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Solitude

• Object type

  • print

• Museum number

  1979,0512.5

• Title (object)

  • Solitude

• Description

  Couples seated on park benches embracing, night piece. 1917 Lithograph, on oriental paper

• Producer name

  • Print made by: George Bellows

• School/style

  • American

• Date

  • 1917

• Materials

  • paper

• Technique

  • lithograph

• Dimensions

  • Height: 438 millimetres
  • Width: 394 millimetres

• Inscriptions

  • • Inscription Content

      Signed on stone. Signed, titled and numbered: "No.1".

• Curator's comments

  Text from Stephen Coppel, 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', with the assistance of Jerzy Kierkuc-Bielinski, BMP, 2008, no. 15.

  Bellows identified the scene as New York's Central Park on a spring night. The title contains an element of ironic humour - a lonely man on a park bench surrounded by amorous couples who can find no solitude. Bellows's night scene speaks of the isolation of the individual in the modern metropolis.

  A certain awkwardness in the handling of the lithographic technique betrays this as one of Bellows's early prints. The man's form is roughly blocked in with lithographic crayon, the arms and hands reduced to a few basic shapes. The soft, deep shadows are achieved with tusche over crayon work. Certain contours and areas of shadow that required lightening are scratched through the drawn stone with the needle. An edition of sixty was printed of this print. Bellows subsequently worked over the stone, plunging the scene into almost complete darkness, but only a few proofs of the unsuccessful second state were printed.

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• Bibliography

  • Mason 37

• Location

  American XXc Mounted Atlas

• Exhibition history

  1980 Jan-May, BM, American Prints 1879-1979, cat. no.55
  1983 May-Jun, Sheffield, City Art Gallery, 'American Prints'
  1983 Jun-Sep, Manchester, Whitworth Gallery, 'American Prints'
  1983 Sep-Dec, Belfast, Ulster Museum, 'American Prints'
  1991/92 Oct.-Feb, BM, Collecting the Twentieth Century
  2008 April-Sep, BM, The American Scene, cat. no.15
  2009 Sep-Dec, Manchester, Whitworth AG, The American Scene
  2012 July-Sept, BM, Isolation (Camden School for Girls curated display)

• Acquisition name

  • Purchased from: Kennedy Galleries

• Acquisition date

  1979

• Department

  Prints & Drawings

• Registration number

  1979,0512.5