Blasted Tree and Deserted House

Provenance

The artist

Estate of above

Emma S. Bellows, the artist’s wife

Estate of above, until 1975

H.V. Allison & Co., New York, New York, 1975

Merton Shapiro, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1975

Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, New York, 1987

Sale, Christie’s, New York, New York, November 30, 1999, lot 118

The Doris and Herbert Sloan collection

Estate of above

Exhibited

Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, New York, 1992

Berry-Hill Galleries, New York, New York, 1993

Related Works

Hunter and Mountains, 1920, oil on wood, 18 x 22 inches; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Cornfield and Harvest, 1921, oil on masonite, 17 11/16 x 21⅝ inches; Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio

Autumn Brook, 1922, oil on panel, 16½ x 24 inches, signed lower left; Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, New York

Note: This work is recorded in the artist’s Record Book B, page 288. It is included in the online catalogue raisonné of the artist’s work by Glenn C. Peck.

George Bellows first visited Woodstock, New York in the summer of 1920 and he would continue returning to the area regularly over the next several years, creating numerous depictions of the rural landscape. In Blasted Tree and Deserted House, the artist depicts the scene through vibrant colors and emotive brushwork. Describing his art, Bellows detailed:

The test of my success with a picture, to me, is whether I have been able to make other people feel from the picture what I felt from the reality. Even so abstract a message as a landscape may have is still an expression of feeling. My pictures are all expressions of emotional realism—of feeling about life to-day—_[1]

_[1] Marjorie B. Searl and Ronald Netsky, Leaving for the Country: George Bellows at Woodstock (Rochester: Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester, 2003), 30.