How Did Thomas Eakins Style Differ From the Ecoles Des Beaux Art
We explore in this post, the family unit, friends, education, and art of Thomas Eakins in relationship to his social contexts and highlight key events and paintings. Every bit many readers know, Cedarhurst cares for four paintings by Eakins —Samuel Murray, 1889;Professor Barker, 1886 (and the excised canvas fragment of Barker's hand turned into a divide painting); and Eakins' beloved sisterMargaret, 1871.
Thomas Eakins,Margaret, 1871, oil, xviii×xv″, Gift of John R. and Eleanor R. Mitchell, 1973.ane.17
Today, Eakins stands with America's best painters of the 19th century who was also the century's all-time art teacher. Eakins is highly regarded for his ability to capture in paint the psychology of both men and women. Rembrandt and Velázquez had this ability.
Known today for his portraits, he sold very few paintings in his lifetime. It is said thatall his paintings are portraits in some form or some other. Also praised for his outdoor scenes, especially his rowing depictions. His colors (blacks, browns, and tans) were a problem for some, not colorful plenty, and his paintings not "modern" enough. Eakins had no involvement in the contemporary art of his times (Courbet, Manet, or Impressionism). In 1864, Manet had but debutedOlympia and was the talk of the town. Though Eakins was in Paris in 1865, he remained an iconoclast interested only in painting what he saw in real life. He cared next to zippo for the smooth neoclassical way or the bombastic romantic style. Thomas Eakins danced to a different beat.
Eakins was smart, wealthy, single-minded, with no political or social ambitions. An excellent student, he excelled at fine art and scientific discipline. Eakins may have been bipolar; fought depression every day of his life. Sexual identity ambiguity and family unit tragedy (deaths of mother and sister Margaret; suicide of a niece) too haunted his life.
However, young Tom and his father, Benjamin hunted together, sailed, and bicycled. Tom loved rowing. The elder Eakins had amassed a fortune that would keep Eakins and his wife Susan Macdowell Eakins in practiced stead the balance of their lives.
Married to Susan Macdowell for 32 years. She was a former student and they cared deeply for each other. Afterwards Eakins died, Susan worked tirelessly to see that her husband was recognized by the major museums, especially the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Supremely gifted, Eakins always knew he wanted to exist an creative person, and unconventionally, his begetter supported and encouraged his son in this pursuit.
Young Eakins attended ane of the leading schools in the country, Philadelphia'due south Central High School where only i% of potential grammar school graduates were accepted. He was interested in painting, anatomy, medicine, physics, and sports. Eakins had a lifelong fascination with science. He gave the scientific accost at graduation in 1861.
Eakins developed fluency in French and six more languages—Italian, Castilian, German language, Greek, Latin, English. Also knew sign language. His command of French allowed him to navigate past the bureaucracy guarding admittance to Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Eakins sailed the Atlantic to Paris in 1866 to pursue his dream to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts with the most historic art instructor of the time, Jean-Léon Gérôme. Mary Cassatt likewise studied with Gérôme. In French republic, Eakins kept a periodical in French and returning home, for a fourth dimension, wrote letters to friends in French. While in Paris, Eakins also studied with Léon Bonnat, a portrait painter. Bonnat advised Eakins to visit Spain and especially the Prado, where Eakins fell in honey with paintings by Diego Velázquez. The Prado and Velázquez had a tremendously positive effect on Eakins' thinking every bit to what painting could be.
During Eakins' lifetime, the Second Industrial Revolution nicknamed the Gilded Age began to thrive. The last decades of the 19th century and the beginning two of the 20th century were times of corking economic achievement for the United States. It rapidly became the near industrious and wealthiest nation in the world.
The footstep of the world wasnoticeablyaccelerating with the inventions of trains, the motorcar, the airplane, telegraph, telephone, the photographic camera, light bulb, movies, typewriter, cash register, and fourth dimension clock. Eakins was one of the first painters to use a camera in making art. Eakins met motion lensman Eadweard Muybridge at the Academy of Pennsylvania. Eakins was an integral function of the Academy's thousand experiments, serving on committees, and there he perfected his own photographic invention—the wheel camera—that photographed human motility with one photographic camera.
Significantly, the Gilded Age saw the rise of the professional person class, especially in the science and medical professions. Sports were becoming popular as a middle grade way to relax. In 1871 Eakins paintedMax Schmitt in a Unmarried Shell. In 1875, Eakins paintedThe (Dr. Samuel) Gross Clinic considered by many to be his greatest painting. At the time, surgical teams withal wore concern suits. People despised the painting considering information technology to accept also much blood and shock value.
Eakins' late 19th century world was quickly condign modernized and his paintings responded to social and cultural innovations.
In an infamous incident, in 1886, Eakins was fired from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine art where he taught. During a figure drawing class, he removed the loincloth from the male model in order to further a point on musculature. Immediately afterwards, 54 students petitioned to have him reinstated. Within ten days Eakins' dismissal, 30 of his students set up, on their own, an Art Students League with Eakins every bit the sole instructor.
Thomas Eakins,Professor Barker'south Hand, 1886, oil, 15×12″ (reduced), Souvenir of Mr. and Mrs. S. Alden Perrine, 1973.6.1
Thomas Eakins,Professor George F. Barker, 1886, oil, 24×20″ (reduced from original lx×40″), Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Due south. Alden Perrine, 1973.6.1
Professor George F. Barker was painted the year of the dismissal. A well-regarded physicist and chemist, Barker was a friend and colleague of Thomas Edison. Originally, Eakins painted his love friend Barker as a three-quarter body-length portrait, not the head-only portrait we exhibit today. Remarking on the psychological identity of the hand, Eakins said, "a hand takes as long to paint as a caput; and a homo'south hand looks no more like another human'due south hand than a caput looks like another's."
In 1885, Samuel Murray was an art pupil of Eakins at the Fine art Student League. Eakins painted the Cedarhurst Samuel Murray in 1889. Murray was 25 years Eakins' junior and they were inseparable in the 1890s. They went to boxing matches, rode bikes together, and made pilgrimages to Walt Whitman. Murray was at his friend'southward bedside when Eakins died in 1916.
Thomas Eakins,Thomas Murray, 1889, oil, 24×xx″, Souvenir of John R. and Eleanor R, Mitchell, 1973.ane.16
Since his death, Thomas Eakins has been favorably compared to his contemporaries Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. These American thinkers contributed indelible principles towards Eakins' own philosophical outlook.
Whitman (1819-1892) asserted in his poetry the beauty of the human being torso, physical health, and sexuality. Whitman's poetry bankrupt new footing as it moved abroad from traditional verse to everyday cadence. Whitman was globe-famous every bit people from all over the world visited him in Camden, New Jersey. Eakins met Walt Whitman in 1887. They became friends and enjoyed many talks together. Eakins was a Whitman pallbearer, and he and Samuel Murray made the death mask of their friend.
Thoreau (1817-1862) was an exponent of Transcendentalism which consort the essential unity of all cosmos, the innate goodness of humankind, and trusted insight and experience over logic. America's Hudson River Schoolhouse painters owed a debt to this worldview.
Thoreau'sWalden is considered a philosophical treatise on labor, leisure, self-reliance, individualism, and our connection to nature. Thoreau's themes—the value in the beauty of the man trunk, the unity of creation, self-reliance, and individualism suffused the values of Thomas Eakins who lived from 1844 to 1916.
Thomas Eakins and his legacy had a tremendous impact on Robert Henri and his Ashcan painters. George Bellows with swain members of the Ashcan School started an American Revolution freeing artists to paint what they wished, much across what the Academy sanctioned. They—and in many ways following Eakins—chose Everyday Life.
George Bellows observed: Eakins' 1917 Metropolitan retrospective "proves him to be one of the best of all the earth'south masters. The greatest one man evidence I've seen and some of the very greatest pictures."
Source: https://cedarhurst.org/the-life-of-thomas-eakins/
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