Seated Boy

The seated youth in this drawing was probably made as a study for one of the many young boys in George Bellows’s lithographs Splinter Beach and River-Front or their related paintings. The inscription “raft” below the figure suggests that the pose was intended for the large raft in the River-Front composition, although a pose with greater similarity appears on the shoreline in the same print. Bellows’s quick sketch captures the wiry, perhaps undernourished physique and the darting eyes of the young man.