Nude with Red Hair1920
A woman with copper-red hair sits partly wrapped in a black cloth, one arm across her chest and a strand of amber beads at her neck, her head turned to look away to the right. More about this work
About this work
A woman with copper-red hair sits partly wrapped in a black cloth, one arm across her chest and a strand of amber beads at her neck, her head turned to look away to the right. Bellows painted her in 1920, when he was absorbed in systematic theories of composition and colour, and the deep reds and greens piled behind her set off her pale skin and the heavy black drapery. The loose, fluid handling of the cloth and background lets the face and hands hold the attention.
Written by Ochre Editions.
What you’re looking at
Shown from the knees up, a woman sits partially covered by a black cloth as she holds one forearm across her bare breasts in this vertical painting. The woman has pale, yellow-tinged skin and long, copper-red hair and bangs. Her body faces us, but she turns her head to look off to our right with large blue, wide-set eyes. Her cheeks are flushed, and her full, dark pink lips are closed. A strand of gradually larger amber-yellow beads hangs around her neck, and she wears a gold-colored bracelet on the arm braced across her chest, her left arm, to our right. Glimpses of pale pink nipples are visible. The voluminous black cloth drapes down over one shoulder and across her hips. She wears a ring on the other hand, which emerges from the cloth to rest on that knee. Piles of garnet red, peridot green, and forest green are piled up to chest height behind her, and the background is nickel gray around her body and darkens to black around the top and side edges. The scene is loosely painted, especially in the fabric and background. The artist signed the canvas in the lower left corner, “Geo. Bellows E.S.B.”
Description from the National Gallery of Art.
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
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.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The National Gallery of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1963.10.84
- Credit
- Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
- Type
- Painting
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
