Self-Portrait (1921): Art, History and Details

Self-Portrait (1921) 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:

Bellows’s Self-Portrait wittily presents himself in the very act of creating it. Reflected in a scallop-framed mirror, the artist intently studies his likeness while recording it on the thick lithographic stone that would be prepared and inked to make this print. He sports the bow tie often worn during this period of his career, and a cigarette dangles from his free hand. Bellows frequently attempted to break his smoking habit, writing on one occasion to a friend, “. . . all winter I have been making evasive gestures at cigarettes usually with the left hand and lighting them with the right.”

Object facts

• Title: Self-Portrait
• Date: 1921
• Creator attribution: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Sheet: 29.7 x 22.6 cm (11 11/16 x 8 7/8 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1935.279

A detail from the museum

George Bellows attended the Ohio State University and the year that this self-portrait was made marked the school's only loss in football to another team from the state of Ohio.

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.

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.