Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)

As an artist and teacher, Thomas Eakins championed a realistic approach to art and praised the use of preparatory drawings made from live models. During the 1880s, Eakins was one of the first American painters to use photography as a tool in training the artist's eye in the anatomy and physiology of the human figure. As with preparatory drawings, he regarded photographs as one step in the process of making a painting that would capture not only the realistic look of things and people, but also their expressive, emotional content. Though controversial and under-appreciated during his lifetime, Eakins along with his contemporary Winslow Homer, are now considered critical to the development of American art styles that no longer mimicked dominant European trends.    

Eakins was born in Philadelphia, a city with which he was to maintain strong associations throughout his life. His training began in 1862 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), where he graduated in 1866. Students at PAFA worked largely from antique casts, and the infrequent female models were obliged to wear masks in the interest of propriety. To supplement what he came to regard as inadequate knowledge of the human figure, Eakins also attended anatomical courses at Jefferson Medical College, participating in dissections and observing operations. This scientific approach was typical of Eakins, to whom science remained only slightly subordinate to art throughout his life.

After graduation, he traveled to Paris to study at the École des Beaux Arts and trained with Jean-Léon Gérôme, Augustin-Alexandre Dumont, and Léon Bonnat. At the École des Beaux Arts, Eakins was able to study the nude, but the emphasis was on the draftsmanship and conservative painting techniques of the academic Salon. Eakins's distaste for artificiality led him to explore possibilities of color, light, and the oil medium on his own, always yearning towards a naturalistic art, faithful to nature and free of affectation. Curiously, he seems to have been largely unaware or indifferent to the revolutionary activities of Gustave Courbet happening in Paris in the late 19th century, even though the French painter's stated goals had much in keeping with Eakins's own.

On his way back to America after three years of study in the French capital, Eakins stopped in Spain and remained for six months, studying the 17th-century Spanish masters in the Prado. In the work of Jusepe de Ribera and particularly of Diego Velásquez, Eakins found the naturalism and unidealized character that he had been seeking. On his return to America, Eakins began painting scenes of outdoor activities in strongly original style. Unlike the leading landscape painters working in the US, Eakins always subordinated his interest in the natural environment and play of light on objects to the particular human individuals whose activities were featured in the paintings. Whether portraying outdoor activities or indoor genre subjects, the surroundings were for Eakins merely an arena for austere but emotionally charged portraits of the persons and objects most familiar to him. 

Eakins was also known for his skill and unorthodox methods as a teacher. He began instructing students as a teaching assistant at PAFA in 1876 and pursued teaching with the same individual vision and zeal as painting. In a few years he rose through the ranks of the Pennsylvania Academy, becoming its director in 1882. His non-traditional pedagogy, especially his devotion to the study of the nude human figure, aroused opposition in conservative circles. Things came to a head in 1886, when he removed the loin cloth from a male model in a life class for women. Eakins's refusal to compromise his academic approach led to his resignation and the formation of the Art Students League of Philadelphia, which lasted for several years but in the end also ran afoul of conservative objection to nude studies. 

Eakins's "radical" views and his break with the Pennsylvania Academy damaged his standing in the community and further hampered his ability to obtain commissions and sell his work. From the mid 1880s on, Eakins concentrated on portraits and figure paintings, which reveal his psychological insight into character. His unsentimental, determined realism was continued in the work of his students, particularly Thomas Anshutz and that of Anshutz's student, Robert Henri. The DMA collection includes works by Henry Ossawa Tanner, Ivan Albright, and Susan Macdowell, all of whom studied under Eakins. The latter became his wife in 1884 and played a critical role in defending and promoting her husband's accomplishments after his death in 1916. 

Thomas Eakins, Swimming, 1885. Amon Carter Museum of American Art, 248949467: UMO

248949326: UMO. [Caption] Self-portrait by Thomas Eakins in 1902. Source: National Academy Museum, Wikimedia Commons, accessed July 15, 2016.

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In addition to Eakins's immense popularity and influence on subsequent generations of American artists, historians and critics have used his biography as an explanation for his status as a national icon. Eakins spent his entire life in his home city of Philadelphia apart from the four years he lived in Paris while attending the École des Beaux Arts.

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