George Wesley Bellows 1882 - 1925

Estate of the artist
Emma S. Bellows (the artist's wife)
Estate of Emma S. Bellows, 1959
Mrs. Allan C. Butler, Nassau, Bahamas, 1971
The Equitable Life Insurance Society of the United States, New York, 1985
Private Collection, New York

H.V. Allison & Company, New York, George Bellows, May 1968, no. 7
Ithaca, New York, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Cornell Collects: A Celebration of American Art From the Collections of Alumini and Friends, August-November 1990, no. 82
New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, Natural Forces: Landscapes by Bellows, Henri and Sloan, May-June 1992, no. 6
New York, Berry-Hill Galleries, George Bellows, December 1993-January 1994
Newport, Rhode Island, Newport Art Museum, George Bellows in Newport and Beyond, June-September 2000
Orlando, Florida, The Mennello Museum of American Art, The Paintings of George Bellows, November 2007-February 2008, no. 21, illustrated in color p. 31

The artist's Record Book B, p. 172
Mary Sayre Haverstock, George Bellows An Artist in Action, New York, 2007, p. 124

Clouds and Meadow was painted in Middletown, Rhode Island in the summer of 1919. The artist and his family spent the summers of 1918 and 1919 in Middletown, which is located three miles outside of Newport. They rented a large house on Appleton Farm which was surrounded by barns, gardens, and a hilly farmland. While there he often worked out of doors painting farm scenes in which cattle appear prominently. The work demonstrates Bellows new freedom with color following the Armory show of 1913. Bellows had been introduced by Robert Henri to the Maratta color system in order to reveal color's expressive potential. In emulation of the intense juxtaposed colors he had seen in the paintings of such artists as Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin, he often incorporated interesting combinations of greens and purples. Bellows admitted that what he adopted above all from the "modernist movement" was "fresh, spontaneous pure color" (Charles H. Morgan, George Bellows Painter of America, New York, 1965, p. 135)