What is Thomas Eakins best known for?
Thomas EakinsKnown forPainting, sculptureNotable workMax Schmitt in a Single Scull, 1871 The Gross Clinic, 1875 The Agnew Clinic, 1889 William Rush and His Model, 1908MovementRealismAwardsNational Academician5 more rows
What was Thomas Eakins most famous work and why?
Then in 1873 while on a hunting trip, Eakins contracted malaria and was incapacitated for two months. Quickly his portraiture work began to garner him attention, although it was not always well received as was the case with one of his most famous paintings The Gross Clinic (1875).
What movement was Thomas Eakins part of?
RealismAmerican RealismThomas Eakins/Periods
What was one of Thomas Eakins masterpieces?
Exhibition Minutes Recognized in Eakins' lifetime as his greatest work, Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) has gained stature since his death in 1916 as one of the most often reproduced, discussed, and celebrated paintings in American art history.
What did Eakins focus on anatomical correctness lead him to investigate?
What did Eakin's focus on anatomical correctness lead him to investigate? Humans in motion using photography.
Who painted Paris Street Rainy Day?
Gustave CaillebotteParis Street; Rainy Day / ArtistGustave Caillebotte was a French painter who was a member and patron of the Impressionists, although he painted in a more realistic manner than many others in the group. Caillebotte was known for his early interest in photography as an art form. Wikipedia
Why was Eakins fired?
In January 1886, lecturing about the pelvis to a class that included female students, Eakins removed a loincloth from a male model so that he could trace the course of a muscle. Angry protests by parents and students forced him to resign at the request of the Academy board.
What revolutionary techniques did Eakins use in his photography?
What revolutionary techniques did Eakins use in his photography? Eakins used the zoopraxiscope which produced a series of images of a moving subject that he could study to make his work more accurate.
Where is the Gross Clinic painting now?
Philadelphia Museum of ArtPortrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) / LocationThe Philadelphia Museum of Art is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at Eakins Oval. Wikipedia
Where did Thomas Eakins study?
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine ArtsCentral High SchoolThomas Eakins/Education
Where was Thomas Eakins born?
Philadelphia, PAThomas Eakins / Place of birth
Who is Thomas Eakins?
Thomas Eakins, in full Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins, (born July 25, 1844, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.—died June 25, 1916, Philadelphia), painter who carried the tradition of 19th-century American Realism to perhaps its highest achievement. He painted mainly portraits of his friends and scenes of outdoor sports, ...
Where did Thomas Eakins go to school?
Eakins went to France in 1866. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied with the leading academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme for over three years. Unaffected by the avant-garde painting of the Impressionists, Eakins absorbed a solid academic tradition with its emphasis on drawing. That period of his life can be explored through his own reports to friends and family in The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins (2009), edited by William Innes Homer.
What was the rejection of the painting by Eakins?
The rejection of the painting was the first of many rebuffs Eakins was to receive from Victorian contemporaries who shared his world but not his values.
What was the subject of Eakins' paintings?
A candid realist, Eakins simply painted the people and the world that he knew best, choosing his subjects from the life that he lived. Like the poetry of his aged friend Walt Whitman, who lived across the Delaware River in Camden, New Jersey, Eakins’s art was autobiographical, “a song of himself.”.
Where did Eakins go to study anatomy?
Concerned particularly with the human figure, he reinforced his study of the live model at the academy by attending lectures in anatomy at Jefferson Medical College and eventually witnessing and participating in dissections. Eakins went to France in 1866.
Where did Eakins study?
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content. Subscribe Now. After completing his study in Paris, Eakins went to Spain late in 1869, where he was greatly influenced by the 17th-century paintings of Diego Velázquez and José de Ribera.
Who was Samuel Gross?
Gross was a magnetic teacher and one of the country’s greatest surgeons. Eakins often selected moments that reveal multiple aspects of a scene and in this picture depicts Gross as both surgeon and teacher. Gross stands in the centre of a sombre amphitheatre, starkly top-lighted by a flood of cool daylight cascading down from a skylight above; he is dressed in black street clothes. He has opened an incision in the leg of the anesthetized male patient stretched out before him. While his assistants probe the wound, the doctor turns, one hand holding a scalpel covered with blood, to tell his students what he has done and what he will do next. At the left a seated woman, perhaps the patient’s mother, flings an arm across her face, shielding her eyes from the scene, her fingers clawing the air in anguish. Her emotion and the note of pain and suffering inherent in the subject contrast strikingly with the cool professionalism of Gross, whose calm features reflect assurance and determination as well as compassion. The painting objectively records a realistic drama of contemporary life, full of feeling but free of sentimentality. The Gross Clinic is generally agreed to be Eakins’s masterpiece.
Who was Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins?
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was born in 1844 in Philadelphia, the first-born and only male of the four children of Benjamin Eakins and Caroline Cowperthwait. His father was a calligrapher and writing master, who supported his family in comfortable circumstances by his profession and through prudent investments. Eakins was raised in the family home at 1729 Mount Vernon Street and would live there for the rest of his life (it still stands). He graduated from the Central High School in Philadelphia and in 1862 began to take courses at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and attended anatomy lectures there and at the Jefferson Medical College. In 1866 he went to Paris, where he attended the École des Beaux-arts and studied with the French painters Jean-Léon Gérôme, who permanently influenced him, and Léon Bonnat and the sculptor Augustin Alexandre Dumont. Before returning to the United States he spent six months in Spain. He greatly admired Spanish painting, particularly the art of Velázquez, which would also be lastingly influential.
Is Eakins famous?
Eakins' fame is almost entirely posthumous. He was little known and admired in his native city--when John Singer Sargent visited Philadelphia in 1903 and was asked what artist he would like to meet, he said "There's Eakins, for instance." The reply was, "And who is Eakins."--and even less known outside it. Eakins died in Philadelphia in 1916, at the age of seventy-one. [This is an edited version of the artist's biography published in the NGA Systematic Catalogue]
Who is Thomas Eakins?
Thomas Eakins was the eldest of five children born to Benjamin and Caroline Eakins. Despite a supportive and secure childhood, Eakins experienced losses early in life, including the death of his younger brother.
What were Eakins' accomplishments?
Accomplishments. Eakins was committed to scientific inquiry of natural laws to the point that he took anatomy lessons and observed dissections and surgeries. His uncompromising realism based on his astute observations brought a scientific rigor to his painting practice.
Who gave the lecture on Thomas Eakins?
This video is a recording of the lecture given at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC on October 27, 2005 by Doctor Kathleen Foster, curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The lecture focuses on the grand manner portraits created by Thomas Eakins during his career with a focus on how the portraits of others were often ways for the artist to reveal elements of his own personality and life.
Who is William Rush?
Thomas Eakins' William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River depicts Philadelphian sculptor and ship carver, William Rush, known for his allegorical works. In his studio, Rush stands in the background, carving a female figure based upon the nude woman posing in the foreground.
What is the significance of the painting "Rowing" by Eakins?
It also provides examples of the fine skill, attention to detail, and Realism that would dictate most of his oeuvre. Eakins depicts the figures at the height of motion.
What did Eakins use the brothers for in his paintings?
Eakins began a friendship with the men and used them as models in many of his paintings for the next two years.
What was Eakins' view of men and women?
They embodied a virile masculinity with calm and repose. His women, however, were always shown in interior settings, and he emphasized their inner world, showing them in contemplation.
What did Thomas Eakins do?
Thomas Eakins shared his era’s fascination with the individual human being—with his or her capacity for intellectual achievement, psychological intricacy, and vulnerability to the ravages of nature. Yet among painters of his time Eakins was unusual in that he expressed this interest directly. Other artists turned their attention to nature, as did ...
What did Eakins do in his lifetime?
Other artists turned their attention to nature, as did the Impressionists and other late-nineteenth-century landscapists, spending a lifetime painting fields, mountains, and flowers in dazzling sunlight.
Why did Eakins resign?
He was forced to resign his positions as teacher and director after he used a nude male model for a coed drawing class. Eakins was a progressive teacher who advocated sketching with oil paint, using photography for anatomical studies, and studying the body in motion.
What is the sensitivity of Eakins?
Eakins’s extraordinary sensitivity to each human being’s interior nature —even in works that portrayed subjects in their public capacities—their gaze or gesture with a private quietness that the artist had noticed.
What format did Eakins use to study men and women?
To carry out his study of men and women, Eakins chose the portrait format. Traditionally portraits had been commissioned, the artist collaborating with the sitter to portray him or her as the sitter wished to be viewed. But Eakins chose his subjects and uncompromisingly portrayed them as he saw them.
What did Eakins say about the nature of man?
Eakins was notable in that he alone seemed to understand the implications for art of the late-nineteenth-century intellectual attention to the nature of man. He might have said what the English lexicographer and critic Samuel Johnson made clear a century earlier: “ A blade of grass is always a blade of grass.
Who is Charles Sullivan?
Painter, photographer, sculptor, and controversial teacher; he achieved greatness in psychologically astute portraits and in luminous outdoor scenes. Charles Sullivan, ed American Beauties: Women in Art and Literature (New York: Henry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with National Museum of American Art, 1993) ...
What did Thomas Eakins do?
Thomas Eakins, America's greatest realist, dedicated his career to representing the human figure in oil and watercolor, sculpture, and photography. His style renounced idealized and romantic depictions and advocated instead for meticulous investigation of the human form and the natural world.
Where did Thomas Eakins live?
Eakins was born and lived most of his life in Philadelphia. He was the first child of Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, a woman of English and Dutch descent, and Benjamin Eakins, a writing master and calligraphy teacher of Scots-Irish ancestry. Benjamin Eakins grew up on a farm in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, the son of a weaver. He was successful in his chosen profession, and moved to Philadelphia in the early 1840s to raise his family. Thomas Eakins observed his father at work and by twelve demonstrated skill in precise line drawing, perspective, and the use of a grid to lay out a careful design, skills he later applied to his art.
What school did Eakins attend?
Eakins attended Central High School, the premier public school for applied science and arts in the city, where he excelled in mechanical drawing.
Who is Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins?
Considered one of the greatest American artists, he is represented in the collections of major museums across the country. More ... Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American ...
When did Eakins die?
It was not until after Eakins’s death that scholars and critics began to recognize his role in the history of American art. Eakins died on June 25, 1916. In November 1917, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a memorial exhibition of sixty of his paintings.
How many paintings did Eakins sell?
Although Eakins sold fewer than thirty paintings and only had one solo exhibition in his lifetime, having lost prestige when he left PAFA, he exerted an incredible influence upon his students, many of whom became renowned artists. It was not until after Eakins’s death that scholars and critics began to recognize his role in the history of American art. Eakins died on June 25, 1916. In November 1917, The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened a memorial exhibition of sixty of his paintings. The Pennsylvania Academy followed a month later with a display of 139 works. By mid-century, Eakins had not only become a source of pride for Philadelphia but also a celebrated figure in the canon of American art history, widely praised for his meticulous working methods, a portrayal of everyday life, and influential, though controversial, teaching strategies. Considered one of the greatest American artists, he is represented in the collections of major museums across the country.
What was Eakins' view of men and women?
Eakins' depictions of men and women were markedly different. His men, usually middle-class and professional, were portrayed at work or pursuing leisure activities, such as rowing and swimming. They embodied virile masculinity with calm and repose.
Who was Thomas Eakins?
Thomas Eakins (1844–1916): Photography, 1880s–90s. In the 1880s, through a series of technical advances that greatly simplified its practice, photography had expanded from being the province solely of the specialist into an activity accessible to the millions.
What was Thomas Eakins's camera?
In addition to being an accomplished painter, watercolorist, and teacher, Thomas Eakins was a dedicated and talented photographer. Working with a wooden view camera, glass plate negatives, and the platinum print process, he distinguished himself from most other painters of his generation by mastering the technical aspects of the new medium and requiring his students to do the same. For Eakins, the camera was a teaching device comparable to anatomical drawing ( 43.87.23; 43.87.19 ), a tool the modern artist should use to train the eye to see what was truly before it.
What was the artistic freedom of the classical world that Eakins strove to bring to life in his academic programs
The artistic freedom of the classical world that Eakins strove to bring to life in his academic programs at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (and in his Arcadian paintings ) also appears as an important element in many of his nude studies ( 43.87.19) with the camera.
Did Eakins use photographs?
Eakins did not generally use photographs as a preparatory aid to painting, although there are a small number of oils that have direct counterparts in existing photographs: the Amon Carter Museum’s The Swimming Hole and the Metropolitan’s Arcadia ( 67.187.125) being the foremost examples.
