George Wesley Bellows. 1882-1925.
Preliminaries (to the Big Bout). 1916. Lithograph. Mason 24. 15 3/4 by 19 1/2 (sheet 22 x 24). Edition 67, number 28. A richly-inked impression printed on thin Japan paper. Provenance: Susan Sheehan Gallery, Carey Ellis Company, property of an American Corporation. Inscribed in pencil with the artist's name and initialed by his daughter, Jean 'J.B.B.', and numbered '28'. Housed in a stunning modernist 30 x 33-inch modernist silver leaf frame. Price upon request.
Bellows noted of this print: "Society attends a big fight at Madison Square Garden, New York." Preliminaries is the only one of the Bellows fight lithographs in which women are present. At the center of the composition a woman (Emma Bellows?) turns toward us. Emma commented in her catalogue of the Bellows lithographs: "For the first time in New York prize-fight history, many fashionable women appeared in the audience."
For more information, send e-mail to Jane Allinson at Jane Allinson (jane@allinsongallery.com) or call =1 (860)429-2322.