dozen trails across the island leading away from the harbor on the western side to the massive 160-foot cliffs of Blackhead and Whitehead a half mile to the east. Having previously spent the summer of 1911 there with his mentor Robert Henri, Bellows knew the varied terrain well and returned to fully explore and paint every nook and cranny of this beautiful island located ten miles out to sea. As seen in Through the Trees, Monhegan, Maine, Bellows summarized his fascination with Monhegan in a letter to his wife Emma: “the Island is only a mile wide and two miles long, but it looks as large as the Rocky Mountains. It's three times as high as Montauk and all black and grey rock. Beautiful pine forests and wonderful varieties of all kinds...” (as quoted in C.H. Morgan, George Bellows: Painter of America, New York, 1965, pp. 135-36)
Initially struggling on his first Monhegan trip with small 11 x 15 inch panels, in 1913 Bellows painted effortlessly outdoors on panels roughly twice the size using a large brush that he favored. He also took a new approach to his compositions, trading distant panoramas for closely-cropped details of the ocean and landscape executed with vibrant immediacy. As Franklin Kelly describes, “Bellows's 1913 Monhegan paintings are markedly different from those of just two years earlier. The evocative mood of mystery and uncertainty…is gone, replaced by an exuberant celebration…Generally painted with great, bold strokes, the works of 1913 obtain a new dramatic force and power.” (“‘So Clean and Cold’: Bellows and the Sea,” George Bellows, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1992, p. 155)
Painted in August 1913, Bellows’ brushwork in Through the Trees, Monhegan, Maine is energetic as he immerses the viewer fully within the forested landscape. Thick and generous strokes of paint create a three-dimensional surface in the verdant greenery, while the vertical lines from the pale tree trunks create an effect of overall surface patterning that feels both utterly fresh and timeless. Bellows reflected of his 1913 Monhegan paintings, "I painted a great many pictures and arrived at a pure kind of color which I never hit before. And which seems to me cleaner and purer than most of the contemporary effort in that direction." (as quoted in M. Quick, "Technique and Theory: The Evolution of George Bellows's Painting Style," George Bellows, Fort Worth, Texas, 1992, p. 43)
Related works include Up the Gorge (1913, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); The Grove (1913, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas); and Fern Woods (1913, Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts).
Initially struggling on his first Monhegan trip with small 11 x 15 inch panels, in 1913 Bellows painted effortlessly outdoors on panels roughly twice the size using a large brush that he favored. He also took a new approach to his compositions, trading distant panoramas for closely-cropped details of the ocean and landscape executed with vibrant immediacy. As Franklin Kelly describes, “Bellows's 1913 Monhegan paintings are markedly different from those of just two years earlier. The evocative mood of mystery and uncertainty…is gone, replaced by an exuberant celebration…Generally painted with great, bold strokes, the works of 1913 obtain a new dramatic force and power.” (“‘So Clean and Cold’: Bellows and the Sea,” George Bellows, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1992, p. 155)
Painted in August 1913, Bellows’ brushwork in Through the Trees, Monhegan, Maine is energetic as he immerses the viewer fully within the forested landscape. Thick and generous strokes of paint create a three-dimensional surface in the verdant greenery, while the vertical lines from the pale tree trunks create an effect of overall surface patterning that feels both utterly fresh and timeless. Bellows reflected of his 1913 Monhegan paintings, "I painted a great many pictures and arrived at a pure kind of color which I never hit before. And which seems to me cleaner and purer than most of the contemporary effort in that direction." (as quoted in M. Quick, "Technique and Theory: The Evolution of George Bellows's Painting Style," George Bellows, Fort Worth, Texas, 1992, p. 43)
Related works include Up the Gorge (1913, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); The Grove (1913, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas); and Fern Woods (1913, Mead Art Museum, Amherst, Massachusetts).