The Powerful Hand of George Bellows

Drawings from the Boston Public Library

Curated by Robert Conway

Exhibition Available 2007 - 2008

The Trust for Museum Exhibitions is privileged to offer for exhibition an incomparable collection of drawings by the modern American master George Bellows. The Albert H. Wiggin Collection of the Boston Public Library, which contains nearly 50 masterpieces by one of America’s greatest draftsmen, was last exhibited in the 1950s and has never been presented in its entirety. Demonstrating the artist’s technical and aesthetic versatility, these drawings range in subject from popular sporting events and powerful social commentary, to intimate figure studies and family portraits.

A general lack of scholarly attention to the artist’s drawings might suggest that the medium was, for Bellows, secondary. As the Wiggin Collection demonstrates repeatedly, Bellows created large, highly finished drawings as ends in themselves, as well as developing sketches along the way to the creation of major works in other media.

This groundbreaking exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive catalogue of the Wiggin Collection that will feature an important group of essays examining Bellows’ status as a great draftsman, his place among American realist artists and writers, the relationship of these powerful works to his better known paintings and prints, and the history of the Wiggin gift itself.

Click each image for a larger view.