id: 115877 accession number: 1936.588 share license status: Copyrighted url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1936.588 updated: 2023-08-31 11:02:27.199000 The Law is too Slow, 1923. George Bellows (American, 1882–1925). Lithograph; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1936.588 title: The Law is too Slow title in original language: series: series in original language: creation date: 1923 creation date earliest: 1923 creation date latest: 1923 current location: creditline: Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. copyright: --- culture: America, 20th century technique: lithograph department: Prints collection: PR - Lithograph type: Print find spot: catalogue raisonne: Mason 147 --- CREATORS * George Bellows (American, 1882–1925) - artist An accomplished athlete, George Bellows (1882–1925) was an especially appropriate artist to address the subject of sports. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, he played baseball and basketball as a youth, developing sufficient ability to letter in both at Ohio State University. According to some accounts, scouts for the Cincinnati Reds took notice of his shortstop talents. However, Bellows’s first love, art, ultimately intervened, and after his junior year he relocated to New York to study painting. In a remarkably short period he became the leading artist of his generation, a reputation fueled through boxing subjects such as Stag at Sharkey’s. In his later years he developed recreational passions for tennis and billiards, which he routinely played with friends. Bellows’s life was cut short at the age of 42, due to complications after his appendix ruptured. --- measurements: state of the work: edition of the work: support materials: inscriptions: --- CURRENT EXHIBITIONS title: The George Wesley Bellows Memorial Exhibition opening date: 1926-02-16T05:00:00 The George Wesley Bellows Memorial Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 16-March 22, 1926). --- LEGACY EXHIBITIONS --- PROVENANCE --- fun fact: digital description: Bellows made this lithograph to illustrate "Nemesis," a fictitious anti-lynching story written by Mary Johnston and published in Century Magazine in May 1923. In the story, a Black man is accused of attacking and killing a white woman; he is then lynched by a mob of white men, all of whom subsequently fall upon misfortune themselves. Bellows portrays the gruesome lynching by highlighting the Black man's strong, illuminated body and surrounding it with an unfeeling mob of white men, some of whom watch as if at a sporting event. The glow of the fire highlights the lynched man's physical as well as internal strength, and visual resonances with Catholic imagery of deaths of saints imply the man's martyrdom. The title of the print may refer both to a twisted justification for lynching cited by racists during the Jim Crow era, as well as to the United States Congress's failure to pass anti-lynching laws. wall description: --- RELATED WORKS --- CITATIONS --- IMAGES