Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists.
Paintings by Thomas Eakins
The Gross Clinic (1875)
The Gross Clinic or The Clinic of Dr. Gross is an 1875 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins. It is an oil on canvas and measures 8 feet (240 cm) by 6.5 feet (200 cm).
The painting depicts Dr. Samuel D. Gross, a seventy-year-old professor dressed in a black frock coat, lecturing a group of Jefferson Medical College students. Included among the group is a self-portrait of Eakins, who is seen at the right-hand edge of the painting, next to the tunnel railing, with a white cuffed sleeve sketching or writing. Seen over Dr. Gross's right shoulder (on the left-hand side of the painting) is the clinic clerk, Dr. Franklin West, taking notes on the operation.
Arcadia (painting) (1883)
Arcadia is a c.1883 painting by the American painter Thomas Eakins. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. It is number #196 in the Goodrich catalogue of Eakins's work.
In the early 1880s, Eakins, instructor in painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, began to photograph models dressed in classical garb or nude and posed in vaguely classical poses. He used his friends and students as models, although taking nude photographs of a student was contrary to PAFA policy. Some of the photographs were used as studies for subsequent works, including those of nude young men swimming and relaxing on the shore of Dove Lake for the painting The Swimming Hole (1884–85).
The Chess Players (Eakins) (1876)
The Chess Players is an 1876 genre painting by the American painter Thomas Eakins, Goodrich catalogue #96. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
It is a small oil on wood panel depicting Eakins' father Benjamin observing a chess match. The two players are Bertrand Gardel (at left), an elderly French teacher, and the somewhat younger George Holmes, a painter. The men are in a dark, wood-panelled Victorian parlour with a quality of light suggesting late afternoon. The game is well in progress, as many pieces have been removed from the board. Holmes, the younger player, seems to be winning the match, as he has taken the queen of his opponent (the top of which pokes out of the table's drawer), and his own black queen is well-positioned in the centre of the board. Eakins painted The Chess Players for his father, and signed the painting in Latin, "BENJAMINI. EAKINS. FILIUS. PINXIT. '76"—"the son of Benjamin Eakins painted this"—in small letters on the drawer of the table. Michael Clapper of Franklin & Marshall College has noted, "Eakins’s choice of [chess] and his knowledgeable treatment of it suggest that he was familiar with and interested in the game, though there is little direct evidence of it apart from the painting."
The Swimming Hole (1885)
The Swimming Hole (also known as Swimming and The Old Swimming Hole) is an 1884–85 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), Goodrich catalog #190, in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas. Executed in oil on canvas, it depicts six men swimming naked in a lake, and is considered a masterpiece of American painting. According to art historian Doreen Bolger it is "perhaps Eakins' most accomplished rendition of the nude figure", and has been called "the most finely designed of all his outdoor pictures". Since the Renaissance, the human body has been considered both the basis of artists' training and the most challenging subject to depict in art, and the nude was the centerpiece of Eakins' teaching program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. For Eakins, this picture was an opportunity to display his mastery of the human form.
In this work, Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish Victorian attitude to nudity: swimming naked was widely accepted, and for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces. Eakins was the first American artist to portray one of the few occasions in 19th-century life when nudity was on display. The Swimming Hole develops themes raised in his earlier work, in particular his treatment of buttocks and his ambiguous treatment of the human form; in some cases it is uncertain as to whether the forms portrayed are male or female. Such themes had earlier been examined in his The Gross Clinic (1875) and William Rush (1877), and would continue to be explored in his paintings of boxers (Taking the Count, Salutat, and Between Rounds) and wrestlers (Wrestlers).
The Agnew Clinic (1889)
The Agnew Clinic (or The Clinic of Dr. Agnew) is an 1889 oil painting by American artist Thomas Eakins. It was commissioned to honor anatomist and surgeon David Hayes Agnew, on his retirement from teaching at the University of Pennsylvania.
The Agnew Clinic depicts Dr. Agnew performing a partial mastectomy in a medical amphitheater. He stands in the left foreground, holding a scalpel. Also present are Dr. J. William White, applying a bandage to the patient; Dr. Joseph Leidy (nephew of paleontologist Joseph Leidy), taking the patient's pulse; and Dr. Ellwood R. Kirby, administering anesthetic. The operating room nurse, Mary V. Clymer, stands between White and Leidy, while, in the background, University of Pennsylvania medical school students observe. One of the students is William Henry Furness III, sitting in the back row with his head cocked 90 degrees. Eakins placed himself in the painting – he is the rightmost of the pair behind the nurse – although the actual painting of him is attributed to his wife, Susan Macdowell Eakins. The painting also records the significant transition, in just 14 years, from the earlier status quo – the participants' black frock coats represented in The Gross Clinic (1875) – to the "white coats" of 1889.
Wrestlers (Eakins) (1899)
Wrestlers is a name shared by three closely related 1899 paintings by American artist Thomas Eakins, (Goodrich catalog #317, #318, #319). The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) owns the finished painting (G-317), and the oil sketch (G-318). The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) owns a slightly smaller unfinished version (G-319). All three works depict a pair of nearly naked men engaged in a wrestling match. The setting for the finished painting is the Quaker City Barge Club (defunct), which once stood on Philadelphia's Boathouse Row.
Eakins painted a series of works depicting scullers on the Schuylkill River in the 1870s. In the late 1890s, he painted three major works depicting boxers—Taking the Count (1898), Yale University Art Gallery; Salutat (1898), Addison Gallery of American Art; Between Rounds (1899), Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871)
Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (also known as The Champion Single Sculls or The Champion, Single Sculls) is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins, Goodrich catalogue #44. It is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Set on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, it celebrates Eakins's friend Max Schmitt's victory in the October 5, 1870, single sculls competition.
Max Schmitt (1843–1900) had attended Philadelphia Central High School with Eakins, and the two were close friends. Schmitt was a member of the Pennsylvania Barge Club – as, it is presumed, was Eakins – one of nine men's clubs in the Schuylkill Navy, and twelve that rowed on the river. The Schuylkill Navy had been organized in 1858, with approximately 300 members, and began hosting annual regattas in 1859 (with a four-year hiatus for the American Civil War). Initially, the races were for 6-oared and 4-oared gigs and barges, but a new kind of lightweight craft was rapidly gaining popularity: the racing scull.
Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand (1874)
The Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand is an 1874 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins. It is an oil on canvas that depicts Benjamin H. Rand, a doctor at Jefferson Medical College who taught Eakins anatomy. It is held at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, in Bentonville, Arkansas.
In the painting, Rand is sitting at the desk in his home office, which appears cluttered with both scientific and academic objects as well as everyday things, while reading a book and absentmindedly petting his cat. The doctor thus finds himself between the world of intellectual effort and home comfort.
Salutat (1898)
Salutat is an 1898 painting by Thomas Eakins (1844–1916). Based on a real-life boxing match that occurred in 1898, the work depicts a boxer waving to the crowd after the match. According to Eakins' biographer Lloyd Goodrich, Salutat is "one of Eakins' finest achievements in figure-painting." The painting's title is Latin for "He greets" or "He salutes."
Much as he had with his paintings of rowers in the 1870s, during the late 1890s Eakins turned his interest again to the male nude, this time depicting prizefighters. Eakins attended fights in 1898, and aided by sportswriters Clarence Cranmer and Henry Walter Schlichter, met with and hired fighters to pose for him.
Miss Amelia Van Buren (1891)
Miss Amelia Van Buren or Portrait of Amelia C. Van Buren is a c. 1891 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), now in The Phillips Collection. It depicts Amelia Van Buren (c. 1856 – 1942), an artist who studied with Eakins, and was called "one of his most gifted pupils." The painting is considered one of Eakins's finest works.
Van Buren studied with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1884 and 1885. In 1886 Eakins described her as "a lady of perhaps thirty years or more, and from Detroit[.] She came to the Academy some years ago to study figure painting by which art she hoped to support herself, her parents I believe being dead. I early recognized her as a very capable person. She had a temperament sensitive to color and form, was grave, earnest, thoughtful, and industrious. She soon surpassed her fellows, and I marked her as one I ought to help in every way...."
Taking the Count (1898)
Taking the Count is an 1898 painting by American artist Thomas Eakins. It is part of the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven.
This depiction of a prizefight marks Eakins' return to anatomical studies of the male figure, this time in a more urban setting. Taking the Count was his second largest canvas, but not his most successful composition. The same may be said of his Wrestlers (1899). More successful was Between Rounds (1899), for which boxer Billy Smith posed seated in his corner at Philadelphia's Arena; in fact, all of principal figures in this composition were posed by models re-enacting what had been an actual boxing match.
The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog (1884)
The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog is a painting by the American painter Thomas Eakins, from c. 1884–1889. It is part of the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.
Eakins began this portrait shortly after his marriage to his former student, the painter and photographer Susan Macdowell Eakins (1851–1938), in January 1884. The setting is his studio at 1330 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, where the couple and their dog Harry lived from 1884 to 1886.