01 Work, The Art of War, George Bellows' The Germans Arrive, with footnotes

George Bellows

The Germans Arrive, 1918

Oil on canvas

 125.73 x 201.3 cm (49 1/2 x 79 1/4 in.)

The National Gallery of Art

A German soldier strangles a civilian while another woman is attacked near a burning cottage.

Artists played a role even before 1917. Reports of German atrocities galvanized George Bellows, initially an opponent of the war, into action. Bellows, channeling Goya, painted and made prints of rape, forced labor and the murder of children by gleeful monsters in German uniforms. Masterfully done yet extremely difficult to contemplate, these works were meant to rouse Americans in support of military action. More on this painting

As an illustrator for left-wing periodicals such as the Masses, George Bellows was accustomed to addressing social issues pointedly, but he condemned “obvious, heavy propaganda.” Nevertheless, in 1918, with the United States at war, the former pacifist completed a series of prints, drawings, and monumental paintings that was mobilized as just that. Drawing on press and government accounts—

Bellows enlisted in the United States army but did not fight overseas—and owing a debt to the themes in Spanish artist Francisco de Goya’s Disasters of War, Bellows represented extreme brutality in a highly classicized formal language. His depictions of reported German atrocities on the Western front were used by media outlets and the federal government to stoke anti-German sentiment. Bellows’s “War Series” highlights the complex and porous relationship between art and propaganda. The artist’s attempt to balance narrative strategies adopted from history painting with contemporary reportage, while ambitious, created an unresolvable tension that accounts, in part, for the series’ mixed reviews and limited endurance. More on The Germans arrive

American painter and printmaker George Wesley Bellows played a crucial role in early 20th century American art. He depicted contemporary scenes of everyday life in urban environments through an overtly Realist approach, presenting the realities of tenement life on the Lower East Side, the bristly physicality of men working on the docks, or widely attended popular sporting events. His sudden death from appendicitis at the age of forty-two tragically cut short an impressive, singular career.

Born in Columbus, Ohio in 1882, Bellows sustained parallel interests in art and sports, drawing, painting and playing baseball and basketball regularly from a young age. After declining an offer from the Indianapolis baseball team to play professionally, Bellows attended Ohio State University and later moved to New York City to study under Robert Henri and pursue a career as a painter. Within five years, Bellows gained critical and commercial success, exhibiting alongside Ashcan School painters William Glackens and John Sloan and regularly contributing illustrations to popular magazines. His paintings and prints depicting a rough, grimy New York City that was full of life and vitality have become iconic artworks of the early twentieth century. Over time, his work became increasingly politically engaged, as he openly criticized atrocities committed by Germany during World War I, or the bureaucracy and censorship of the United States government.

The Boston Public Library holds a considerable selection of his prints, while many of his major paintings can be found at the Columbus Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of Art, the National Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art and many other major institutions. More on George Wesley Bellows

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