PUBLIC FAVORITES (33)

THE most popular painting in the sizable collection of the Des Moines Art Center is the late George Wesley Bellows' Aunt Fanny (opposite), and her box-office appeal is well deserved. In the wrinkled skin and watchful eyes of the brisk old lady Bellows has reflected the feeling of affection tinged with awe that almost everyone has about a favorite aunt.

The artist's own aunt was Elinor ("Fanny" was a nickname) Smith, his mother's sister, who lived with the Bellowses when George was a child. Aunt Fanny, who had no children of her own, helped keep the house spick & span, saw to it that young George was always dressed in starched tidiness. She even taught him to whistle while he was still in his baby carriage. In middle age, Aunt Fanny married and moved to California, but in 1920, when she was over 70, she came on a visit to her nephew's home in Woodstock, N.Y. There she returned to her old ways of scrubbing and washing everything spotlessly clean, and it was at this time that Bellows, by then a successful artist, painted his reverent portrait of her.

The paint was hardly dry when a wealthy Des Moines contractor and art collector named James S. Carpenter bought the picture and hauled it off to his Iowa home (the Des Moines Art Center paid his widow $12,000 for it in 1941). When Bellows heard about the purchase, he exclaimed: "Where is the man who bought it? I want to kiss him on both cheeks."

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