Stag at Sharkey's by George Bellows, 1909 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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Stag at Sharkey's: Introduction

George Bellows's Stag at Sharkey's compresses a prizefight into a room that feels barely large enough to hold it. Two boxers meet head to head under hard light, the referee leans into their struggle, and rows of spectators crowd the ring. Painted in 1909, this is the oil on canvas now held by the Cleveland Museum of Art—not the later lithograph with a similar title.[1]

At a Glance

  • ArtistGeorge Bellows (1882–1925)
  • TitleStag at Sharkey's
  • Date and medium1909, oil on canvas
  • Size92 × 122.6 cm unframed
  • CollectionCleveland Museum of Art, Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, 1922.1133
  • SubjectA private-club boxing match seen from close to the ring

George Bellows in context

Works
19051910191519201925

Pennsylvania Station Excavation

c. 1907–08

Stag at Sharkey's

1909

Both Members of This Club

1909

New York

1911

Cliff Dwellers

1913

My Family

1916

A Stag at Sharkey's

1917

Dempsey and Firpo

1924

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Sharkey's Athletic Club and the Word “Stag”
  3. A Fight Built from Opposing Forces
  4. The Referee and the Ropes
  5. The Crowd Is Part of the Contest
  6. Light, Colour and Loaded Paint
  7. A View from Ringside
  8. One Painting in an Early Trio
  9. The 1917 Lithograph Is a Different Object
  10. How to Look at Stag at Sharkey's

Sharkey's Athletic Club and the Word “Stag”

The title points to Tom “Sailor Tom” Sharkey's Athletic Club, a saloon with a boxing ring in its back room. Sharkey, an Irish-born former heavyweight boxer and US Navy veteran, ran the establishment near Bellows's studio in the Lincoln Arcade Building at Broadway and 66th Street. Bellows knew this environment directly, and his early boxing pictures grew from visits to it.[1][2][4]

The legal setting explains the unusual word “stag”. New York State had prohibited prizefighting under the Lewis Law after repealing the more permissive Horton Law in 1900. Promoters worked around the ban by holding contests inside nominally private athletic clubs. Spectators paid membership dues rather than admission to a particular bout, while a visiting fighter could receive temporary membership for the evening. That outsider was called a stag.[1][4]

This fiction turns the title into more than a colourful label. It identifies the bout as an event poised between regulation and evasion: organised enough to require ropes and a referee, yet staged in a space whose private-club status sheltered an otherwise prohibited public entertainment. The crowd's proximity makes the arrangement look both intimate and precarious.

A Fight Built from Opposing Forces

Bellows does not isolate a clean punch or the instant of a knockout. The fighters are tangled at the centre of an exchange that appears likely to continue. On the left, the boxer in green trunks drives across the canvas. One leg stretches back towards the lower corner while the other lifts, turning his whole body into a diagonal thrust. His opponent bends away but remains balanced against that pressure, with one arm swinging out as if gathering force for a reply.[2]

Their heads meet, yet their torsos and legs open away from this point of contact. That combination—compression at the top and separation below—makes the pose feel unstable. Pale limbs flare against the dark room, and the crossing directions make it difficult to decide which fighter controls the exchange. The uncertainty is important. Bellows depicts physical effort, not a diagram of correct technique or a report of a named result.

Neither the Cleveland record nor the National Gallery's study identifies the contestants by name. Reading them as anonymous participants preserves what the evidence supports. Their significance comes through posture, balance and force rather than an undocumented biography.

The Referee and the Ropes

The referee is not a detached official. He bends close behind the fighters, his face and torso caught between their pale bodies and the surrounding darkness. His attention fixes on the action, while his extended arm carries the movement towards the right edge. In the National Gallery's comparison of Bellows's three early boxing oils, the referee is a distinctive feature of Stag at Sharkey's; Bellows removed that mediating presence from Both Members of This Club.[2][4]

Dark ropes run almost the full width of the composition. They divide bodies into abrupt segments: one crosses the referee's chest, another passes in front of the fighters' trunks, and a lower line cuts through the audience. The ropes establish the ring's rules while also exposing how little distance separates combatants from onlookers. At the right, a yellow-brown corner post fixes the geometry, but the implied meeting of ropes beyond the frame makes the visible ring feel incomplete.

The Crowd Is Part of the Contest

The spectators do not form an orderly background. Foreground heads are cut by the bottom and sides of the canvas, placing the viewer among them. Across the ring, faces appear in a narrow strip between the ropes and the pale apron. Some are alert, others blurred or masked by shadow; a few seem to grin, shout or lean for a clearer view. Bellows varies their clarity so that individual reactions emerge from a larger human mass.

The National Gallery's study notes tiny red touches within the deep background, readable as glowing cigar ends. It also describes two dark figures near the right corner post that block part of the middle-distance audience. Such details prevent darkness from becoming an empty backdrop. The room is populated far beyond the faces that Bellows fully defines.[2]

This crowd changes the painting's subject. It is not simply two athletes demonstrating strength. It is also a picture of men paying to watch controlled violence at close quarters. The ring organises their attention, and their attention intensifies the fight.

Light, Colour and Loaded Paint

Although reproductions can make the painting seem nearly monochrome, its darkness contains purposeful colour. Bellows began with a light blue-green wash over the pale ground and left traces of it visible. A green-lit opening glows at the upper left, while warmer notes punctuate the opposite side. Against these muted zones, the fighters carry broken passages of cream, pink, red, yellow and green.[2]

The paint is not uniformly smooth. Faces across the ring thicken into impasto, with some passages applied by palette knife, while distant figures can be reduced to faint marks. Heavy strokes model muscles but also remain visible as strokes. At several edges Bellows used dense black contours to separate limbs from the room. Flesh therefore appears at once solid and momentary: the bodies have weight, yet their surfaces flicker in the glare.[2]

That handling is central to Bellows's paintings. Brushwork does not merely decorate the action after it has been drawn. Thick highlights, exposed ground and dark outlines create the visual collision.

A View from Ringside

The low viewpoint denies a comfortable survey of the entire match. We look upward across spectators and ropes rather than down onto a clearly mapped ring. Large heads obscure the foreground; parts of bodies disappear beyond the edges. The crop implies that the fight, crowd and room continue outside the rectangle.[2]

This arrangement makes the viewer's position ethically uneasy. We are close enough to feel the pressure of the bout but occupy the same zone as those who have come to watch it. No elevated distance separates looking at Bellows's art from looking at the staged violence he represents. The painting's force depends on that double role: it offers an intense spectacle and makes spectatorship itself visible.

One Painting in an Early Trio

Stag at Sharkey's belongs with Club Night and Both Members of This Club, but the three oils are not interchangeable. The National Gallery dates Club Night to 1907 and identifies it as Bellows's first painting in the closely related group. The Cleveland canvas followed in 1909. Both Members of This Club, painted two months later, enlarged and reversed aspects of the composition while removing the referee.[3][4]

The works share an elevated ring, fighters silhouetted against a near-black room and an audience compressed along the lower edge. Yet each alters the balance between blow, resistance and crowd. That sequence reveals why Bellows's return to a subject is not simple repetition. He changes who mediates the action, how bodies occupy the frame and what social questions enter the ring.

The 1917 Lithograph Is a Different Object

Bellows returned to the motif after taking up lithography. The National Gallery of Art's A Stag at Sharkey's dates from 1917 and is a lithograph in black, not an impression made from the 1909 canvas. The Gallery's particular sheet, accession 1956.6.13, measures 55.56 × 70.17 cm and is catalogued as Mason no. 46. Its graphite “No. 62” is recorded as an inscription; the museum does not use it as a state designation.[5]

The print returns to the club motif as a design of black ink and paper. It can be discussed alongside the painting, but its title includes the initial article, its medium and dimensions differ, and each surviving impression has its own collection history. The prints and lithographs overview follows these object distinctions in greater depth.

How to Look at Stag at Sharkey's

Begin where the fighters' heads press together, then follow each leg towards an opposite lower corner. Notice how that widening structure is crossed by the horizontal ropes. Next, move from the brightest flesh into the dim audience and look for the few coloured signals that keep the black room alive.

Finally, consider where Bellows has put you. The nearest spectators are not safely beyond the image; their cropped heads share your side of the ropes. The George Bellows introduction places this uneasy ringside encounter within a career that also addressed streets, excavation sites, portraits and the Maine coast.

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

Where is Stag at Sharkey's now?

The painting belongs to the Cleveland Museum of Art. Its credit line is the Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection, and its accession number is 1922.1133.[1]

When was it painted, and what is its medium?

The Cleveland Museum dates the work to 1909 and records its medium as oil on canvas. The unframed canvas measures 92 × 122.6 cm.[1]

What does “stag” mean in the title?

At clubs such as Sharkey's, an outside boxer could be granted temporary membership so a fight could be presented as a private club contest despite New York's prohibition on public prizefighting. That visiting participant was known as a stag.[1][4]

Who are the fighters in Stag at Sharkey's?

The current museum sources do not name them. Specific identifications would go beyond the evidence used here, so the two men are best understood through their depicted roles and movements rather than assigned identities.[1][2]

Is the 1917 print the same work as the painting?

No. Cleveland's Stag at Sharkey's is a 1909 oil on canvas. The National Gallery's A Stag at Sharkey's is a separate 1917 lithograph in black, and accession 1956.6.13 identifies one particular impression.[1][5]

Discussion

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

Share an observation about Stag at Sharkey's or a source that adds useful context.

Reader Insights

Close Looking

Which detail most changes your reading of Stag at Sharkey's?

Context

How do scale, support, medium or present museum evidence shape the encounter?

Open Question

What remains uncertain when visual inference is separated from documented fact?

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References

  1. Cleveland Museum of Art, “Stag at Sharkey's”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  2. National Gallery of Art, Bellows: The Boxing Pictures, accessed 31 August 2026.
  3. National Gallery of Art, “Club Night”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  4. National Gallery of Art, “American Paintings, 1900–1945: Both Members of This Club, 1909”, accessed 31 August 2026.
  5. National Gallery of Art, “A Stag at Sharkey's”, accessed 31 August 2026.