Return of the Useless, Bellows’s haunting image of brutalized Belgian civilians returning in boxcars from their forced labor, is the final painting in what is known as the artist’s “War Series,” a group of paintings, prints, and drawings made in response to the atrocities of World War I.

Compared to the graphic works in this series, Bellows’s paintings benefit from a nearly life-size scale that places the viewer within a few feet of the action, and from the addition of color. The standing woman in the center of Return of the Useless gestures to the suffering and violence surrounding her. By applying a red wash over the boxcar, Bellows suggested the blood-soaked history of its human cargo.