Stag at Sharkey’s: George Bellows and the Art of Sports

Images of sport and fitness punctuate the career of George Bellows (1882–1925), an Ohio State University letterman and semipro baseball player turned artist, who is perhaps best known for his gutsy boxing painting Stag at Sharkey’s (1909) in the Cleveland Museum of Art. This focus exhibition showcases this masterpiece alongside nearly two dozen of the artist’s paintings, drawings, and lithographs. For Bellows, sport and fitness were exhilarating pursuits, and his resultant depictions of skill and rivalry stand as potent symbols for the brash competitive spirit of America itself during the rapidly accelerating Industrial Age.