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The final story of Thomas Eakins has not been written.
Modernists have celebrated him for his departure from French academic
traditions, and his artwork has had considerable influence over succeeding
modernist schools of art such as “The Eight.” But it is very much a stretch to
see him as a modernist, as everything about his subject and technique cries out
traditional, classical, and universal human themes. Thus Thomas Eakins painter
also finds an even more avid audience among modern-day classical artists, who
greatly admire his knowledge of anatomy and perspective and the power of his
compositions and themes. |
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He was born in Philadelphia, where he would spend most of his life. From
1866-70, he traveled to Paris to study with
French masters. Thomas Eakins gained admission to the
prestigious École des Beaux-Arts and entered
Jean Léon Gérôme’s
atelier on October 29, 1866. He enjoyed Gérôme’s meticulous Thomas Eakins drawing and exhaustive
research for his oriental and historical
paintings. As his training progressed, his
letters to his father reveal a growing
antagonism with the French academic’s
preoccupation with classical subjects. Even
Thomas Eakins painter love for
Gérôme
never abated, he began to study
on his own, and he later entered the atelier of
Gérôme’s
friend, Léon Bonnat, in 1869. Thomas Eakins preferred
the broad tonalities of Bonnat’s paintings
to that of his former teacher, but it was in
Spain that he would find his true artistic
allies. While visiting the Prado in Madrid,
Thomas Eakins discovered the tonalities and loose
brushstrokes of
Diego Velázquez and
Jusepe Ribera,
both of whom would deeply affect Thomas Eakins painter artwork
throughout his entire career.
Although today, Eakins is often heralded as
the greatest American painter of the
nineteenth century, his artwork found little
success in either American collections or by
the critics. Americans at the time preferred
the bright colors and classical idealism of
artists like
William Bouguereau and
Alexander Cabanel to the muddy tonalities
and gritty realism of Thomas Eakins, as best
exemplified by his 1875 painting The Gross
Clinic. In this Thomas Eakins painting, a surgical
operation comes to life in all its reality:
students look on with scientific fascination
as bloodstained surgeons operate on a
patient. The patient’s wound is displayed in
all its graphic detail, and the chief
surgeon, Dr. Gross, stands lecturing to the
students, as a woman in the lower left
covers her face in shock. From our vantage
point a hundred years later, the antagonisms
between Thomas Eakins and other academics of his
time seem of minor consequence considering
the unquestionable high quality of the best
on both sides of those arguments, especially
compared to the destruction of standards
that was soon to follow. The re-appreciation
well underway of all these great 19th
century masters is long overdue. |
Toperfect Group