Omniscient Eye

American Realist:  Thomas Eakins, one of America’s great realist painters, had his own set of quirks. An exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art puts it into perspective.

By: Daniel Shearer

"Starting Out After the Rail," 1874, by Thomas Eakins, is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Jan. 6.

   Legendary poet Walt Whitman described his friend Thomas Eakins
as "not a painter, but a force."
   Born in Philadelphia, Eakins is regarded by many critics
as the most outstanding American painter of the 19th century, perhaps the greatest
our nation has produced. During his lifetime, Eakins did not encounter such
universal praise. His career suffered a major blow in 1886, when he was forced
to resign from a teaching position at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine
Arts after allowing a co-ed class to draw from a completely nude male model.
It was, after all, the height of the Victorian era.
   His teaching methods would probably raise a few eyebrows
today, particularly his insistence that anyone seeking to study the nude model
should be willing to pose for artists when other models were not available.
He upheld his credo by posing naked for students’ photographic studies on several
occasions — scandalous fodder for the gossip mill.
   Although only a fraction of his work consisted of nudes,
Eakins’ subject matter drew considerable controversy. One of his best-known
works, an enormous rendering of a surgical procedure, occupies a prominent
position as part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s latest major exhibit,
Thomas Eakins: American Realist. Eakins painted "The Gross Clinic" for
display during the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia.

Eakins’ subject matter drew considerable controversy. "The Agnew Clinic," oil on canvas, 1889.

   "He went all out to make this painting, which shows a famous
Philadelphia surgeon removing diseased bone from the leg of the patient," says
Darrel Sewell, the museum’s curator of American art, who organized the exhibit.
"It’s a magnificent painting, and from the time it was shown, everyone recognized
that a major talent was at work.
   "At the same time, it was a very controversial painting,
because it is a shocking subject. It was considered so shocking that it wasn’t
shown in the art section of the exhibition. It was shown in the field hospital
on the grounds fairly nearby. This painting, in a sense, really establishes
the nature of Eakins’ reception for the next 30 years of his life… Either
his paintings were a little bit shocking for the art patrons of the day, or
they were simply too ordinary."

Eakins was fascinated with rowing, painting several famous scenes along the Schuylkill River, a stone’s throw from the museum.

   EXCEPT FOR FOUR YEARS spent studying art in France and Spain,
Eakins lived in Philadelphia his entire life. He remained an intensely local
artist, painting scenes and people around the city, carefully producing detailed
perspective drawings and sketches. Eakins was fascinated with rowing, painting
several famous scenes along the Schuylkill River, a stone’s throw from the
museum. The exhibit clearly displays how Eakins used drawings to work out the
relative positions of the shell, the oars and the bridge pier for a rowing
painting completed in 1872, "The Pair-Oared Shell."
   "These are biographical in the sense that Eakins liked to
row," Mr. Sewell says. "They represent real scenes of competitions. He came
back from Paris without ever really having completed more than one or two pictures,
until he made this (‘Max Schmitt in a Single Scull’), an amateur rower who
had been winning a lot of races on the Schuylkill River.
   "Eakins actually painted himself in this painting as the
rower rowing out of the picture, and he signed the painting on the rower’s
shell. This gives you some small idea of how really personal these works are."

Eakins painstakingly produced the painting above, "Shad Fishing at Gloucester on the Delaware River," 1881, oil on canvas, using photographic studies like the image below right, printed from the original glass-plate negative.

   The massive exhibit chronologically organizes 68 paintings,
18 sculptures and more than a dozen watercolors, along with many photographs
taken by Eakins and used extensively throughout the artistic process.

   Using glass-plate negatives owned by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,
researchers produced digital prints for the exhibit, since many of the original
prints had been lost or deteriorated over time. Researchers maintain their
efforts illustrate, for the first time in a museum exhibit, how Eakins projected
images directly on canvas, which he used to trace figures and even reflections.
He supplemented these with oil sketches made at the scene to help accurately
reproduce lighting and atmospheric effects.
   "In this very grand painting, called ‘Mending Nets,’ he composed
the whole painting out of a series of photos," Mr. Sewell says. "Apparently,
there was never any one photograph of this whole scene. Rather, Eakins had
people pose for the various figures and then composed them into the scene.
   "This was a process that interested Eakins for a limited
period of time, like everything else. By the mid-’80s, he had stopped doing
this. It was a very painstaking way to work."
   A FEW YEARS AFTER resigning from the Pennsylvania Academy,
Eakins began concentrating on portraiture, once again encountering criticism
from patrons and critics because he often focused on character and mood, rather
than efforts to produce aesthetically pleasing works. His portrait of a family
friend, Mary Adeline Williams (1899), clearly shows lines and creases at the
brow, mouth and face, the subject in a tense posture. Realistic, but not necessarily
flattering. Like his earlier work, Eakins’ portraits retained a strict adherence
to the academic method of painting based on careful anatomical study.

"Portrait of Walt Whitman," oil on canvas, 1887-1888.

   "He wasn’t interested in society portraits, that’s for sure,"
Mr. Sewell says. "A great deal of what he was doing in painting portraits was
interpreting. When you have a chance to look at the photographs as well as
the painting, it’s a fascinating study of how Eakins went about looking at
and thinking about his subjects.
   "You can see this in a series of three photographs of Walt
Whitman, very beautiful images. Eakins became a friend of Whitman, and he and
his students went to Camden to photograph Whitman in the early 1890s."
   Right around the time of Eakins’ visits to Whitman, he began
collaborating with New York sculptor William O’Donovan on several large public
works, among them The Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn and the Trenton Battle
Monument, erected at North Broad and North Warren streets in 1893, where it
stands today. The museum exhibit displays two bronze casts of the Trenton monument
panels, done in sculptural relief. One of them shows George Washington and
his troops crossing the Delaware; the other captures Alexander Hamilton commanding
the first artillery shots of the battle, aimed at retreating Hessians running
down an accurately depicted King Street.
   Although fruitful, Eakins’ fascination with sculptural relief
proved relatively short lived. Shortly after 1900, he painted some of his most
technically accomplished portraits.

"Portrait of Amelia C. Van Buren."

   "This marks the time when Eakins’ reputation was beginning
to grow," Mr. Sewell says. "His work had, in a sense, been out of fashion for
about 20 years among critics and people who were buying art.
   "By this time, there was an interest in American subjects.
There was a sort of turning away from the fancier aspects of European history
and genre painting, and there was beginning to be an interest in states of
mind, in introspection. Eakins really began to win a measure of public acclaim,
although very few people were still buying his art."
   His growing recognition culminated in 1902, when he was named
a full academician by the United States’ most prestigious art organization,
the National Academy of Design. Unfortunately, his growing acceptance did not
produce great financial rewards during his lifetime. He sold less than 30 works
before his death on June 25, 1916. The following year, the Metropolitan Museum
of Art opened a memorial exhibition with 60 of his paintings. Also that year,
the Pennsylvania Academy mounted an exhibition of more than 100 of his works.
The black sheep had once again found favor with his former school.
   In a new century, the Met will once again pay tribute to
Eakins, when American Realist travels to Manhattan during summer 2002.
Between Philadelphia and New York, the exhibit travels to Musée d’Orsay,
Paris.
Thomas Eakins: American Realist is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of
Art, Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street, Philadelphia, Pa., through Jan.
26. Adult tickets cost $12.50; seniors, students and children ages 13-18, $9.50;
ages 12 and under free. Lectures: Eakins and the Omniscient Eye, Oct.
19; At Full Length: Eakins and the "Grand Manner" Portrait, Oct. 26;
A Pathetic Conflict: Thomas Eakins and the French Tradition, Nov. 2;
The Pleasure in the Pain: Re-reading Thomas Eakins’ Gross Clinic, Nov. 16;
Mornings in the Park: The Art of Thomas Eakins and his Contemporaries, Nov.
20; all lectures take place from 7:30-8:30 p.m., free with museum admission.
Advance tickets available at the museum’s ticket/reservation desk and online
for a $2.75 service charge. For reservations, call (215) 235-7469. On the Web:
www.philamuseum.org