AFA Autumn 2019

Antiques & Fine Art 93 2019 top: Robert Henri (1865–1929), George Wesley Bellows, 1911. Oil on canvas, 32 x 25⅞ inches. National Academy of Design, New York; ANA diploma presentation, December 4, 1911 (561-P). Courtesy American Federation of Arts. left: Reuben Tam (1916–1991), Monhegan Landform, 1974. Oil on canvas, 36 x 30 inches. National Academy of Design, New York; ANA diploma presentation, October 1, 1986 (1986.214). (c) Estate of Reuben Tam. Courtesy American Federation of Arts. Bellows, a student of the influential teacher Robert Henri, painted this seascape (opposite page) during a trip the two took together in the summer of 1911 to Monhegan Island, fifteen miles off the coast of Maine. That same year, Henri depicted Bellows in the latter’s Academy portrait. Like Henri and Bellows before him, Reuben Tam felt the pull of Monhegan, visiting and living there for decades. Tam believed that landscape was not only a subject for representational painting, but also a medium to convey ideas and concerns related to memory, identity, and subjectivity, and he submitted this work (below) in lieu of a diploma portrait. Departing from convention, the Academy’s governing council accepted it, perhaps because it consciously harked back to Bellows’ Three Rollers .