Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large (1916): Art, History and Details

Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large (1916) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is George Bellows (American, 1882–1925).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Due to the popularity of his early boxing paintings such as Stag at Sharkey’s, Bellows was often commissioned by newspapers and magazines to depict sporting events, both actual and fictional. One of the artist’s first boxing prints, Introducing the Champion was inspired by a drawing he made three years earlier to illustrate a short story in American Magazine, which describes an imagined lightweight champion nicknamed Tornado Black. The cocky gloating of this character, who panders to the crowd, provides the impetus for Bellows’s rendering.

Object facts

• Title: Introducing the Champion, No. 1, Large
• Date: 1916
• Creator attribution: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1937.494

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.