The Lone Tenement 1909

George Bellows painted "The Lone Tenement" most likely in oil on canvas, with a direct, almost brutal approach to the surface. The colours are muddy, but it's a purposeful mud, like the real stuff under your boots in a city. There's this one spot, right at the bottom left, where the brushstrokes are thick and kind of scribbled. It’s like Bellows was wrestling with the paint, trying to capture the raw energy of the scene. The whole painting feels unresolved, caught in the act of becoming, a testament to the city as a place of constant change. You can feel the bite of the cold, the dampness in the air, see the way people cluster together for warmth. Bellows reminds me a bit of Gustave Courbet, actually, in that he’s committed to painting the world as he sees it, without any romanticising. Both artists are not afraid to let their work be messy, because, well, life *is* messy. It makes you wonder, doesn't it, about what it means to make something beautiful out of the everyday.