Thomas Eakins

Among American artists of the last generation, Thomas Eakins was one of the strongest, leaving behind work of unescapable power, and exercising a widespread influence as a teacher. And yet less is generally known about his life and even his art, than about many of his minor contemporaries. Obscure during much of his career, and of a reserved nature, he preferred to be remembered by his work and through his pupils rather than by the printed word. But in recent years his name has taken on an increasing significance, until now his life, like his art, belongs to the world.

Thomas Eakins was born in 1844 in Philadelphia , the city in which almost his entire life was to be spent. His ancestry was Scotch-Irish, English, and Dutch, with a strain of Quaker. His immediate forebears, who had lived in America for at least a generation, were craftsmen-sturdy, hard-working, intelligent people, occupying respectable positions in their communities. His paternal grandfather, Alexander Eakins, was a Protestant Scotch-Irishman, who had come to this country from the north of Ireland with his wife, Frances Fife, about 1812, settling on a farm at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and pursuing his craft of weaving, in which he sometimes travelled by foot. His third child, Benjamin, the future father of the artist, was born on the farm in 1818 and as a young man came to Philadelphia , where he became a writing master, teaching the copperplate hand of the old style in the exclusive schools of the city, and engrossing documents such as deeds, diplomas, and testimonials.

All of this still remains today as when Thomas Eakins was a boy, even the brass nameplate beside the door: "B. Eakins." His childhood was that of any normal American boy of the period. The family, while not affluent, was in comfortable circumstances, and lived simply but well. As the years passed three sisters were born: Frances, Margaret, and Caroline, five, ten, and fifteen years younger than he. The relations among all the members of the family were unusually close; especially between his father and himself there was an exceptional companionship, frankness, and mutual respect. The older man being an enthusiastic sportsman, the two led a healthy, active outdoor life in the country around Philadelphia . Never a shy dreamer, the boy formed many friendships, some of which were to last the rest of his life.

After four or five years of this kind of education, half artistic and half scientific, Thomas Eakins possessed a thorough knowledge of perspective and anatomy and was able to do a strong drawing from the cast or model, but still had comparatively little experience of working from the nude and practically none of painting. Nor could better facilities for study be found elsewhere in America , for Philadelphia was one of the country's art centers and the Academy one of its best art schools. For any thorough professional training Thomas Eakins realized that it was necessary to go abroad. His father did not oppose the plan but on the contrary did everything in his power to help, especially financially. It was not easy for Thomas Eakins to leave, for he was deeply attached to his family, his home, his friends, and his city. In late September, 1866, at the age of twenty-two, he sailed from New York , and after a miserable ten days during which he was so sea-sick that he "lost all account of time", he arrived in France .

His vision was close to familiar visual reality. Thomas Eakins saw reality steadily, with penetrating observation, and seemed to get entire satisfaction from it, feeling no need to idealize it. He painted what he saw, with almost terrible candor; anything that appeared in the subject, and that seemed to him significant, reappeared in his work, regardless of conventions. Thomas Eakins distorted little; the liberties he took with nature consisted rather in the omission of non-essentials, the concentration on fundamentals. There was hardly a trace of conscious stylism or decorative intent.