Nude with Red Hair

George Bellows

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a woman sits partially covered by a black cloth as she holds one forearm across her bare breasts in this vertical painting. The woman has pale, yellow-tinged skin and long, copper-red hair and bangs. Her body faces us, but she turns her head to look off to our right with large blue, wide-set eyes. Her cheeks are flushed, and her full, dark pink lips are closed. A strand of gradually larger amber-yellow beads hangs around her neck, and she wears a gold-colored bracelet on the arm braced across her chest, her left arm, to our right. Glimpses of pale pink nipples are visible. The voluminous black cloth drapes down over one shoulder and across her hips. She wears a ring on the other hand, which emerges from the cloth to rest on that knee. Piles of garnet red, peridot green, and forest green are piled up to chest height behind her, and the background is nickel gray around her body and darkens to black around the top and side edges. The scene is loosely painted, especially in the fabric and background. The artist signed the canvas in the lower left corner, “Geo. Bellows E.S.B.”