Collection Online as of February 5, 2023
Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large
George Bellows
(American, 1882–1925)
Lithograph
Gift of Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. 1937.494
Catalogue raisonné: Mason 26
Location
not on view
Description
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.
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.