Tennis (1920): Art, History and Details

Tennis (1920) 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:

During the late 1910s, while summer vacationing with his family in the small town of Middletown, Rhode Island, Bellows took time to attend tennis matches hosted nearby at the Newport Casino, a mecca for high-society locals and visitors. In two resultant lithographs, Tennis and The Tournament, greater emphasis is placed on the fashionable spectators assembled to watch the matches than on the sporting activity itself. Bellows appears to imply that at such elite gatherings, audiences were present not only to see, but to be seen.

Object facts

• Title: Tennis
• Date: 1920
• Creator attribution: George Bellows (American, 1882–1925)
• Culture: America
• Type: Print
• Technique: lithograph
• Dimensions: Image: 46.7 x 50.7 cm (18 3/8 x 19 15/16 in.)
• Collection: PR - Lithograph
• Department: Prints
• Accession number: 1937.508

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.