- Museum number
- 1979,1006.91
- Title
- Object: A stag at Sharkey's
- Description
-
Boxing match, with spectators crowded around ring. 1917
Lithograph
- Production date
- 1917
- Dimensions
-
Height: 475 millimetres
-
Width: 610 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- From an edition of 99
Bellows became interested in boxing in 1907, when he would go to see the semi-professional matches held in the back-rooms of bars in Manhattan. He is reported to have said about one of his many paintings of fights: 'I don't know anything about boxing; I'm just painting two men trying to kill each other'.
Prize fights were illegal in New York in 1907. To get round this, boxing matches were held in private clubs on 'stag' evenings; the boxers had to be members of the club. The bar depicted here was owned by Tom Sharkey, a boxer himself.
Bellows did not begin to make lithographs until 1916, relatively late in his 19-year career. This composition is based on a painting of August 1909 now in the Cleveland Museum of Art, but there are numeous differences that make the print more concentrated and dramatic than the painting. The right hand side has been cut down, the numbers of spectators reduced and their positions clarified, and the foreground ropes made almost invisible.
Text from Stephen Coppel, 'The American Scene: Prints from Hopper to Pollock', with the assistance of Jerzy Kierkuc-Bielinski, BMP, 2008, no. 12.
By virtue of its large scale and powerful handling, this is Bellows's best-known lithograph and one of the most iconic images of twentieth-century American printmaking. Bellows based the lithograph on the composition of his earlier painting, Stag at Sharkey's, August 1909, 1909, now in the Cleveland Museum of Art. As prize fights in public were illegal in New York at the time the painting was done, the way round the prohibition was to hold them in private clubs, such as Tom Sharkey's Athletic Club. These events were called 'stags' and the fighter had to be a 'member' of the club, tickets for which were called 'dues'. Sharkey's Club was located close to Bellows's first studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building on 1947 Broadway, to which he moved in 1906 with his friends Ed Keefe and Fred Cornell and where many artists had their studios.
By 1917, when this print was made, prize fighting had become legal and popular. While Bellows made sixteen lithographs of boxing subjects in all, A Stag at Sharkey's was his most ambitious and monumental work. It was printed in an edition of ninety-nine, the largest edition of all his lithographs. The boxers are arranged in a strong, pyramidal composition that recalls classical sculpture; the force of their action is evoked by interlocking forms and bold diagonal lines. Whereas in the 1909 painting the boxers were enclosed behind ropes, these were largely removed from the foreground of the lithograph, thus pitching the viewer into the roaring crowd. Bellows delineates musculature through careful shading with the lithographic crayon, reserving a broader technique for the rest of the composition. Whereas the fighters' features remain anonymous, Bellows differentiates the faces of the spectators, showing a range of social types from the office clerk in tie to the worker in shirtsleeves.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1980 Jan-May, BM, American Prints 1879-1979, cat. no.56
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.12
2009 Feb-April, Nottingham, Djanogly AG, The American Scene
2009 May-Aug, Brighton Museum & AG, The American Scene
2009 Sep-Dec, Manchester, Whitworth AG, The American Scene
2016 -2017 21 Oct - 22 Jan, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham UK, Bellows and the Body
- Acquisition date
- 1979
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1979,1006.91
