American Realist Who Taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Philedelphia

Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

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Biography

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was one of the best portrait artists of the 19th century, and 1 of the smashing masters of figure painting in America. Works like Max Schmitt in a Unmarried Scull (1871, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and The Gross Clinic (1875, Philadelphia Museum of Art) marking a high point of psychological realism in American art, revealing Eakins' outstanding control of perspective, human anatomy, mechanical drawing, and the study of the human form in motion. In all Eakins' realist painting, the human figure is central; his composition is enlivened by a use of tenebrism that derives from Rembrandt (1606-69) and Velazquez (1599-1660) and yet is wholly personal and American in execution and feeling. Eakins received little official recognition during his lifetime, just is now considered to exist the finest exponent of figurative realism in American modernistic art. For details of like 19th century realist artists, come across the great Russian portraitists Ivan Kramskoy (1837-1887) and Ilya Repin (1844-1930).

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Academic Training

Eakins was born and spent most of his life in Philadelphia, where he studied art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and later anatomy and dissection at Jefferson Medical College. From 1866 to 1869 he studied art in Paris at the French University, under Jean-Leon Gerome - famous for his stylish Orientalist painting - and also in the workshop of Leon Bonnat, a realist painter whose focus on anatomical precision was fully embraced by his American pupil. During his stay in France, Eakins showed no interest in the new Impressionism movement (although he did share their enthusiasm for photography), nor was he impressed by the classical pretensions of the Academy. Instead, he paid a 6 month visit to Spain where he studied the great Castilian Masters of Realism similar Diego Velazquez (1599-1660) and Jusepe de Ribera (1591-1652) and made his first attempts at completing a large oil painting. Equally subsequently works would bear witness, his European studies allowed him to absorb numerous painterly techniques from the French and Castilian masters, especially in the use of painting colour, limerick and chiaroscuro. To a higher place all, his European experience confirmed his aesthetic conviction that the Nude was the basis of all real fine art: a conviction that underpinned much of his inventiveness, too as much of the controversy that dogged him during his life.

Artist and Fine art Instructor

Eakins returned to America in 1870 and embarked on a professional career as an artist and teacher, until his health began to neglect some forty years subsequently. Throughout these parallel careers, the study of the nude was pivotal. He taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts from 1876, became its head in 1879, and resigned in 1886 because of opposition to his insistence on the full nudity of the model. This issue was aggravated by ii other matters.

First, his uncompromising education methods which were rigidly aimed at the depiction of the human torso. He offered no aid in drawing from antique sculpture, and gave students only a short study in charcoal drawing earlier introducing them to painting. He devoted rigorous attending to all aspects of the human being figure, including figure cartoon from life, anatomical study of the human being and animal torso, and surgical dissection, as well as the fundamentals of form, and studies in linear perspective involving mathematics. In addition, he encouraged students to use photography every bit an aid to understanding anatomy and the study of movement.

Second, his insistence on the value of nude models led to accusations of improper behaviour towards his female person students. For example, when explaining the movement of the pelvis to a female person student, he undressed and gave her a concrete demonstration! Such incidents boosted by the bohemianism of Eakins and his circle, the intensity of his friendships with men, and his generally provocative attitudes led to his dismissal. Nonetheless, he was greatly admired as a teacher and when he left the Academy many of his students followed him and formed the Art Students League of Philadelphia, where he later instructed. He as well lectured at numerous other schools, including the Art Students League of New York, the National Academy of Design, and the Art Students Gild in Washington, DC. Moreover, before quitting the Academy he married one of his peak students, Susan Hannah MacDowell, the girl of a Philadelphia engraver, well known within the artistic customs.

Max Schmitt in a Single Scull

Every bit an artist, Eakins achieved unusually rapid success. Among his earliest works upon his render from Europe were a grouping of rowing pictures - in both oils and watercolour - which included his first masterpiece Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871, likewise called The Champion Single Sculling). Meticulously prepared using a series of preparatory drawings of the effigy and the perspective of the composition - which highlighted the importance of his academic training in Paris - it was an exceptionally successful piece of work for a painter who less than a yr before had struggled to complete his first outdoor composition.

Family Portraits

At the same fourth dimension, he began a series of family portraits - a sort of series of domestic Victorian interiors - using his family and friends as sitters. Works similar Dwelling Scene (1871), Elizabeth at the Piano (1875), The Chess Players (1876), and Elizabeth Crowell and her Dog (1874), each set in a low tonal cardinal, were unsentimental characterizations of people in their homes. In total, he produced several hundred portraits, ordinarily of family or friends, or prominent Philadelphia figures in the arts, sciences, medicine, and religion. In addition to these studio-manner paintings, Eakins painted a number of figurative works prepare in the outdoors, featuring the nude or lightly clad figure in motion, which illustrated his painterly skills in modelling and perspective. The most notable examples include The Biglin Brothers Racing (1872; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC), and The Swimming Hole, (1884-5; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas). These pictures also enabled Eakins to develop his talent in the practical application of movement photography.

The Gross Clinic

Eakins' series of indoor portraits culminated in his 2d masterpiece entitled The Gross Clinic (Portrait of De Samuel Gross) (1875, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts), described by one critic as one of the greatest portrait paintings e'er executed in America. In this piece of work, the renowned Philadelphia surgeon, Dr. Samuel D. Gross, is featured presiding over an operation in a packed amphitheatre at Jefferson Medical College. Dramatically illuminated, the surgeon's heroically conceived presence is designed to reverberate the field of study of modernistic surgery, for which Philadelphia was then a leading centre, and the piece of work was intended for evidence at the Centennial Exhibition of 1876. But it was rejected by the selection committee on the grounds of its depiction of blood, and was shown in the medical department instead. Every bit information technology happened, some other of his other portraits The Chess Players was accustomed for the Centennial Exhibition and received much disquisitional praise.

The Gross Clinic, despite being Eakins' finest work, did not receive the acclaim it was due, being criticised for its adverse effect on viewers with weak nerves! Ultimately bought by Jefferson Medical Higher for the paltry sum of $200, its owners now draw it in altogether different terms: "Today the in one case maligned movie is celebrated as a bang-up nineteenth-century medical history painting, featuring ane of the most superb portraits in American art". Its value has also jumped. In November 2006, the Thomas Jefferson authorities agreed to sell information technology to the National Gallery of Fine art in Washington DC for $68,000,000, the highest price for a work by Eakins and a tape price for an individual American portrait. A month afterwards, a grouping of art patrons collected $68,000,000 in social club to retain the painting in Philadelphia. Since so it has been on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania University of Fine Arts.

Photography

Eakins was an avid and innovative user of the camera, whose influence tin can be seen in works like Mending the Net (1881) and Arcadia (1883). Nonetheless, he employed photography equally role of his drive for realism and authenticity rather than every bit a short-cut or aid to composition and perspective. Unfortunately information technology was precisely this quest for realism that attracted controversy. His so-called Naked Serial, (from 1883) consisted of nude photographs of students and professional models, taken to illustrate real human anatomy from several specific angles, and were displayed for study at the Academy. Although poses were typically traditional in nature, the sheer number may accept contributed to a sense of unease nigh his artistic methods, and his focus on female person nudes and also male person nudes.

Other Portraiture

In 1876, Eakins painted a less controversial portrait of Dr. John Brinton, surgeon of the Philadelphia Hospital, which received more than favourable comment. But perhaps the climax of Eakins' portrait art was his 1890s series of portraits of artists, musicians, and other prominent figures, painted after he quit the University. Examples of these exceptional 19th century portraits include: The Agnew Clinic (1889), his largest painting, which featured another eminent American surgeon, Dr. David Hayes Agnew, performing a mastectomy; Professor Henry A. Rowland (1897); The Dean'due south Curl Call (1899), depicting Dr. James W. Holland, and Professor Leslie W. Miller (1901); Blowsy Music (1900), showing Mrs. William D. Frishmuth surrounded by her collection of musical instruments; and The Concert Singer (1890-92), for which Eakins asked his sitter Weda Cook to sing a song to allow him to study the muscles of her throat and oral cavity. Eakins also completed a number of other portraits of female person friends which, contrary to the fashion of the day, were deliberately devoid of glamour and idealization. This works include: Portrait of Letitia Wilson Jordan (1888); The Creative person's Wife and His Setter Dog (1884-89); Portrait of Maud Cook (1895); and the melancholic Portrait of Miss Amelia Van Buren (1891; Phillips Drove, Washington DC). Arguably, the excellence of works like Mrs Edith Mahon (1904; Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, Mass.) elevates Eakins above all his American contemporaries.

Despite Eakins' unique painterly skills, his steadfast insistence on his ain vision of realism, equally well equally the whiff of scandal attaching to him from his days at the Academy, combined to reduce his earning potential as a portraitist. In fact, his intense and realist depictions were ofttimes too stark for his customers, causing them (or their families) to turn down the portraits entirely.

Sculpture

In addition to his painting, Eakins' expertise in equine anatomy led to an invitation, in 1891, from his friend the sculptor William Rudolf O'Donovan, to collaborate in the creation of bronze equestrian reliefs of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant for the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn. Eakins did the horses, O'Donovan the men. (Encounter as well the sculpture of Daniel Chester French.)

Reputation

Eakins did experience some recognition in the 1900s - for instance he was made a National Academician in 1902 - merely most art critics approached his work with some reserve. It is difficult to say whether this was purely a reflection of his art, or a commentary on his personal life. In any event, it wasn't until the twelvemonth post-obit his death that he was honoured with a retrospective at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, and in 1917-18 at the Pennsylvania Academy. This despite the obvious genius of the artist and the influence he had on late 19th and early on 20th century American Realism. Among his followers were Robert Henri, George Luks, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, and George Bellows - all future members of the Ashcan Schoolhouse. Nowadays, excluding the Florence-born American expatriate painter John Vocaliser Sargent (1856-1925), he is regarded, not only equally the finest portraitist but likewise one of the most of import modern artists in the history of American art.

Paintings by Thomas Eakins

Works by Thomas Eakins hang in the all-time art museums in America.

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Source: http://www.visual-arts-cork.com/famous-artists/thomas-eakins.htm

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