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George Bellows
Tennis at Newport, 1920
In the summer of 1919, George Bellows attended an invitational tennis tournament at Rhode Island's prestigious Newport Lawn Tennis Club. Evidently captivated by its luxurious setting and finely attired people, he produced four large paintings of the subject over the course of the next year. This version is the most complete and captivating of the series. Exquisitely composed, it reveals the artist's concern with light as a means of directing the viewer's gaze. Light radiates not from the interior background of the image, as in his other paintings of Newport, but rather from outside the canvas. Casting shadows away from the viewer, the technique effectively highlights the focus of his image, the elegantly dressed spectators in the foreground. |