American Art Collaborative

Over his lifetime, George Bellows executed several portraits of his wife, Emma. The painting "Emma in a Purple Dress" (currently on the Museum’s fourth level) was his last, and the one that took the longest. He spent several years working and reworking the painting, only finishing in 1923, three years after this preliminary drawing was done. Though the basic composition—the dress and position of the body—remained the same, Bellows did a series of lithographs exploring various possibilities with the head and facial expressions. Emma’s final expression is pensive, though it has been suggested that her averted gaze may be the result of the tedium of innumerable sittings.