George Bellows (1882–1925), Breakfast is Served & Mr. Barnstaple Awakes

GEORGE BELLOWS ILLUSTRATES H.G. WELLS

George Bellows
Breakfast is Served
Conté crayon on card
Sheet: 26 5/16” x 20 ⅝” (669mm x 526mm)
Ruled: 554mm x 449mm
Signed “Geo Bellows” at lower left (within the image)
Titled as above and numbered (“-7-”) in graphite (below the image)
1922

&

George Bellows
Mr. Barnstaple Awakes
Conté crayon on card
Sheet: 29 1/8” x 22 1/4” (741mm x 563mm)
Ruled: 555mm x 449mm
Signed “Geo Bellows” at upper right (within the image)
Titled ("Mr. Barnstable Awakes.") and numbered (“-7-”) in graphite (below the image)
1922

$75,000 for pair

 

Publications

George Bellows Record Book B, p. 292 (no. 8: Mr Barnstaple Awakes., no. 9: Breakfast is Served).

Hearst’s International vol. XLIII (January, 1923) pp. 36 (Breakfast) and 37 (Barnstaple).

Provenance

H.V. Allison & Co., ca. 1941

Charles Shipman Payson, likely before 1965

Virginia Kraft Payson (his widow)

Condition

With some creases to the card of both. Blind-stamp of Strathmore to the upper-left of Mr. Barnstaple Awakes. Pin-holes in the corners of both, and soiled verso. Numbered in the lower margin as photo-ready (both “-7-” with “-7” preceding in Barnstaple and struck through) in graphite, with titles (Barnstaple as “Mr Barnstable Awakes.”) in Bellows’s hand. Verso, both labeled “2897/ v/ Hearst” in graphite within a circle. “Box 39-20” in green pencil to the verso of Breakfast. On the verso of Barnstaple, a sketch of the head in three-quarters rather than in profile, with the mouth closed.

 

One of the most dynamic American artists of the early XXc, George Wesley Bellows (1882–1925) enjoyed significant acclaim during his lifetime. The esteemed Milch Galleries staged multiple solo exhibitions of his paintings, drawings, and lithographs. He was shown also at the Albright Gallery —both in solo and group showings — and at the Bourgeois Galleries throughout the 1910’s. Bellows became widely celebrated for his visceral depictions of boxing rings and urban tenement life, but these pictures reveal a more whimsical, narrative side of his practice rarely seen in his exhibition.

These two Conté (graphite or charcoal in a clay medium, formed into rectangular prisms) drawings were commissioned to illustrate H.G. Wells’s 1923 novel Men Like Gods, which was serialized in Hearst’s International magazine (beginning with vol. XLIII, January 1923, pp. 32–38, 124–125). The International, which would be subsumed by Cosmopolitan in 1925, made literature available to a vast audience; in the same issue were pieces by Bernard Shaw, Somerset Maugham and Edith Wharton. These drawings were reproduced on pp. 36 (Breakfast is Served) and 37 (Mr. Barnstaple Awakes) of the first part of Men Like Gods: the disillusioned journalist Mr. Barnstaple is transported from the XXc “Age of Confusion” to a parallel utopian world governed by reason, peace, and cooperation; there is no war, no religion, no poverty or disease. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was a direct response to the novel, mocking its optimism.

Bellows’s illustrations for this story have an unusually refined serenity; the seemingly perfect world is a striking contrast to Bellows’s better-known rough-hewn city scenes. The text reads (p. 38):

 

Mr. Barnstaple awakened slowly out of profound slumber. He had a vague feeling that a very delightful and wonderful dream was slipping from him. He sat up in his little bed in a state of extreme amazement. “Impossible!” he said. He was lying in a little loggia half open to the air. Between the slender pillars of fluted glass he saw a range of snow-topped mountains and in the foreground a great cluster of tall spikes bearing deep red flowers. The bird was still singing—a glorified thrush, in a glorified world. Now he remembered everything. Now it was all clear. The sudden twisting of the car, the sound like the snapping of a fiddle string and—Utopia!... It was no dream. He looked at his hand on the exquisitely fine coverlet. He felt his rough chin. It was a world real enough for shaving—and for a Very definite readiness for breakfast. Very —for he had missed his supper. And as if in answer to his thought a smiling girl appeared ascending the steps to his sleeping place and bearing a little tray…

“Good morning,” said Mr. Barnstaple. 

“Why not?” said the young Utopian and put down his tea and smiled at him in a motherly fashion and departed. 

“Why not a good morning, I suppose,” said Mr. Barnstaple and meditated for a moment, chin on knees.

 

The drawings were made during Bellows’s vibrant lithographic period between 1921 and 1924, when he installed a press in his studio and collaborated closely with master printer Bolton Brown. The “crayon” effect of Conté is well-translated to lithography. Bellows’s partnership with Brown yielded more than one hundred lithographs, helping to advance the cause of the medium as a respected fine art form. The present works, however, appear never to have been sold as lithographs.

Of note is the preparatory sketch for Barnstaple’s head — in a slightly altered pose — on the verso of Mr. Barnstaple Awakes; perhaps Bellows began the drawing on that side and abandoned it, or else used the otherwise blank space to work out an idea.

Following Bellows’s death in 1925, these drawings were entrusted to Harry V. Allison, who worked Bellows’s widow Emma to manage the artist’s estate. Allison established H.V. Allison & Co. in 1941 with his son Gordon, which sold American paintings and prints as well as representing the Bellows estate. Sometime between 1941 and 1985, the works were acquired by Charles Shipman Payson (1898–1985) — husband of Joan Whitney Payson (1903–1975), Whitney family heiress and a co-founder of the New York Mets, noted philanthropist, and distinguished art collector. The drawings were probably displayed at Greentree, the Whitneys’ 600-acre estate in Long Island, a candidate for the Gatsby mansion in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby. Designed by William Delano (architect of metropolitan haunts such as the Knickerbocker Club), Greentree was a wedding gift from Joan’s parents. While the house’s contents — excluding the artwork — were sold through Doyle in 1984, the drawings remained in the Payson collection. After his, the drawings passed to his widow Virginia Kraft Payson.