Thomas Eakins

From New World Encyclopedia

Thomas Eakins
Eakins selfportrait.jpg
Self portrait (1902), National Academy of Design, New York.

In 1894 the artist wrote: "My honors are misunderstanding, persecution & neglect, enhanced because unsought." [1]

Birth name Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins
Born July 25 1844(1844-07-25)
Philadelphia
Died June 25 1916 (aged 71)
Philadelphia
Nationality American
Field Painting
Training Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, École des Beaux-Arts
Movement Realism
Famous works Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871, The Gross Clinic, 1875, The Agnew Clinic, 1889
Awards National Academician

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was a painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He was one of the greatest American painters of his time, an innovating teacher, and an uncompromising realist. He was also the most neglected major painter of his era in the United States.[2]


Early life

Eakins was born and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. He was the first child of Caroline and Benjamin Eakins, who moved to Philadelphia from Valley Forge, Pennsylvania in the early 1840's to raise their family. Benjamin was a writing master and calligraphy teacher of Scots-Irish ancestry, [3] and so influenced his son Thomas, who by age 12 demonstrated skill in precise line drawing, perspective, and the use of a grid to lay out a careful design[4]

Eakins studied drawing and anatomy at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts beginning in 1861, and attended courses in anatomy and dissection at Jefferson Medical College from 1864-65. For a while, he followed his father's profession and was listed in city directories as a "writing teacher".[5] His scientific interest in the human body led him to consider becoming a surgeon.[6] Eakins then studied art in Europe from 1866 to 1870, notably in Paris with Jean-Léon Gérôme, being only the second American pupil of the French realist painter famous as a master of Orientalism.[7] He also attended the atelier of Léon Bonnat, a realist painter who emphasized anatomical preciseness, a method adapted by Eakins. While studying at L'Ecole des Beaux-Arts, he seems to have taken scant interest in the new Impressionist movement, nor was he impressed by what he perceived as the classical pretensions of the French Academy.

By age 24, he developed a strong desire for realistic artistic depictions of both anatomy and emotion. A trip to Spain for six months confirmed his admiration for the realism of artists such as Diego Velázquez and Jusepe de Ribera.[8] In Seville in 1870 he painted Carmelita Requeña, a portrait of a seven year old gypsy dancer more freely and colorfully painted than his Paris studies, and in the same year attempted his first large oil painting, A Street Scene in Seville, wherein he first dealt with the complications of a scene observed outside the studio.[9]Although he failed to matriculate and showed no works in the salons, Eakins succeeded in absorbing the techniques and methods of French and Spanish masters, and he began to formulate his artistic vision which he demonstrated in his first major painting upon his return to America, "I shall seek to achieve my broad effect from the very beginning.[10]

Work

For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some forty years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse, the portraits offer an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries; individually, they are incisive depictions of thinking persons. As well, Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In the process he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective.

Eakins's first works upon his return from Europe in 1870 included a large group of rowing scenes, eleven oils and watercolors in all, of which the first and most famous is The Champion Single Sculling, known also as Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871). Both his subject and his technique drew attention. His selection of a contemporary sport was “a shock to the artistic conventionalities of the city”. [11]

Eakins also took a keen interest in the new technologies of motion photography, a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Misunderstood and ignored in his lifetime, his posthumous reputation places him as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".[12]

Teaching

No less important in Eakins' life was his work as a teacher. He returned to the Pennsylvania Academy in 1876 where taught and rose to the position of director by 1882. Eakins gave only terse instruction to his students, allowing them to learn from example and find their own way. Most notable was his delight in teaching depiction of the human form, which involved studies of nude models and casts made from dissections.

Behavorial and sexual controversy shaped much of his career. He insisted on teaching men and women "the same," used nude models in mixed-sex classes, and was accused of abusing female students. Some accounts include posing nude for a female student in a private setting and pulling the loin cloth from male model in a classroom full of females. Today, scholars see these controversies as caused by a combination of factors such as the bohemianism of Eakins and his circle (in which students, for example, sometimes modeled in the nude for each other), and Eakins's inclination toward provocative behavior.

Legacy

Late in life Eakins did experience some recognition. In 1902 he was made a National Academician. In 1914 the sale of a portrait study of D. Hayes Agnew for the Agnew Clinic to Dr. Albert C. Barnes precipitated much publicity when rumors circulated that the selling price was fifty thousand dollars. In fact, Barnes bought the painting for four thousand dollars.[13]

In the year after his death Eakins was honored with a memorial retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and in 1917-18 the Pennsylvania Academy followed suit.

Eakins's attitude toward realism in painting, and his desire to explore the heart of American life proved influential. He taught hundreds of students, among them his future wife Susan Macdowell, African-American painter Henry Ossawa Tanner, and Thomas Anshutz, who taught, in turn, Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan, and Everett Shinn, future members of the Ashcan School, and artistic heirs to Eakins' philosophy.[14] Though his is not a household name, and though during his lifetime Eakins struggled to make a living from his work, today he is regarded as one of the most important American artists of any period.

"Portrait of Maud Cook" (1895), Yale University Art Gallery.

Since the 1990s, Eakins has emerged as a major figure in sexuality studies in art history, for both the homoeroticism of his work and for the complexity of his attitudes toward women.

On November 11, 2006 the Board of Trustees at Thomas Jefferson University agreed to sell The Gross Clinic to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas for a record $68,000,000, the highest price for an Eakins painting as well as a record price for an individual American-made portrait.[15] On December 21, 2006, a group of donors agreed to pay $68,000,000 in order to keep the painting in Philadelphia. It will be displayed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

Notes

  1. Sewell, Darrel: Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, page xvi. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982.
  2. Goodrich, Lloyd: Thomas Eakins, Volume I, page vii. Harvard University Press, 1982.
  3. Goodrich, Volume I, pages 1-4.
  4. Amy B. Werbel, Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001, ISBN 0-87633-142-8, p. 5
  5. Amy B. Werbel, p.10
  6. Canaday, John: "Thomas Eakins; Familiar truths in clear and beautiful language," Horizon, page 96. Volume VI, number 4, Autumn, 1964.
  7. H. Barbara Weinberg, Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001, ISBN 0-87633-142-8, p. 15
  8. Spanish work [is] so good so strong so reasonable so free from every affectation. It stands out like nature itself... Updike, page 72.
  9. Homer, page 44.
  10. H. Barbara Weinberg, p. 23
  11. Marc Simpson, Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2001, ISBN 0-87633-142-8, p. 28
  12. Goodrich, Volume II, page 285.
  13. Homer, page 249.
  14. Goodrich, Volume II, page 309.
  15. Shattuck, Kathryn. Got Medicare? A $68 Million Operation. New York Times, November 19, 2006. [1] Retrieved on 2007-03-31.

References
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  • Adams, Henry: Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 0195156684.
  • Canaday, John: Thomas Eakins; "Familiar truths in clear and beautiful language," Horizon. Volume VI, Number 4, Autumn 1964.
  • Goodrich, Lloyd: Thomas Eakins. Harvard University Press, 1982. ISBN 0-674-88490-6
  • Homer, William Innes: Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art. Abbeville Press, 1992. ISBN 1-55859-281-4
  • Johns, Elizabeth: Thomas Eakins. Princeton University Press, 1991. ISBN 0691002886
  • Kirkpatrick, Sidney: The Revenge of Thomas Eakins. Yale University Press, 2006. ISBN 0300108559.
  • Lubin, David: Acts of Portrayal: Eakins, Sargeant, James. Yale University Press, 1985. ISBN 0300032137
  • Sewell, Darrel: Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982. ISBN 0-87633-047-2
  • Updike, John: Still Looking: Essays on American Art. Alfred A. Knopf, 2005. ISBN 1-4000-4418-9
  • Weinberg, H. Barbara: Thomas Eakins and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994. Publication no: 885-660
  • Werbel, Amy: Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia. Yale University Press, 2007. ISBN 9780300116557.

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