River-Front is the work of Bellows as a more mature artist, returning to a
theme that had attracted him earlier in his career—youth flocking the banks of the
Hudson River in search of relief from the sweltering heat of the New York summer.
Bellows' earliest work depicting this subject was a 1906 painting called River Rats.
He revisited the theme in the 1916 lithograph Splinter Beach. In River-Front,
however, Bellows' interest was less focused on the personalities than on the geometric
foundation of the composition, organized around the pier.
Buy the catalogue An American Pulse: The
Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows.
