biografia di Thomas Cowperthwait EAKINS (1844-1916)

Birth place: Philadelphia, PA

Death place: Phila.

Addresses: Phila.

Profession: Painter, sculptor, teacher, photographer

Studied: PAFA; …cole des Beaux-Art, with Gérôme, Bonn‚t, 1866; visited Spain, 1890, where he admired works by Velasquez; anatomy, Jefferson Medical College, 1870.

Exhibited: Paris Salon 1875, 1890; PAFA, 1876-17; NAD,1877-96, 1905 (prize); Brooklyn AA, 1878, 1881, 1883; Boston AC, 1878-91; AIC; Mass. Mechanics Assn., Boston (med.); Columbian Expo, 1893, Chicago (med.); Paris Expo, 1900; Pan-Am. Expo, Buffalo, 1901 (gold); St. Louis Expo, 1904 (gold); PAFA, 1904 (gold); Corcoran Gal., 1907-14; CI, 1907 (prize); AAS, 1907 (gold); Babcock Gal., NYC, c.1992 ("Art & Archives of Thomas Eakins")

Member: ANA, 1902

Work: PAFA; PMA; Jefferson Medical College (The Gross Clinic"); Univ. Pennsylvania; Villanova Univ.; BM; AIC; Gilcrease Inst.; Corcoran; BMFA; NGA; Roman Catholic Univ.; Fort Worth (TX) Art Mus. His photographs (often studies for his paintings), 1880-1904, are at PMA and MMA; sculpture: horses on the Brooklyn Arch, reliefs on the Trenton Monument."

Comments: One of America"s greatest realist painters of portraits and figurative works. The latter category included his famous Gross Clinic," which showed the surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross at work before a group of observing students, modern genre works such as "The Swimming Hole," and sport subjects such as "Max Schmitt in a Single Scull" and a series of boxing pictures from the 1890s. His working method involved a close, at times scientific, study of the mechanics of nature. As a teacher at the PAFA (beginning in 1873, chief instructor, 1876), he emphasized anatomy, advocating the study of the nude in order to understand figural construction. Eakins resigned from the Academy in 1886 after a stormy disagreement with the its board of directors, partly about his having removed the loin cloth from a model in the women's life class. Among his students: Thomas Anshutz, Henry O. Tanner. Other teaching positions: PAFA summer classes at Chester Springs, PA; Brooklyn Art Guild, 1880s; Philadelphia ASL, (which he helped found after he resigned from PAFA ó the organization lasted only a few years); NAD, 1887; ASL, 1887-95. He was in the North Dakota Badlands, 1887. A friend of Walt Whitman, he painted his portrait in 1887 (PAFA). Many of his portraits were of friends and family, as well as prominent Philadelphia figures. He was also a very talented photographer (his photos date from 1880-1904) and used the medium not only as an aide memoir for his paintings but to create sophisticated works of art in themselves. His wife, Susan (see entry), was also a painter and photographer. Upon his death, Babcock Galleries in NYC was appointed to liquidate his estate.

Sources: WW15; William I. Homer, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work (New York: Abbeville Press, 1992); Elizabeth Johns, Thomas Eakins: The Heroism of Modern Life (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983); Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press, 1982); P&H Samuels, 149; Fink, Ame. Art at the 19th c. Paris Salons, 340; Witkin & London, 128; The Boston AC; Falk, Exh. Record Series.