The Black Hat

Art Historical Context

### The Black Hat George Bellows' *The Black Hat* (1) is a striking graphic arts print from the Smithsonian American Art's collection, acquired through museum purchase. This waist-length portrait captures a figure elegantly posed in a bold black hat, with Bellows' signature directness and vitality. Created just four years before the artist's untimely death at age 42, it exemplifies his late-career exploration of portraiture through printmaking, a medium that allowed for wider dissemination of his work during the early 1920s. Bellows, a leading figure in the Ashcan School of American Realism,...

About the Artist

George Bellows

George Wesley Bellows was born on August 12, 1882, in Columbus, Ohio, the only child of building contractor George Bellows Sr. and Anna Smith Bellows, with an older half-sister, Laura. A talented athlete who excelled in baseball and basketball at Ohio State University from 1901 to 1904, Bellows illustrated for the school yearbook before rejecting a professional baseball contract to pursue art. In ...