The artist as a young man was an intimate friend of the family of the superintendent to
the great State Hospital in Columbus. For years the amusement hall was a gloomy old
brown vault where on Thursday nights the patients indulged in "Round Dances"
interspersed with two-steps and waltzes by the visitors. Each of the characters in this
print represents a definite individual. Happy Jack boasted of being able to crack
hickory nuts with his gums. Joe Peachmyer was a constant borrower of a nickel or a
chew. The gentleman in the center had succeeded with a number of perpetual motion
machines. The lady in the middle center assured the artist by looking at his palms
that he was a direct descendant of Christ. This is the happier side of a vast world
which a more considerate and wiser society would reduce to a not inconsiderable
degree.
-George Bellows
Bellows' debt to the Spanish painter Francisco Goya is evident in the dark and
brooding mood of this lithograph, and in the wild faces of the inmates.
Buy the catalogue An American Pulse: The
Lithographs of George Wesley Bellows.
