Eakins, Thomas

Eakins, Thomas (1844–1916). American painter, primarily of portraits, active for most of his life in his native city of Philadelphia; he is regarded by most critics as the outstanding American painter of the 19th century and by many as the greatest his country has yet produced. After studying at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, he moved to Paris and continued his training under Gérôme, 1866–9. However, he learnt more from a six-month visit to Spain, where he particularly admired the precise and uncompromising sense for actuality he found in Velázquez and Ribera. In 1870 he returned to Philadelphia and in 1876 he began teaching there at the Pennsylvania Academy. He was attacked for his radical ideas, particularly his insistence on working from nude models, and in 1886 he was forced to resign after allowing a mixed class to draw from a completely nude male model. Eakins's quest for realism led him to study anatomy and make full use of Muybridge's photographic researches, but the scientific bent in his work is of less importance than his honesty and depth of characterization. His portraits are often compared with Rembrandt's because of their dramatic play of sombre lighting and sense of inner truth. The most famous of his paintings is The Gross Clinic (1875, Thomas Jefferson Univ., Philadelphia), which aroused controversy because of its unsparing depiction of surgery, an experience that was repeated with The Agnew Clinic (1889, Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia). Because of financial support from his father, Eakins could continue on his chosen course despite public abuse, but much of his later career was spent working in bitter isolation. It was only near the end of his life that he achieved recognition as a great master, and in the first two decades of the 20th century his desire to ‘peer deeper into the heart of American life’ was reflected in the work of the Ashcan School and other realist painters; Robert Henri was one of his greatest admirers. In addition to portraits, Eakins painted genre scenes of Philadelphia life (boating and bathing were favourite themes), and he also took photographs and made a few sculptures. His wife, Susan Hannah Macdowell Eakins (1851–1938), whom he married in 1884, was likewise a painter and photographer, as well as an accomplished pianist.