In this lithograph, the second of Bellows' YMCA prints, Bellows depicts the
out-of-shape businessmen in their shower-room. The lean and healthy-looking figure in
the center of this composition is juxtaposed with a huge individual. The contrast
between the two physiques could not be more extreme. At the far right, an elderly
man, back hunched, struggles to pull his towel around him. Like his lithograph of a
year earlier, Business-Men's Class, this work pokes fun at the variety of businessmen
who haunted the YMCA in search of physical improvement.
Buy the catalogue An American Pulse: The
Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows.
