Seated Boy (c. 1914): Art, History and Details

Seated Boy (c. 1914) 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:

The seated youth in this drawing was probably made as a study for one of the many young boys in George Bellows’s lithographs Splinter Beach and River-Front or their related paintings. The inscription “raft” below the figure suggests that the pose was intended for the large raft in the River-Front composition, although a pose with greater similarity appears on the shoreline in the same print. Bellows’s quick sketch captures the wiry, perhaps undernourished physique and the darting eyes of the young man.

Object facts

• Title: Seated Boy
• Date: c. 1914
• Creator attribution: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925)
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: black crayon
• Dimensions: Sheet: 25.4 x 20.5 cm (10 x 8 1/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 20th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1950.452

A detail from the museum

Bellows made several compositions of boys swimming and lounging on the banks of the East River in New York City, based on studies such as this one.

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.