The Sawdust Trail

Tent poles
At the top of the painting, you can see the many poles needed to support the large tent for the revival held by popular evangelical preacher Billy Sunday in Philadelphia in 1915—the subject of this painting.

George Bellows, the artist, was commissioned by Metropolitan, a monthly magazine out of New York, to document the scene for an article.

Billy Sunday
The man reaching into the crowd of followers is the preacher Billy Sunday. Sunday had been a professional baseball player in Chicago who heard a gospel choir on the street, began attending services, and eventually converted and became a preacher.

Sunday’s wife
Standing behind the preacher Billy Sunday is his wife, Helen, who helped organize his sermons.

In strong contrast to the fervor of the crowd, she calmly observes her husband and the scene below. Could she be a skeptic?

Followers
Sunday’s followers weep, shout, fall to the ground, and collapse in religious frenzy in the foreground of the painting. Sunday’s sermons were so popular that instead of preaching in a church or community space, he had to rent large tents that he and his team put together.

Color palette
Bellows used bright, high-keyed colors in the foreground to reinforce the pandemonium of the crowd. The subdued, muted colors of the background give depth to the work and suggest the anonymous thousands who attended the sermons.

Sawdust
Sawdust on the floor of the tent, referenced in the painting’s title, The Sawdust Trail, was often used to dampen the noise of these events. “Trail” refers to the well-worn path across the United States that Billy Sunday traveled to deliver his message of salvation.

Conductor
A choirmaster leads the attendants and singers in a hymn. You can almost hear the cacophony of voices, from the choir to the followers below.

Podium
The podium, in a place of prominence at the center of the painting, is abandoned.

Art historians have suggested that Bellows painted the podium this way as a satirical jab at the emptiness of Billy Sunday’s methods, which focused on dramatic and graphic warnings of damnation as he moved energetically around the stage.

Bellows famously called Billy Sunday the “worst thing that ever happened to America.”