Solitude (1917): Art, History and Details

Solitude (1917) 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:

In addition to leisure and recreation, city parks provided a place where couples could spend time together away from families and crowded apartments. Emphasizing the murky black of the night, George Bellows used tusche, a greasy ink, layered over lithographic crayon to create the mood of this print of park benches full of couples too absorbed in each other to notice anyone around them. A solitary man along the left edge is both physically and psychologically isolated from the others. Bellows often placed observers in his prints to suggest a connection between them and the viewer.

Object facts

• Title: Solitude
• Date: 1917
• Creator attribution: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Platemark: 43.3 x 39 cm (17 1/16 x 15 3/8 in.); Sheet: 60.8 x 54.7 cm (23 15/16 x 21 9/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1936.580

A detail from the museum

The benches in this image are a specific type called the “Central Park settee.”

Collection credit

Gift of Leonard C. Hanna Jr.

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peters, Emily J. “People Watching: Curator Emily Peters introduces the upcoming show featuring artists of the early 20th-century Ashcan School.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 61, no. 2 (Spring 2021): 27-29.

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.