Artists Judging Works of Art

 

George Wesley Bellows

  1882 - 1925 (biography)

1916  

lithograph 

14 9/16 x 19" image size 

signed in the stone along bottom center of image, "Geo Bellows"; pencil signed "Geo Bellows" by Bellows' daughter Jean Bellows Booth "J.B.B." on behalf of the estate 

unnumbered; from an edition of 52 as noted by Mason in reference to Record Book B (ref.: M&A, pg. 15 

"J.B.B." for Jean Bellows Booth inscribed beneath the estate signature 

Myers and Ayers, fig. 126; Mason 18; B. 147 

delicate, fibrous tissue wove 

ii/ii 

artist 

GAWI101 

SOLD

"Artists Judging Works of Art" was based on a drawing Bellows did for 'The Masses' in 1915, which he had titled "Jury Duty", where he described the figure on the left as the "giant intellect of the connoisseur in the left foreground, straining itself to its aesthetic utmost, and at last bringing forth its prodigious judgement." Other jurists crowd around an oil painting depicting a female subject. Bellows depicts himself in the upper far right and artist Robert Henri seated in a chair in the lower right. A note on the editions from the Myers & Ayers catalogue, page 158: "A number of working proofs (fig. 125) were made prior to the editioned print (Mason 18; fig. 126), to which Bellows added a glass to the foreground and hair to the head of the man in center of the print. The inventory cited 75 impressions of this print remaining in the estate at the time of Bellows' death, while the edition size given in the record book is 52 (Record Book B, p. 106). The discrepancy between these two figures suggests that there were at least 23 working proofs of the lithograph." - Myers, Jane and Ayers, Linda. George Bellows: The Artist and His Lithographs, 1916 - 1924. Fort Worth, Texas, Amon Carter Museum, 1988. This impression, like the others found in the estate after the artist's death, has a surrogate pencil signature "Geo Bellows" in the lower right margin by the artist's daughter Jean Bellows Booth and is pencil initialed by her beneath the signature.