Introduction to 20th Century
American Art
Visual Art II
George Bellows, Stag at Sharkey’s
George Bellows
• George Bellows was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio. He was an only
child, born four years after his parents married, at the ages of fifty and
forty respectively. His mother, Anna Wilhelmina Smith, was the daughter
of a whaling captain.
• Bellows attended The Ohio State University from 1901 until 1904. There
he played for the baseball and basketball teams, and provided illustrations
for the Makio, the school's student yearbook. He was encouraged to
become a professional baseball player, and he worked as a commercial
illustrator while a student and continued to accept magazine assignments
throughout his life. Despite these opportunities in athletics and
commercial art, Bellows desired success as a painter. He left Ohio State in
1904 just before he was to graduate and moved to New York City to study
art.
• Bellows was soon a student of Robert Henri at the New York School of Art,
and became associated with Henri's "The Eight" and the Ashcan School, a
group of artists who advocated painting contemporary American society in
all its forms. By 1906, Bellows was renting his own studio, on Broadway.
Cliff Dwellers
George Bellows
Cliff Dwellers (1913) is a
clever title for a painting of
the tenement dwellers of
New York City in the early
twentieth century. Bellows
took the mass confusion of
elements and organized
simple composition of darks
and lights, eliminating much
of the detail of the actual
scene. The activity in the
painting is intense and
varied yet is handles with
care and compassion.
John Singer Sargent, Daughters of Edward D. Boit
Albert Beirstadt, The Rocky Moutnains
The Banjo Lesson
Henry O. Tanner
The Banjo Lesson (1893) is a
simple scene of African-American
life. The figures are rendered
realistically, without
sentimentality. This deceptively
simple-looking work explores
several important themes. Blacks
had long been stereotyped as
entertainers in American culture,
and the image of a black man
playing the banjo appears
throughout American art of the
late 19th century. Tanner works
against this familiar stereotype
by producing a sensitive
reinterpretation. Instead of a
generalization the painting
portrays a specific moment of
human interaction
Henry O. Tanner
• Henry Ossawa Tanner (June 21, 1859 – May 25, 1937) was an
African-American artist. He was the first African-American painter
to gain international acclaim. Tanner was born in Pittsburgh, PA. His
father, Benjamin Tucker Tanner was a minister, editor, and political
activist. His mother Sarah Tanner had escaped slavery via the
Underground Railroad. The family moved to Philadelphia when
Tanner was young; his father becoming a friend, sometime
supporter, sometime critic of Frederick Douglass.
• Tanner is often regarded as a realist painter, focusing on accurate
depictions of subjects. While his early works, such as "The Banjo
Lesson" were concerned with everyday life as an African American,
Tanner's later paintings focused mainly on the religious subjects for
which he is now best known. It is likely that Tanner's father, a
minister in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, was a formative
influence in this direction
John Sloan, Renganeschi’s Saturday Night
Georgia O’Keeffe, From the Plains I
Charles Seeler, City Interior
The Kentuckian
Thomas Hart Benton
The Kentuckian (1954)
illustrates the type of
historical subject that
Benton favored in his
paintings. There is a slight
distortion of humans,
plant life, and nature.
However, the strongly lit
forms, deep shadows, and
simplified design create a
realistic image.
Thomas Hart Benton
• Thomas Hart Benton (April 15, 1889 – January 19,
1975) was an American painter and muralist. Along
with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the
forefront of the Regionalist art movement. His fluid,
sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday
people in scenes of life in the United States. Though his
work is strongly associated with the Midwest, he
studied in Paris, lived in New York City for more than 20
years and painted scores of works there; summered for
50 years on Martha's Vineyard off the New England
coast; and also painted scenes of the American South
and the American West.
Grant Wood, Stone City Iowa
Edward Hopper, Nighthawks
Nighthawks (1942) is a powerful and dramatic portrayal of
loneliness of life in big cities. His strong light is always garish and
piercing. The subjects look exposed, as though they were put
under glaring spotlight. This is an example of how Hopper visually
expresses his view of American life.
American Gothic
Grant Wood
American Gothic (1930) is
Wood’s best know work.
The simple plainness of
this farming couple
conveys the austerity of
rural American life at this
time and leaves a lasting
impression on the viewer.
This painting is a good
example of Social realism.
Social Realism
• Social Realism, also known as Socio-Realism, is
an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and
other realist arts, which depicts social and racial
injustice, and economic hardship through
unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often
depicting working-class activities as heroic. The
movement is a style of painting in which the
scenes depicted typically convey a message of
social or political protest edged with satire. This
art movement is closely related to regionalism.
Fredrick Remington, The Outlaw
Jacob Lawrence, One of the Largest Race Riots
Occurred in East St. Louis
One of the Largest Race Riots Occurred in East St. Louis is one of the bestknown panels from Lawrence’s sixty panel The Migration of the Negro
series. The race riot is not depicted realistically. Instead, Lawrence gives us
a stylized and perfectly balanced dance of almost abstract shapes, which
only make the work more chilling. The painting universalizes the hatred,
lifting it above a more specific clash of individuals.
Jacob Lawrence
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Jacob Lawrence was born in 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey and died in 2000 in
Seattle, Washington. He was thirteen when he moved with his sister and brother
to New York City. His mother enrolled him in classes at an arts and crafts
settlement house in Harlem, in an effort to keep him busy.
After dropping out of school at sixteen, Lawrence worked in a laundry and a
printing plant. More importantly, he attended classes at the Harlem Art Workshop,
taught by the African American artist Charles Alston. Alston urged him to also
attend the Harlem Community Art Center, led by the sculptor Augusta Savage.
Savage was able to secure Lawrence a scholarship to the American Artists School
and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration. In addition to getting
paid, he was able to study and work with such notable Harlem Renaissance artists
as Charles Alston and Henry Bannarn in the Alston-Bannarn workshop.
In October 1943 (during the Second World War), he enlisted in the United States
Coast Guard and served with the first racially integrated crew on the USCGC Sea
Cloud, under Carlton Skinner. He was able to paint and sketch while in the Coast
Guard.
In 1970 Lawrence settled in Seattle and became an art professor at the University
of Washington.
Ben Shahn,
The Passion of Sacco and
Vanzetti
Ben Shahn, Handball
Conclusion
• America changed in the first half of this
century with a dynamic force, full of ideas and
discoveries. Extreme social, economic, and
political changes too place in the first half of
the twentieth century with greatly influence
the subject matter and style of the art world.
Most art was very focused on depicting life
and scenery of the US.