George Wesley Bellows

The Picnic

1918-1928

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George Wesley Bellows

The Picnic

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.

The National Gallery of Art, "George Bellows," The Metropolitan Museum of Art November 13 2012 - February 18 2013; Royal Academy of Arts London March 16 - June 9 2013.

The Brooklyn Museum of Art, "Youth and Beauty: Art of the American Twenties,"
The Brooklyn Museum of Art October 28 2011 - January 29 2011; Dallas Museum of Art March 4 2012 - May 27 2012;Cleveland Art Museum July 1 2012 - September 16 2012.

David Curry & Ann Shafer, BMA, "American Realism: Ashcan Artists," January 9-April 6, 2008.

Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester. "George Bellows in Woodstock, 1920-1924". Memorial Art Gallery, April 13 - June 23, 2003; Terra Museum of American Art, October 4, 2003 - January 11, 2004; Georgia Museum of Art, February 21 - May 16, 2024, Vero Beach Museum of Art, August 14 - October 31, 2004.

Art Institute of Chicago, "The American Muse", The Corcoran Gallery of Art, April 3 - May 17, 1959.

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.