
Read the visual description
From under an elevated train track, we look at a cluster of people hammering and working on the far side of a wooden fence, all against a silvery-blue building that fills most of the background in this horizontal painting. The scene is loosely painted mostly in tones of hazy and saturated blues, so many of the details are indistinct. About a quarter of the way in from the right edge of the composition, a thin iron column holds up the train platform. The column nearly spans the height of the painting, and the track it supports runs across the top edge of the canvas. At the foot of the column, along the bottom edge, are two parallel tracks embedded in an area otherwise painted with short, diagonal strokes in topaz blue, olive green, and straw yellow. Just beyond the tracks, the split-rail wooden fence runs across most of the painting, though there is an opening at the left edge of the canvas. A man sits with his back to us on the railing to our right of center. He wears a dark cap, a lapis-blue shirt, and navy-blue pants. Several men work on or near a mound-shaped form, perhaps a piece of machinery, just beyond the fence, near the center of the painting. One man holds a hammer high overhead while another reaches down or strikes the mound with his feet planted wide. More people work together to our left, and a man to our right stands near a crane. The people and these areas are painted with broad strokes and touches of cobalt blue, charcoal gray, khaki brown, and a few swipes of shell pink and bright white. A puff of white smoke billows up behind the central group, before the land drops precipitously away. The chasm is painted with shimmering tones of aquamarine and cerulean blue. A sky-blue, rectangular building perches at the far edge. A few windows are outlined in royal blue to our left but the rest of the building is loosely painted with long, vertical strokes so no architectural details can be made out. Behind this structure are more city buildings, suggested with strokes of muted rust red, parchment and bright white, and cobalt blue. The ice-blue sky fills the band between the top of the buildings and the train track running overhead. The artist signed his name near the lower left corner, “BELLOWS.”
National Gallery of Art · Painting
Blue Morning
George Bellows
- Date
- 1909
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- overall: 86.3 x 111.7 cm (34 x 44 in.) framed: 102.9 x 135.6 x 6 cm (40 1/2 x 53 3/8 x 2 3/8 in.)
- Classification
- Painting
- Accession number
- 1963.10.82
- Credit line
- Chester Dale Collection
- Time span
- 1901 to 1925
- Department
- CAB
Subjects and terms
- painted surface
- American
- occupation
- genre
- American Paintings of the Twentieth Century, Part I: Early American Modernism, 1900-1950 (NGA Online Editions)
- Realist
- New York City
- Cityscape, New York
- Construction worker
Provenance
The artist [1882-1925]; by inheritance to his wife, Emma S. Bellows [1884-1959]; purchased June 1956 through (H.V. Allison & Co., New York) by Chester Dale [1883-1962], New York; bequest 1963 to NGA.
Inscription
lower left: BELLOWS
NGA object ID 46557. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.