Anne with a Japanese Parasol by Bellows, George

Bellows, George · 1917

Sotheby's sold this painting in 1991 for thirty-two thousand dollars. 'Anne with a Japanese Parasol' is George Bellows' 1917 portrait of his daughter, now in a private collection. The sale price reflected a time before Bellows' reputation caught up with his output, a painting by an American realist who died too young, whose market hadn't yet ignited.

Look at Anne herself. She holds the viewer's eye with a self-possessed calm unusual for a child's portrait. The full-length treatment Bellows chose was uncommon for domestic subjects of the era, it grants her the gravitas of an adult state portrait. The so-called Japanese parasol is a barely-legible object in her right hand, rendered in near-gestural shorthand that rewards a second look.

George Bellows moved to New York in 1904 and built his reputation on paintings of boxing matches, dockworkers, and kids in the street. By 1917, when he painted this portrait of Anne, he was increasingly turning toward domestic subjects and his own family. The loose, energetic brushwork here, the dissolved background, the open strokes in her blonde hair, is characteristic of his mature style, one that trusted gesture over finish.

Bellows died of appendicitis in 1925, just 42 years old. His market has transformed in the decades since: in 2018, his painting 'Dempsey and Firpo' sold for over $27 million. The quiet portrait of his daughter, sold for a modest sum in 1991, now looks like something else entirely, an undervalued moment in a foreshortened career.

Details

This portrait of a girl sold for thirty-two thousand dollars.

It's his daughter, Anne. She looks right at you.

Her father was George Bellows. He painted boxers, street kids, the East River.

Now look for the parasol. It's almost hidden.

Far from flat black, the dress holds embedded blues and purples suggesting reflected ambient light , Bellows painting shadow as color, not absence of it.

Transcript

Sotheby's, New York. December, 1991. This portrait of a girl sold for thirty-two thousand dollars. It's his daughter, Anne. She looks right at you. Her father was George Bellows. He painted boxers, street kids, the East River. He gave her a full-length portrait. That was uncommon for a child. Now look for the parasol. It's almost hidden. That little gesture in her hand, that's the Japanese parasol. Bellows died at forty-two. Today, his paintings sell for millions.