id: 116941
accession number: 1937.494
share license status: Copyrighted
url: https://clevelandart.org/art/1937.494
updated: 2023-01-19 15:25:27.577000
Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large, 1916. George Bellows (American, 1882–1925). Lithograph; The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1937.494
title: Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large
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creation date: 1916
creation date earliest: 1916
creation date latest: 1916
current location:
creditline: Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.
copyright:
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culture: America, 20th century
technique: lithograph
department: Prints
collection: PR - Lithograph
type: Print
find spot:
catalogue raisonne: Mason 26
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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.
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CURRENT EXHIBITIONS
title: Stag at Sharkey’s: George Bellows and the Art of Sports
opening date: 2016-05-14T00:00:00
Stag at Sharkey’s: George Bellows and the Art of Sports. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (May 14-September 18, 2016).
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LEGACY EXHIBITIONS
* The Cleveland Museum of Art, OH (05/14/2016-09/18/2016): “Stag at Sharkey’s: George Bellows and the Art of Sports”
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PROVENANCE
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Due to the popularity of his early boxing paintings such as Stag at Sharkey’s, Bellows was often commissioned by newspapers and magazines to depict sporting events, both actual and fictional. One of the artist’s first boxing prints, Introducing the Champion was inspired by a drawing he made three years earlier to illustrate a short story in American Magazine, which describes an imagined lightweight champion nicknamed Tornado Black. The cocky gloating of this character, who panders to the crowd, provides the impetus for Bellows’s rendering.
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RELATED WORKS
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IMAGES