Tennis at Newport

Renowned for his paintings of clandestine boxing matches, Bellows also depicted leisure-time pursuits of the wealthy. He painted Tennis at Newport in his New York studio from sketches he had made the previous summer. The annual tennis tournament at the Newport Casino in Rhode Island was an important sporting event and social occasion. Bellows’s painting emphasizes the setting more than the match; although the players appear in action in the foreground, the spectators strolling about the grounds and lingering on the lawn divert attention away from the contest. Bellows’s blended brushwork and lurid palette evoke both bright, almost blinding light and sweltering heat.