Collection Online as of June 26, 2022
Reducing Exercises
George Bellows
(American, 1882-1925)
Lithograph
Image: 44.5 x 42.1 cm (17 1/2 x 16 9/16 in.)
Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1937.478
Catalogue raisonné: Mason 22
Location
not on view
Description
Fueled by the advertising industry and the increasing popularity of movies, the ideal standard for women’s bodies began to evolve during the early 20th century, fostering a preference for more curvaceous profiles with thinner waists. Bellows’s Reducing Exercises presents a woman dutifully engaged in changing her physique while her male companion sleeps. When he first exhibited the print, the artist provided an accompanying quip: “Gymnastics before retiring are supposed to reduce the flesh. The husband is contented with his figure.”
George Bellows
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.