Anatomy of a Painting: Thomas Eakins
“A Pupil Such As You” – Thomas Eakins gifts a work to his Parisian instructor.
This article originally appeared in Watercolor Artist Magazine. Subscribe now so you don’t miss any great art instruction, inspiration, and articles like this one.
In 1870, after five years of study in Europe, Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916) returned to his hometown of Philadelphia and set up shop as a professional artist. Choosing subjects drawn from his own experiences, Eakins sought to utilize what he had learned about constructing a composition and painting the human figure.
Two themes particularly interested him: portraits of friends and family, and sporting scenes that featured the figure in motion. He painted the portraits using a dark palette, bringing a quiet intensity to the subjects. Although the sporting scenes introduced the landscape, Eakins painted them in his studio, using color studies as references for the populated images.
As a student, Eakins had shown little interest in Impressionism or the academic art of the French Salon; his realism was dictated by a personal vision that was stubbornly immune to fashion. Soon after returning home, he embarked on a series of works unlike those anyone had done before, by painting rowers on the Schuylkill River, in eastern Pennsylvania. An amateur rower, Eakins knew accomplished oarsmen such as Max Schmitt and the brothers John and Bernard Biglin. His first major canvas showed Schmitt, painted in razor-sharp focus, rowing on the Schuylkill on a clear day. Over the next few years, the Biglin brothers became his preferred rowing models.
“His work speaks in the direct sensory language
—LLOYD GOODRICH
of form and color, texture and pigment.“
In one series of works, Eakins studied John Biglin rowing under strong sunlight. Biglin is seen in profile, his arms extended at the end of a backward stroke. The artist sent the Yale watercolor, John Biglin in a Single Scull, to Jean-Léon Gérôme, his former teacher in Paris. Gérôme wrote back, “Your watercolor is entirely good, and I am very pleased to have in the New World a pupil such as you who does me honor.”
John Biglin in a Single Scull
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John Biglin in a Single Scull was preceded by several preparatory works. A drawing much larger than the watercolor was done as a perspectival study—this wasn’t unusual, given Eakins’ interest in science and mathematics— and a small oil painting focused on the rich colors of Biglin’s figure and the water reflections. Eakins also made a replica in watercolor, now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which suggests his satisfaction with the painting.
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Eakins’ watercolors were as carefully plotted and executed as his oils. His images are comprised of a multitude of small brushstrokes. The scrupulous fidelity to visual fact is leavened by a lightness of touch and the luminous white paper that shows through the transparent colors. John Biglin in a Single Scull shimmers with an impression of summer heat.
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Eakins’ attention to preparation and detail extended to the study of reflections on water. “There is so much beauty in reflections,” the artist wrote, “that it is generally well worthwhile to get them right.” He could have been describing the phenomenon we see in this painting. “Everyone must have noticed on the sides of boats and wharves or rocks, when the sun is shining and the water in motion, never-ending processions of bright points and lines, the lines twisting into various shapes, now going slowly or in a stately manner, then dancing and interweaving in violent fashion.”
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For all his scientific meticulousness, Eakins’ work is rarely dry. As explained by his biographer Lloyd Goodrich, “His understanding of reality was not merely intellectual, but deeply rooted in the senses. His work speaks in the direct sensory language of form and color, texture and pigment.”
About the Author
Jerry N. Weiss is a contributing writer for fine art magazines. He teaches at the Art Students League of New York.
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