An American Pulse:
The Artist as Spectator

Electrocution [third state of five], 1917
Edition of 51 (all states combined)
Mason 42; Bellows 55
Museum purchase, 1998:3
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One scholar, Donald Braider, has suggested that Bellows created this graphic protest against the inhuman cruelty of the electric chair in response to events following the anarchist bombings of a 1916 Preparedness Parade in San Francisco. A long-time labor leader, Thomas Jay Mooney, was tried and sentenced to death for his role in the bombings. Bellows disapproved of the anarchist bombings of innocent people, but he also disapproved of capital punishment.

Buy the catalogue An American Pulse: The Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows.

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