A Stag at Sharkey's, a 1917 lithograph by George Bellows Buy Art Prints Now
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Tom Gurney BSc (Hons) is an art history expert with over 20 years experience
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George Bellows Prints and Lithographs: Introduction

George Bellows took up lithography in 1916, after his paintings of New York and prizefighting had already established his reputation. Printmaking did more than multiply familiar pictures. It gave him a way to draw at scale, revise an idea through successive stages and send forceful black-and-white designs into homes, magazines and collections. Boxing, family life, social comedy, wartime violence and self-portraiture all changed as they passed through this medium.

At a Glance

  • Printmaking period1916–1925
  • Principal print mediumLithography, usually printed in black
  • Early printerGeorge C. Miller, who printed most of Bellows's lithographs from 1916 to 1919
  • Later printerBolton Brown, Bellows's printer from 1919 to 1925
  • Recurring subjectsBoxing, modern society, family, war, portraits and the artist at work
  • Essential distinctionA design, stone, state and individual impression are related, but they are not the same object

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Why Bellows Chose Lithography in 1916
  3. From Drawing to Stone, State and Impression
  4. Printers as Technical Partners
  5. Boxing Reconsidered in Black and White
  6. Social Satire and Everyday Theatre
  7. War Images: Construction, Shock and Publication
  8. Family, Portraits and the Artist at Work
  9. How to Look at a Bellows Lithograph

Why Bellows Chose Lithography in 1916

Bellows installed a lithographic press on the balcony of his East 19th Street studio during the winter of 1915–1916. He had previously made an etching of Robert Henri's night class, but he did not continue with intaglio printing. Drawing on stone offered a more congenial route. The National Gallery of Art's account describes an artist new to the technical demands of lithography but immediately drawn to its expressive possibilities. In his first year he produced thirty-five designs.[1]

The timing matters. Etching then held greater prestige among many American artists and collectors, while lithography was still widely associated with commercial reproduction. Bellows's success helped renew interest in it as a fine-art medium. The Smithsonian American Art Museum describes his lithographs as an important part of that revival and notes that they were often more satirical than his paintings.[2] His choice was therefore both practical and ambitious: lithography could preserve the broad attack of his drawing while reaching more buyers than a unique canvas.

This new practice did not replace painting. Bellows continued to move among oil, drawing, illustration and print, using each for different effects. The Metropolitan Museum of Art places his lithographs alongside work addressing the social, political and cultural life of the period, rather than treating them as a secondary appendix to his paintings.[3]

From Drawing to Stone, State and Impression

In traditional lithography, the artist draws with a greasy material on a prepared stone. The printer uses the opposition of grease and water so that ink takes to the design while the dampened blank areas resist it; pressure then transfers the inked design to paper. Bellows sometimes worked through a transfer drawing and sometimes directly on the stone. Either route demanded that a gestural drawing survive preparation, inking and pressure.

The vocabulary helps identify what survives. A design is the composition Bellows conceived. The stone is the worked printing surface. If he altered that surface and printed it again, the changed version became another state. An impression is one sheet pulled from the stone in a particular state. An edition is the intended or completed group of impressions, though surviving numbering does not always prove how many acceptable sheets were actually printed. Paper, ink density, wiping, pressure, inscriptions and condition can make impressions of the same state look different.

That is why a museum record belongs to a specific sheet, not to every example of the design. Catalogue numbers help connect related impressions, while accession numbers identify objects within individual collections. Descriptions should retain both levels: the shared design and the particular impression being discussed.

Printers as Technical Partners

Bellows did not master every stage alone. Artist and dealer Albert Sterner encouraged his first attempts and introduced him to the experienced lithographer George C. Miller. Miller printed most of the lithographs Bellows made between 1916 and 1919. From 1919 until Bellows's death in 1925, artist-printer Bolton Brown became his principal collaborator.[1]

Their role was not merely to operate a press after the creative work had ended. A printer judged how a crayon passage, scraped highlight or broad dark would respond during processing and how much ink and pressure would preserve the intended range. Brown was especially skilled at retaining subtle gradations. His name appears on surviving sheets because the pulled impression embodies both Bellows's work on the design and the printer's technical decisions.

The collaboration also explains why object records sometimes name two makers. “George Bellows” identifies the artist, while “George C. Miller” or “Bolton Brown” may identify the printer. The abbreviation imp., derived from impressit, means “printed by.” It records responsibility for the impression rather than shared authorship of the composition.

Boxing Reconsidered in Black and White

Boxing gave Bellows an ideal test for lithography: bodies could be built from luminous paper, dense crayon and abrupt contours, while the crowd became a field of compressed marks. The prints did not simply reproduce the famous early oils. They revisited gestures, viewpoints and spectators after the legal and cultural setting of boxing had changed. Preliminaries to the Big Bout and Between Rounds, No. 1, both dated 1916, shift attention from a single blow to the ceremony and pauses surrounding a match.[1]

The title distinction between Stag at Sharkey's and A Stag at Sharkey's is especially important. The former is the Cleveland Museum of Art's 1909 oil painting. The latter is a separate 1917 lithographic design. The National Gallery's impression of A Stag at Sharkey's is a lithograph in black, accession 1956.6.13, catalogued as Mason no. 46. Its graphite inscription includes “No. 62,” but the museum record does not assign the sheet to a numbered state; that inscription should not be converted into one.[4]

The later print concentrates the grapple in a broad horizontal field, but its paper, monochrome tonality and printable design create a different encounter from the oil. It could circulate in multiple impressions and enter several collections. Bellows returned again to boxing in 1921 and in lithographs related to the 1923 Dempsey–Firpo fight. Repetition here is creative reconsideration: a subject changes when drawn for a stone, revised, printed and seen away from a painted original.

Social Satire and Everyday Theatre

Printmaking also drew together Bellows's experience as an illustrator and his alertness to social performance. Business-Men's Class (1916), with its comic cast and exaggerated activity, belongs to a satirical vein that the National Gallery compares to Honoré Daumier's social commentary.[1] Such designs depend on quickly legible types, but Bellows rarely lets the scene become orderly. Faces crowd together, gestures overlap and bodily awkwardness unsettles easy moral distance.

The humour could be affectionate, sceptical or sharp. Clubs, sporting events, streets and public gatherings offered ready-made stages on which class, fashion and self-importance became visible. Lithography allowed Bellows to make these scenes as drawings intended for circulation, rather than as unique painted statements. That broader audience mattered: an impression could be purchased, exhibited, reproduced or encountered in a publication, giving the design several public lives.

This circulation should not be confused with sameness. A magazine reproduction is not an original lithographic impression, just as a later photographic reproduction of a print is not the print itself. Scale, paper surface and tonal depth change as the image moves between formats.

War Images: Construction, Shock and Publication

Bellows's 1918 war lithographs use the medium's stark contrasts for an altogether different purpose. He did not witness combat in Europe. His scenes were constructed from newspaper reports, other published accounts, photographs, illustrations and soldiers' stories. Sniped focuses on soldiers gathered around a fallen comrade while danger remains largely unseen. The Metropolitan Museum of Art identifies its object as a 1918 lithograph, 1973.589.8, and records that the design appeared in the 13 July 1918 issue of Collier's with a combat story by Donal Hamilton Haines.[5]

Publication altered the setting in which such an image operated. In a museum, an impression can be studied as ink on a particular sheet. In a mass-circulation magazine, the design accompanied text and wartime news. Its persuasive and emotional work was therefore inseparable from reproduction, sequencing and contemporary propaganda. The war work must be read with that non-eyewitness boundary intact.

Individual records keep the series from becoming an undifferentiated catalogue of horrors. The National Gallery's The Charge is a 1918 lithograph in black with chine collé on wove paper, accession 2015.19.2929 and Mason no. 63.[6] Its Murder of Edith Cavell, also dated 1918, is a separate impression printed by George C. Miller: lithograph in black on wove paper mounted on paperboard, accession 2015.19.529 and Mason no. 53.[7] Other impressions of either design may differ in paper, mounting, inscriptions, state or collection history.

Family, Portraits and the Artist at Work

The quieter lithographs are essential to understanding Bellows's range. The Smithsonian singles out The Black Hat (1921), a portrait of his wife Emma, within the final nine years of his printmaking. Family and portrait subjects use the same medium as the boxing and war images but exchange collision for sustained attention: faces, hats, fabric and posture emerge from measured tonal passages.[2]

His 1921 Self-Portrait turns printmaking itself into the subject. Bellows shows himself working at a lithographic stone, making the image an occupational portrait as well as a record of appearance. The Library of Congress impression is identified by the digital ID cph.3m00107; its record notes signatures on the stone and in pencil by the artist and printer.[8] Those marks return the viewer to the chain of work behind a finished sheet.

Late portraits also show what collaboration could preserve. A printer sensitive to crayon's greys could retain a face without forcing it into the hard black-and-white drama of a prizefight. Bellows's print practice was broad enough to carry both extremes. Its unity lies in the pressure of drawing—sometimes muscular, sometimes intimate—translated into repeatable impressions.

How to Look at a Bellows Lithograph

Start with the object label. Note the exact title, year, medium, paper, printer, catalogue number, accession and any stated state. Then look for inscriptions in the image and margins. A number written on one sheet may refer to an impression or another record-keeping system; it is not automatically an edition size or state number.

Next, examine the tonal range. Bellows could make untouched paper function as glaring light, let grainy crayon describe atmosphere, or compress a crowd into blackness. Ask where the lithograph depends on the material qualities of ink and paper rather than on the colours or brushwork of a related painting.

Finally, consider circulation. Was the design sold as a signed impression, exhibited, reproduced in a magazine or translated into another medium? These routes shaped its audience. They also explain why locating “the original” is often the wrong question: the stone carried a design, while museums preserve distinct impressions with their own histories.

Researched works directory

This searchable evidence census was assembled from public museum records and a reproducible Wikidata snapshot. It is not a catalogue raisonné, not a claim to complete oeuvre coverage, and not a substitute for the published catalogue literature, which was not used to claim absolute completeness.

268 artworks

NameDateMedium
A Cloudy Day / Hudson River: Coming Squall1908Painting
A Day in June1913Painting
A Fresh Breeze1913Painting
A Grandmother1914Painting
A Knockout1921Print
A Morning Snow--Hudson River1910Painting
A Stag at Sharkey's1917Print
A Winter Day - Under the Elevated near Brooklyn Bridge1907Painting
Allan Donn Puts to Sea1923Print
An Irish Girl1922Drawing
Anne1915Painting
Anne 19211923Print
Anne and Her Mother1917Drawing
Anne in Black Velvet1917Painting
Anne in White1920Painting
Anne with a Japanese Parasol1917Painting
Approach of Rain1913Painting
Approach to the Bridge at Night1913Painting
Arms of a Boxer1916Drawing
Artists' Evening1916Print
August Lundberg (No 2)1907Painting
Aunt Fanny1920Painting
Barnyard and Chickens1924Painting
Bethesda Fountain (Fountain in Central Park)1905Painting
Between Rounds, large, first stone1916Print
Between Rounds, small, second stone1923Print
Blue Morning1909Painting
Blue Snow, the Battery1910Painting
Both Members of This Club1909Painting
Boy in a Blue Coat1915Painting
Boy with Eton Collar (Portrait of Meredith Hare)1921Painting
Breaking Sky, Monhegan1916Painting
Bridge, Blackwell’s Island1909Painting
Builders of Ship1916Painting
California Headlands1917Painting
Caricature of Adam and Eve and Two Female Portrait SketchesDate unknownDrawing
Central Park1905Painting
Chester Dale1922Painting
Children Playing in a Park1905Drawing
Cleaning Fish1913Painting
Cliff Dwellers1913Painting
CliffsDate unknownPainting
Club Night1907Painting
Coming Storm1914Painting
Coopers Lake, Woodstock1924Painting
Counted Out, first stone1921Print
Counted Out, second stone1921Print
Criehaven Wharf1916Painting
Cross-Eyed BoyDate unknownPainting
Dance in a Madhouse1917Print
Dancing Town (The Top of the World)1922Drawing
Dempsey and Firpo1923Print
Dempsey and Firpo1924Painting
Dempsey through the Ropes1923Print
Dempsey Through the RopesDate unknownPainting
Deserted Factory1924Painting
Dock Builders1916Painting
Edge of the Pasture - Glow of the Sun1916Painting
Edith Cavell1918Painting
Elinor, Jean and Anna1920Painting
Elsie, Emma and Marjorie, First Stone1921Print
Elsie, Emma and Marjorie, second stone1921Print
Elsie Reading to Emma, First Stone1921Print
Elsie Reading to Emma, Second Stone1921Print
Elsie Speicher [verso]1920Drawing
Emma and Her Children1923Painting
Emma at the Piano1914Painting
Emma at the Window1920Painting
Emma, Elsie and Gene1921Print
Emma in a Purple Dress1920Painting
Emma in the Black Print1919Painting
Emma in the Purple Dress1919Painting
Evening Blue1916Painting
Evening Swell1911Painting
Excavation at Night1908Painting
Family in a Surrey1921Drawing
Fern WoodsDate unknownPainting
Five Cows1919Painting
Floating Ice1910Painting
Florence Davey1914Painting
Fog Breakers1913Painting
Forty-two Kids1907Painting
Frankie, the Organ Boy1907Painting
Garaldine Lee, No. 21914Painting
Gardiner's Bay from Sag Harbor1899Painting
Ghost of Sergeant Pelly1918Drawing
Golf Course, California1917Painting
Gorge and Sea1911Painting
Grandma Bellows1919Painting
Gray Sea1913Painting
Harbor of Monhegan, Fish Boats1911Painting
Haystacks and Barn1909Painting
Head of Boy (aka Gray Boy)1905Painting
Hungry Dogs, second stone1916Print
Hunter and Mountains1920Painting
In a Rowboat1916Painting
In an Elevator1916Print
In the Park, Dark1916Print
Introducing Georges Carpentier1921Print
Introducing John L. Sullivan1916Print
Introducing John L. Sullivan1923Painting
Introducing the Champion1916Print
Introductions1921Print
Jackie (Jacqueline Hudson)1914Painting
Jean 19231923Print
Jean in a Black Hat1923Print
Jean with Blue Book and Apple1916Painting
Jim Twadell's Place1924Painting
Julie Hudson1914Painting
Katherine Rosen1921Painting
Kids1906Painting
Lady Jean1924Painting
Lady of 1860 - The Actress1922Drawing
Lady with a Fan1921Print
Launching1913Painting
Little Girl in White (Queenie Burnett)1907Painting
Love of Winter1914Painting
Lychnis and Her Sons1923Print
Madeline Davis1914Painting
Man and Dog1905Painting
Matinicus1916Print
Maud Dale1919Painting
May Day in Central Park1905Painting
Men of the Docks1912Painting
Mill Dam1924Painting
Miss Bentham1906Painting
Monhegan Island1913Painting
Mother and Children1916Print
Mother and Children, Second State1916Print
Mountain Farm1922Painting
Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Wase1924Painting
Mrs. Chester Dale1919Painting
Mrs. T. in Cream Silk, No.11919Painting
Mrs. T. in Cream Silk, No.21920Painting
Mrs. Walter H. Richter1922Painting
Murder of Edith Cavell1918Print
My Family1916Painting
My Mother1921Painting
New York1911Painting
North River1908Painting
Nude Girl, Miss Leslie Hall1909Painting
Nude Girl Reclining1919Drawing
Nude Study, Girl Standing on One Foot1923Print
Nude with Fan1920Painting
Nude with Hexagonal Quilt1924Painting
Nude with Parrot1915Painting
Nude with Red Hair1920Painting
Old Barn, Grey Day1920Painting
Old Fisherman1904Painting
Ox Team, Wharf at Matinicus1916Painting
Paddy Flannigan1908Painting
Padre1917Painting
Paradise Point1919Painting
Pennsylvania Station Excavationc. 1907–1908Painting
Pigs and Donkey1920Painting
Polo at Lakewood1910Painting
Portrait of a Boy1921Painting
Portrait of a Laughing Boy1907Painting
Portrait of Florence Budd1914Painting
Portrait of Florence Pierce1914Painting
Portrait of Geraldine Lee, No. 11914Painting
Portrait of My Mother No. 11921Painting
Portrait of Prosper Invernizzi1907Painting
Portrait of Walter Littlefield1915Painting
Porträt der Anne1915Painting
Porträt der Laura1922Painting
Prayer Meeting, second stone1916Print
Preliminaries1916Print
PreliminariesDate unknownPrint
Pueblo Tesuque, No. 21917Painting
Rain on the River1908Painting
Return of the Useless1918Painting
River Front No. 11914Painting
Rock Bound1913Painting
Rock Reef, Maine1913Painting
Rock Ridge FarmDate unknownPainting
Rocks and Coast1911Painting
Rolling Breakers1913Painting
Romance of Autumn1916Painting
Romance of Criehaven1916Painting
Roumanian Girl1921Painting
Samuel Knopf1922Painting
Santuario de Chimata1917Painting
Seated Female Nude (Emma Story Bellows)Date unknownDrawing
Seated Nude1910Painting
Self-Portrait1921Print
Shipyard Society1916Painting
Sixteen East Gay Street1923Print
Sketches of Heads, Including One of Chester DaleDate unknownDrawing
Sketches of Three Female Heads [recto]Date unknownDrawing
Snow-Capped River1911Painting
Snow Dumpers1911Painting
Society Ball [verso]1907Drawing
Splinter Beach1916Print
Stag at Sharkey's1909Painting
Steaming Streets1908Painting
Storm Sea1913Painting
Street Fight [recto]1907Drawing
Studies of Jean1920Drawing
Study for "Mr. and Mrs. Philip Wase1924Drawing
Study for Nude with Hexagonal Quilt1924Drawing
Study for "Riverfront No. 11915Drawing
Study of Emma and the Children1917Painting
Summer City1909Painting
Summer Fantasy1924Painting
Summer Night, Riverside Drive1909Painting
Sun Glow1913Painting
Sun Shadows (Rocks at Monhegan)1913Painting
Sunday 18971921Print
Sunlit surf1913Painting
Swans in Central Park1906Painting
Tennis1920Print
Tennis at Newport1919Painting
Tennis at Newport1920Painting
Tennis Tournament1920Painting
The Barricade1918Painting
The Beach, Newport (In the Sand)1919Painting
The Big Dory1913Painting
The Black Derby / Head of a man with a red nose1905Painting
The BrookDate unknownPainting
The Charge1918Print
The Cigarette1918Print
The Coming Storm1916Painting
The Dock1913Painting
The Donkey Cart1922Drawing
The Fish Wharf, Matinicus Island1916Painting
The Fisherman1917Painting
The Germans Arrive1918Painting
The Grove — Monhegan1911Painting
The Gulls, Monhegan1911Painting
The Harbor, Monhegan Coast, Maine1913Painting
The Kindliness Came Not from Her1922Drawing
The LaunchingDate unknownPainting
The Law Is Too Slow1923Print
The Lone Tenement1909Painting
The Newsboy1908Painting
The Novitiate1916Print
The Palisades1909Painting
The Red Vine, Matinicus Island, Maine1916Painting
The Sand Cart1917Painting
The Sea1911Painting
The Shower-Bath1917Print
The Studio1919Painting
The Teamster1916Painting
The Tournament1920Print
The Village Houses1920Painting
The Warships1909Painting
The White Hope1921Print
The White Horse1922Painting
The Widow1917Painting
Three Children1919Painting
Three Pigs and a Mountain1922Painting
Three Rollers1911Painting
Through the Trees, Monhegan Island, Maine1913Painting
Tumble of Waters1913Painting
Two Girls1917Print
Two Women1924Painting
Up the Gorge1913Painting
Up the Hudson1908Painting
Village on the Hill1916Painting
Vine Clad Shore--Monhegan Island1913Painting
Waldo Peirce1920Painting
War Series1918Painting
West Wind1913Painting
Willard in Training Quarters1916Print
Winter Afternoon, Riverside Park1909Painting
Winter Road1912Painting
Woodstock Road, Woodstock, New York1924Drawing

Frequently Asked Questions

When did George Bellows begin making lithographs?

He began in 1916, installing a press in his East 19th Street studio during the winter of 1915–1916. He made thirty-five designs in his first year and continued working in the medium until his death in 1925.[1]

How did Bellows make a lithograph?

He drew with lithographic materials either directly on a stone or through a transfer drawing. After the surface was prepared, the printer dampened and inked it so the drawn areas accepted ink and the blank areas resisted it, then transferred the design to paper under pressure. Bellows valued the process as an extension of drawing.[1]

What did George C. Miller and Bolton Brown do?

They were specialist printers who helped turn Bellows's worked stones into successful impressions. Miller printed most of his lithographs from 1916 to 1919; Brown worked with him from 1919 to 1925 and was particularly important to the tonal subtlety of the later prints.[1]

Is A Stag at Sharkey's the same work as the famous painting?

No. Stag at Sharkey's is a 1909 oil painting in Cleveland. A Stag at Sharkey's is a separate lithograph made in 1917. They share a boxing subject, but their dates, media, compositions and object histories differ.[4]

Where can George Bellows's prints be found today?

Major holdings include the National Gallery of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the Library of Congress. Check each institution's current object record before planning a visit, because works on paper are light-sensitive and are often not on permanent display.[2][3][4][8]

Discussion

Use this evidence-led guide as a starting point for close looking rather than a final verdict.

Share an observation about George Bellows Prints and Lithographs or a source that adds useful context.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

Which material decision best defines Bellows's practice in this group of works?

Context

Where do you see observation and invention working together rather than as opposites?

Open Question

Which work would you add to the selected group, and what would it change?

Join the Conversation

Add your reading below, keeping observations specific and evidence clear.

References

  1. National Gallery of Art, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures, accessed 31 August 2026.
  2. Smithsonian American Art Museum, “George Bellows”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  3. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “George Bellows”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  4. National Gallery of Art, “A Stag at Sharkey's”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  5. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Sniped from War Series”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  6. National Gallery of Art, “The Charge”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  7. National Gallery of Art, “Murder of Edith Cavell”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  8. Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons, “George Bellows self-portrait”, accessed 31 August 2026.