Artwork Page for River-Front

Details / Information for River-Front

River-Front

1924

George Bellows

(American, 1882–1925)
Culture
America
Medium
lithograph
Measurements
Image: 38.1 x 53.2 cm (15 x 20 15/16 in.); Matted: 66 x 86.2 x 0.3 cm (26 x 33 15/16 x 1/8 in.); Platemark: 39.2 x 54.6 cm (15 7/16 x 21 1/2 in.); Sheet: 45.1 x 58.1 cm (17 3/4 x 22 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr. 1935.250
Catalogue raisonné
Mason 168
Public Domain
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Location
Not on view
Print
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Did You Know?

Bellows created a dynamic triangle in this composition with the verticality of the central boy and lone building, the horizontal of the tugboat, and the two sails that complete the shape.

Description

During George Bellows’s first decade in New York City, starting in 1904, newspapers ran many stories about the “social problem” of the urban poor, reporting that the city’s tenement district lacked cleanliness and order. Drawn to this unvarnished side of city life, Bellows made several images of the public docks along the East River that were unofficial places of recreation for the city’s tenement children. Both Splinter Beach and River-Front feature, without sentimentality, children that display their nakedness unabashedly. Disturbingly, both images feature fully clothed adults observing or even touching children, as well as other sexual touching. Portrayals of sexual indecency in Bellows’s work aligned with the off-color humor often found in fictional representations of the urban poor of the time.
A horizontally oriented lithograph in black ink on off-white paper depicts a chaotic riverfront crowded with light-skinned figures. In the foreground, dozens of nude and clothed people cluster along a craggy, shaded shoreline. To the left, a massive concrete pier supports a dense crowd, with figures leaping into the water. On the right, a steamboat with sails drifts under a dark, smoky sky punctuated by a towering chimney and gestural clouds.

River-Front

1924

George Bellows

(American, 1882–1925)
America

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