Here’s a great sentence, written by Oates in her essay on Bellows’ The Lone Tenement:

“A tall, isolated tenement building of no architectural distinction looms over them like the shadow of their own unconsidered mortality; the painting’s dynamism lies in its compositional values of contrasting sunshine and shadow, and its sole ‘action’ is the spirited rising of smoke from a distant boat on the river.”

This particular image has become something of a reference point for my own painting.