George Wesley Bellows
The Picnic
1918-1928
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George Wesley Bellows
The Picnic
1918-1928
Physical Qualities
Oil on canvas, Unframed: 30 1/8 x 44 1/4 in. (76.5 x 112.4 cm) Framed: 38 1/2 x 52 1/4 x 5 1/2 in. (97.8 x 132.7 x 14 cm)
Credit Line
The Peabody Art Collection. Courtesy of the Maryland Commission on Artistic Property of the Maryland State Archives. MSA SC 4680-10-003
Object Number
L.1944.72
The Picnic captures Cooper Lake, New York, as a surreal setting for an outing with family and friends. The scene depicts George Bellows, clad in a blue
blazer and straw boater; his wife, Emma; and their daughter Jean, who looks up at her red-haired sister, Anne. Fellow artist Eugene Speicher is shown sprawled on his back, napping. Yet there is little sense of relaxation. As storm clouds threaten in the distance, the notion of a pleasant country afternoon seems instead filled with anxiety. Bellows, mostly known as a city painter, combined realism, fantasy, and hints of abstraction in this pastoral landscape.
Per H.V. Allison & Co.: (Frank K.M. Rehn Gallery, New York); Adoloph Lewisohn, New York, 1924; (M. Knoedler & Co., New York)
Extended Loans IN
American Realism: Ashcan Artists
Link Benesch Reinstall (Spring 2008)
Before the Fall: Art of the American Twenties
George Bellows
AMW Reinstallation 2014
American Wing Rotations 2020
American Wing Rotations 2021
American Modernism Reinstallation
American Wing Rotations 2023
American Wing Rotations 2024
American Wing Rotations 2025
Carbone, Teresa A. Silent Pictures:Encounters with a Remade World. "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties" Edited by Teresa A. Carbone. New York: Skira Rizzoli Publications, Inc. and Brooklyn Museum, 2011, p. 116, ill. p. 118.
Mark Cole, "A Life Cut Short, 1924," George Bellows, ed. Charles Brock (Washington DC: National Gallery of Art, 2012), 287,296-97.
"Leaving for the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock", Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 2003, 28, 81.
Rosenthal, Gertrude, ed. "From El Greco to Pollock: Early and Late Works by European and American Artists." Baltimore, MD: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1968, pp. 117, ill.
On View at the BMA
