# Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Wase

**George Bellows** (American, 1882–1925)  
1924  
oil on canvas  
51 1/4 x 63 in. (130.2 x 159.9 cm.)

Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1967.39.1. [The museum's record](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=1764).

## About this work

George Bellows spent summers in Woodstock, New York, where Mrs. Wase worked as a cleaning woman and her husband was a gardener. Bellows chose to show the couple stiffly posed and strangely detached from one another. Mrs. Wase’s face shows the worries of a lifetime, and Mr. Wase stares off into the distance, as if thinking of another time or place. Between them, a portrait, perhaps of Mrs. Wase as a bride, hangs on the wall. Their clothes match the shadowy gray of the parlor. Bellows painted suggestions of a brilliantly green summer day beyond the closed shutters, as if to emphasize the distance between youthful optimism and the resignation of old age. The artist experimented with new ways to paint portraits throughout his career, and from 1915 to 1920 he exhibited with the National Association of Portrait Painters, whose mission was to separate from “the tiresomely conventional and perfunctory portrait.” (Myers, “‘The Most Searching Place in the World’: Bellows and Portraiture,” in Quick et al., The Paintings of George Bellows, 1992)

_Text from the Smithsonian American Art Museum._

George Bellows painted this in 1924, aged 42. It is now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, DC.

### How it was made

- **Oil paint.** Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.

### [George Bellows](https://www.ochreeditions.com/artists/george-bellows)

American, 1882–1925

Bellows left Ohio State University to study in New York with Robert Henri and became the most celebrated of the younger realists around him. He painted the city with vigorous brushwork: tenement children, the excavation for Pennsylvania Station, Hudson River docks and, most famously, illegal prize fights such as Stag at Sharkey’s. He took up lithography in 1916 and became one of its leading American practitioners. He died at forty-two of a ruptured appendix.

_Written by Ochre Editions._

## Facts

- Type: Painting
- The artist was 42
- Real size: about 51 × 63 in (130 × 160 cm). The original is larger than our largest print, 18 × 24 in, so every print is a reduction.
- Century: 20th century
- Subjects: Women, Animals, Parrot, Older people, Men, Birds, Portraits, Family
- Colour: olive
- Rights: public domain (CC0 1.0); free to use for any purpose.

## Get it

- Free download, full resolution: https://img.ochreeditions.com/m/1930.jpg?dl=1
- Image: https://img.ochreeditions.com/a/1930/1920.jpg
- Giclée reproduction on Hahnemühle Photo Rag: 8 × 10 in $28; 11 × 14 in $38; 12 × 16 in $42; 16 × 20 in $56; 18 × 24 in $68
- Framed reproduction: 8 × 10 in $78; 11 × 14 in $98; 12 × 16 in $108; 16 × 20 in $138; 18 × 24 in $164
- Canvas reproduction: 8 × 10 in $58; 11 × 14 in $72; 12 × 16 in $79; 16 × 20 in $98
- Print-ready file: 8 × 10 in $2; 11 × 14 in $2; 12 × 16 in $3; 16 × 20 in $3; 18 × 24 in $3

Sizes stop where the museum's file would print below 150 pixels per inch. Everything sold is a reproduction, made to order. [Order a print](https://www.ochreeditions.com/art/mr-and-mrs-phillip-wase-si-saam-1967-39-1).