George Bellows’ boxing paintings trap you in the violent ballet of the ring- the snap of fists, the roar of a hungry crowd, and the strange, fragile beauty of bodies in motion.

A poet of rough-edged America, Bellows moved easily between sunlit landscapes and the darker corners of the industrial city, painting the poor, soldiers, and the spectacle of sport with the same unflinching eye.

When he arrived in New York, boxing was wildly popular and barely legal, existing in a haze of smoke and loopholes.

His studio looked out onto Sharkey’s, a notorious boxing bar that became the stage for Club Night (1907) and Stag at Sharkey’s (1909).

To evade the law, places like Sharkey’s reinvented themselves as “athletic clubs,” selling one-night memberships to brawlers who stepped into the ring, just long enough to fight and vanish back into the crowd.