Cliff Dwellers
Look at all the activity in this painting. What do you see? There are many people gathered on the sidewalks that surround three tall apartment buildings. Residents of the apartments stand on their balconies and lean over the railings to observe the activity on the street below. A group of boys in the lower-left corner of the painting play leapfrog. A young woman is scolding another boy in the center of the painting. Laundry hangs to dry on the lines above them. What else is happening?
George Bellows painted this scene in 1913. It is called Cliff Dwellers. Bellows depicts the crowded living conditions on the Lower East Side of New York. People that lived in the tall apartment buildings like the ones in the painting were called Cliff Dwellers because they lived in small, cramped quarters like the ancient Pueblo Indians, who were the original cliff dwellers. At the beginning of the 1900s, this was a typical neighborhood for many immigrants who had recently settled in New York City.
George Bellows was part of a group of artists known as the Ashcan School. These artists worked in the United States in the early 1900s. Bellows and the others were called the Ashcan School because they painted realistic scenes of the everyday lives of the working class and the poor. Many artists overlooked this aspect of life in New York.
Imagine that you are one of the people in this painting. What time of day is it? What do you see, smell, taste, touch, and hear?
You can see this painting when you visit the American art galleries on the second level of the Art of the Americas Building at LACMA.
Search Collections Online for more works of art by George Bellows.
George Bellows (United States, 1882-1925)
Cliff Dwellers, 1913
Oil on canvas, 40 3/16 x 42 1/16 in. (102.07 x 106.83 cm)
Los Angeles County Fund, 16.4
Photo © 2007 Museum Associates/LACMA
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