George Bellows; Sydney Lee RA

The American artist George Bellows (1882–1925) is best known for his boxing paintings, but as this surprising exhibition reveals, that was only the half of it. We don’t really know his work in this country, apart from the odd picture in a mixed show, but here is indisputable evidence that we have been missing out. Bellows died from appendicitis aged only 42, so this exhibition inevitably offers us work which varies wildly in style and competence, as he tried his hand at different approaches and different subjects. Nevertheless there are at least half-a-dozen paintings of real worth and presence, in addition to the boxing pictures, which I personally find of limited interest, though Bellows’s handling of bodies in dynamic movement is dramatic and convincing.

There are some 70 works in the exhibition, spanning his 20-year career, including paintings, drawings and lithographs. Bellows studied with Robert Henri in New York, a leading light in the famous Ashcan School, and grew fascinated by the crowded tenement life of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, developing a brand of vigorous realist painting that soon began to attract attention.