The White Fence (1920) by George Bellows is a colorful late painting by one of the early twentieth century's leading realist painters. Best remembered today for his paintings of boxing matches, Bellows also created exuberant landscape paintings of east coast scenes.

Bellows, born in 1882 in Columbus, Ohio, came to New York City in 1904 where he studied under Robert Henri at the New York School of Art. Henri was the leader of the Ashcan School, so named because its critics disdainfully suggested that these painters had taken their scenes from the alleys and trash cans of the city. Henri and other members of the group, including John Sloan, George Luks, Everett Shinn, and William Glackens, rejected the genteel settings and pastel country landscapes of the Impressionist painters for grittier scenes of urban life painted in more somber colors. Henri and his colleagues were interested in capturing the energy and boisterous life of the streets of New York. George Luks' Allen Street (c. 1905) in the Hunter collection is an excellent example of such paintings. Here street vendors and their customers crowd the city sidewalks at night.

Henri was also an influential and charismatic teacher and Bellows soon fell under his spell. Bellows later called Henri, "my father in art." Bellows became a favorite student of Henri and throughout his career created works in the Ashcan School mode. Bellows was never officially a member of the Ashcan School, however, because he did not participate in their initial 1908 exhibition at McBeth gallery. Biographers speculate this may have been because Bellows was a decade younger than most of the other artists in this group. Nonetheless, Bellows soon began showing his works in major exhibitions and in 1909 at the age of 27 became one of the youngest artists to be elected to the National Academy of Design.

Although Bellows is best known for his paintings of boxers, such as Stag at Sharkey's (1909, Cleveland Museum of Art), he only created four paintings on this theme. His subject matter was actually quite diverse including portraits and a number of landscapes done during summer trips with his wife and children. The White Fence was recorded in Bellows' daybook as having been done in Woodstock, New York, in October 1920. From 1911 until his premature death of appendicitis in 1925, Bellows and his family would leave sweltering New York City to spend the summer and part of the autumn in the country. Bellows usually went to Maine or Rhode Island, but in 1920 he visited his close friend artist Eugene Speicher at his home in Woodstock, New York, an artists' colony in the Catskills. Bellows was so taken by the locale that he spent several summers there and in 1922 built his own summer home at the foot of Mount Overlook. Since The White Fence was done in 1920, it does not depict Bellows' house, but might be of his rented summer house or Speicher's home.

The thick strokes of paint in The White Fence convey a lushness and energy evident in all of Bellows' work. The bright colors in this autumn scene are a legacy of the impact of the Armory Show. Bellows became more concerned with color in his work after he, and many other American artists, saw avant-garde European works (including Henri Matisse's brightly colored Fauve paintings) for the first time at the Armory show in New York in 1913. Although Bellows was too firmly grounded in realism to be greatly influenced by the Cubist works he saw at the show, he did rethink his use of color and was inspired to explore various theories of art.

In The White Fence this new interest in color provides Bellows with the means to express the vivid colors of early autumn where the deep green of summer gives way to the red of autumn. The white fence surrounding the house touches the white ribbon of road at the center of the composition providing a focal point for the painting. The high horizon line of the scene which allows little sky to show, the view from on high down to the house and barn, and the rolling hills all engulf the viewer in the beauty and lushness of October in upstate New York. As Bellows said of another fall scene he had painted, The White Fence captures an "autumn too garish to miss.