George Wesley Bellows

In this forceful sketch, heavy black parallel lines reinforce the rough and ready character of the subject, a young lower-class boy from New York City. Like other

members of the so-called “Ashcan School,” George Bellows turned his artistic attention away from refined subject matter to examine the harsh social realities of early 20th-century urban life. He found models among the street urchins of the Lower East Side, mostly immigrant children whose dirty appearance, foreign manners, and associations with petty crime offended polite museum-going audiences. Through drawings such as this, Bellows recorded their malnourished bodies and uncomfortable gestures, ultimately integrating the figures into large and complex paintings.