Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) is considered to be one of the prominent painter in the history of American art. His style was classical realism, and he worked strictly fromlife focusing on accuracy of the sitters. Thomas Eakins was also a fine teacher , as well as a photographer. Despite his great skills and talent, he was not very successful during his lifetime, in fact, he did not sell a single portrait painting during his professional career. His personality was often misunderstood and was not appreciated by the ignorant society of his time. Thomas Eakins' genius was recognized only after his death, acknowledged as being one of the best portraitist that have ever lived.

His works depicted the lives in Philadelphia (his hometown) during the 19th century the early 20th century, as he captured people of various kinds, artists, doctors, common people, family members, etc, in an insightful manner, illustrating the thinking persons. He produced such countless portraits all his life. Thomas Eakins also did some large scale paintings outdoors, capturing the semi-nude moving figures in the outdoor environments. Working outside enabled him to render the forms of his figures under sunlight.Eakins was very interested in the motion photography as well, and is now considered as one of the starters of the field.

Thomas Eakins was a skilled teacher and definitely one of the most important figure in the American art education. But his reputations began to detariorate, hampering his success,due to the misunderstandings by the world around him regarding his different views and behaviors that were unfamiliar with the people duing that time, along with a number of ignorant sexual scandals. For this great negativity by the society, along with Eakins' special way of capturing not only the likeness but psychological aspect of his sitters, which the society was not accustomed to, Eakins was unsuccessful and did not have much volunteered sitters besides his close friends and family during his later life. Eakins also had female models to pose completely nude at his studio which was viewed unacceptable by the Philadelphia community at the time.

Thomas Eakins was born 1844 in Philadelpia and lived most of his life there as well. His father, Benjamin Eakins was a successful writer and a calligraphy teacher, born in a farm in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. After marrying Thomas' mother, Caroline, a woman of Dutch and English decent, he moved to Philadelphia to raise his family. As a child, Thomas Eakins showed talent is creating precise line drawings using the grid system, which he applied in his professional works as well.

Thomas Eakins attended a popular art and science oriented high school in his town, Century High School, where he did exceptionally well on mechanical drawing. As a young man, he was athletic, and pursued sports, such as wrestling, swimming, and gymnastics, which he later encouraged his art pupils to pursue as well during his career as a teacher.

In 1861, Eakins enrolled in Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he studied drawing and human anatomy. He also studied by doing dissections of the human bodies at the Jefferson Medical College, which grew Eakin's interests in anatomy and science and led him to consider becoming a surgeon at one point.

Thomas Eakins traveled to Paris in 1866 to study at the atelier of reknowned great French realist painter Jean Leon Gerome. Eakins was only the second American student to have studied there. Soon he studied with the atelier of Leon Bonnat as well, where he followed Bonnats teachings of anatomical precision which Eakins pursued in his own art during his professional career.

He later enrolled in Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where impressionism movement was becoming significant, but Eakins did not have slight interest in the style and preferred to continue what he felt was the better art, the realism.

Eakins' urge to continue pursuing the realist style increased when he became inspired by the Spaniard Painters, such as Velasquez, and Ribera, upon his six months trip to Spain. When he returned to America, he began to demonstrate what he has learned, combining the styles of the French and the Spaniards to form his own style.

Upon his return to America, he created paintings of sports genres, often placing himself in the picture as a subject. He did these oil paintings from studies he made of figures and perspective environments. Then he moved on to do other genres, painting his family members and other people in a large enviromental compositions.

In 1872, Thomas Eakins did a large portrait painting of his fiance Kathrin Crowell, entitled "Kathryn". Tragically, Kathryn died of meningitis in 1879 before they were able to wed.

Thomas Eakins started to teach as a volunteer at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art in 1876, then became a paid faculty in 1878. He went on to become the director in 1882. His teaachings were different and controversial at the academy. He did not follow the usual teachings of academis realism, where a student would study pencil drawing from casts vigorously before moving onto the human figures, then painting. Instead he did not have his students do much cast drawings but introducedthe painting methods early on even before much practice of charcoal drawings. Hefocused on the importance of precise markings by colors of paints. He also encouraged his students to use photographs to study the moving figures and anatomical accuracies. He believed that a teacher is better if he doesn't say too much and be dogmatic in any way. He wanted his students to find their own best methods and styles. But despite his free spirited ways of teaching, he did take the importance of forms, anatomy, and mathematical perspectives very seriously.

In 1884, Thomas Eakins married Susan Hannah MacDowell, his student at the academy. She was a daughter of a respected engraver in their community. Eakins and Susan first met in 1875 at his show "The Gross Clinic". Despite the negative criticisms, she admired Eakin's works and later enrolled in his class to study with him for six years at the Pennsylvania Academy. She followed Eakin's style and became quite a painter herself, winning the "Mary Smith Prize, for best female artist. Thomas Eakins and Susan shared the same passion for photography and took pictures of each other, Susan often posing nude. She soon retired from serious painting and decided to just focus on supporting her husband with his career and teaching. After her husband's death, she returned to painting, and pursued it until she died in 1938. In 1973 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts held a solo exhibition of her works.

Thomas Eakins continued teaching at the academy with his own distictive ways. He soon invited female students to study the figures with live male model, but with cloth covering the private parts. One time a female student, Amelia Van Buren, asked Eakins a question about the function of the hip mass. Eakins then had her visit his studio and undressed, showing her to answer her questions. He did so because he felt her questions would not be suffient by just words, but this created bit of a scandal, and some ill spirited students thinking of taking on the faculty position encouraged the negativity upon Eakins. Amelia Van Buren became a good friend of Eakins and is the subject for the famous portrait "Miss Amelia Van Buren", which is consideredto be one of the finest American portraits ever painted.

Eakins also took many photographs of nude students and models, as well as himself, which the overt displays of Eakin's genuine interest in the art of nude photography were negatively criticized by the ignorant academy and the society. These nude photographs are known as "The Naked Series". No painter had passion for photography as much as Thomas Eakins, and is known to have first introduced the photography for artistic purposes, bring the use of cameras to American art studios.

Then in 1886, Eakins began removing the cloth from the male models in the female drawing class, which forced him to resign from the academy. Thomas Eakins did his best to stand his grounds,with his good wife Susan backing him up by his side, but so much negativity from the ignorant society, and even from his in-laws, caused him much humiliation and permanent damage to his reputation till his death. Some of Eakin's dedicated students stood by his side and dropped out of the Academy to build their own school for Eakins to teach. This school is to be the Art Students League, an established school to this day. Eakins continued teaching at some other institutions as well, such as the Cooper Union, Nattional Academy of Design, and the Art Students' Guild. Thomas Eakins retired from teaching in 1898.

In 1902, Thomas Eakins was inducted to becoming a National Academician, a prestigious honor to this day, for realist artists by the National Academy of Design. Thomas Eakins made a major influence on the art of American Realism, and many of his great works are permanent collections at the museums across America, including the Eakins Oval, on Benjamin Franklin Parkway, across from the Philadelphia Museum of Art, which is named after the artist.

Recommended Book:

The Revenge of Thomas Eakins (Henry Mcbride Series in Modernism and Modernity) by Sidney D. Kirkpatrick This biography is another proof that such readings about the artist's life can greatly enhance the readers' appreciation of his works. Sidney Kirkpatric thoroughly researches selected letters and other documents to illustrate the artist's controversial life in greater detail.














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