The Grove – Monhegan 1913

George Wesley Bellows painted this landscape, The Grove – Monhegan, with oil on canvas, and it feels like a real immersion in the process of seeing. The paint is applied with a kind of gusto, thick and juicy, especially in the foreground, which really pushes forward and gives the whole scene a kind of theatrical depth. Look at the way the greens and yellows of the trees are laid down, almost fighting for space, creating this vibrant, almost electric energy. It’s like Bellows wasn’t just painting what he saw, but also how he felt being there, wrestling with the scene. There is a dialogue happening here, with predecessors like the impressionists. Bellows really makes it his own by roughing it up, asserting a kind of American grit in the handling of the paint, and I think that conversation across time is what makes art so endlessly fascinating. It's never really finished.