UNMATCHABLE EAKINS by Joan K. Yanni

UNMATCHABLE EAKINS

by Joan K. Yanni

Largely misunderstood and underestimated in his own time, Thomas Eakins is now looked upon as one of America's finest painters. The Gallery is fortunate to have an example of Eakins at his best—the sensitive, penetrating portrait of his father-in-law, the engraver William H. Macdowell.

Thomas Eakins (ay-kins) was born in Philadelphia in 1844 and, with the exception of four years of study in Europe, lived there all of his life. His father was a writing master and amateur artist who encouraged his son to develop his talent. In 1861 Eakins entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he studied drawing—mostly from casts, as was the custom of the time. He supplemented this study by taking anatomy classes at Jefferson Medical College.

In 1866 he went to Paris where he had three years of academic training at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean Leon Gérôme. He also studied briefly under the sculptor Augustin-Alexandre Dumont. In 1869 he traveled to Spain, where he discovered the 17th-century masters Velázquez and Ribera. Their realism was a revelation to him, and he remained in Spain for six months before returning home.

Back in Philadelphia, he began to paint the life around him: portraits of his family and friends and scenes of outdoor activity. His pictures showed a strong structural sense, precise vision, and first-hand observation of outdoor light and color—although his palette was far from that of the popular Impressionists.  Max Schmitt in a Single Scull was the first of a number of paintings in which he honored champion rowers, a sport which he saw as combining physical and mental discipline.

In 1875 the approaching Centennial exhibition motivated Eakins to paint the masterpiece of his early years, The Gross Clinic. He chose to show the famous surgeon Samuel D. Gross operating in an amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College with his students looking on. The painting shows Gross lecturing, holding in his hand a scalpel covered with blood. While it had precedents in Rembrandt's paintings of anatomy lessons, the picture's dark tones broken only by the light on Gross's forehead, hand, and on the patient, shocked the Centennial jury. His painting was rejected, but Gross sponsored its showing in a medical exhibition, and it still remains at the Jefferson Hospital. (Eakins pictured the same theme in 1889, when the graduating class of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School asked him to paint a portrait Dr. C. Hayes Agnew, their retiring   professor   of   surgery.   Eakins insisted on painting Agnew presiding over a surgical clinic, but made a point of showing all the advances in surgery developed since the Gross portrait.)

Despite the criticism of The Gross Clinic, Eakins was hired as a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy and became its director in 1882. In 1884 he married one of his art students, Susan Hannah Macdowell. Abandoning the old system of drawing from casts, he based his teaching on the study of the nude and insisted that the Academy facilities be primarily for professional artists. In contrast, the Board of Directors wanted the school to be self-supporting and sought to attract any and all interested students. In 1886 an uproar over his use of a nude model in a mixed drawing class gave the Board an excuse to force Eakins's resignation.

The action badly disappointed Eakins and many of his students, who resigned from the Academy in protest. Though he taught at other institutions sporadically and gained some reputation as a painter, he attained little financial success. He traveled to the Dakota territory in late 1886 for a change of scene and there met the poet Walt Whitman. They formed a lasting friendship, sharing the painful experience of having their work misunderstood. Over the next two decades, though commissions were rare, Eakins painted some of his most sensitive portraits—most of friends or individuals whose mind and spirit interested him.  Often he gave the paintings to the sitters.  Unlike his contemporaries John Singer Sargent and William Merritt Chase, he was uncompromisingly realistic, refusing to flatter. However, his sense of character and his psychological insight gave his portraits intense vitality.

In the late 1880s Eakins suffered from continuing neglect, even though his skills increased. In the early 1900s he finally received some recognition and a number of awards and honors. But although he ultimately painted just under 300 works, he received commissions for only about 25.  He died in 1916.

While oil painting was the major focus of his life, Eakins was also an expert photographer. In 1884 he worked with Eadweard Muybridge in recording human and animal motion. He also did a number of sculptures, including the horses for the Lincoln and Grant monuments in Brooklyn, NY.  Though he had no one student who directly passed on his techniques, his realism, in contrast to the prevailing Romantic style of the late 1800s, influenced an entire generation of American painters in the 20th century, especially members of the Ashcan School.

Source: Curatorial files, dictionary of art.