My Family by Bellows, George
George Bellows painted 'My Family' in 1916, on a summer day at his home. It pictures his wife Emma and their younger daughter, Anne, on a couch dragged out onto the lawn under a striped awning. Bellows is known for his bruising boxing scenes and gritty New York streets, but here he turns that same loose, immediate brushwork on the most private of subjects.
Look at where Emma's body makes a shelter. Her profile is turned wholly toward Anne, whose pink dress and mild, direct stare are the picture's warmest notes. The green leaves crowd close, like walls of a room built from light and foliage. The couch cushions catch the sun, and the fabric of Emma's purple dress is rendered in thick, visible strokes that feel urgent, not delicate.
This tenderness was edged with fear. Their older daughter, Jean, was inside the house, sick with scarlet fever. The painting holds just the two of them: one child in her mother's arms, safe for now in the open air. It is a picture of a family, but also a picture of a suspended, worried afternoon.
Bellows would die only nine years later, at 42, from a ruptured appendix. His wife lived into her 90s. Anne and Jean both became artists. This canvas, quiet and brief, outlasted all of them.
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This is not a formal portrait. It is a summer afternoon, 1916, on the grass. The painter brought the living-room couch outside. His wife Emma, in a dress the color of dusk. She holds their daughter Anne, who was five. The older girl, Jean, was inside, sick with scarlet fever. A mother's arms, holding one child safe from an invisible threat. George Bellows died nine years later. He was 42.