Thomas Eakins 1844-1916

Susan MacDowell Eakins (the artist's wife)
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York
Acquired from the above, 1958

Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, New York, 1933, no. 452, p. 204

Very good condition, lined, recently cleaned; under UV: no apparent retouching.
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Despite Thomas Eakins' conventional artistic training at both the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at the Académie Julian in Paris, he developed his own convictions about how one should study the human body. Though traditional academic training involved studying the figure from plaster casts of antique statuary, Eakins stubbornly skipped such lessons, as he believed studying from a living figure was much more valuable, and supplemented his training with classes in anatomy at the Thomas Jefferson Medical School. Eakins stated: "I don't like a long study of casts, even the sculptors of the best Greek period. At best, they are only imitations, and an imitation of imitations cannot have so much life as an imitation of nature itself" (W.C. Brownell, "The Art Schools of Philadelphia," Scribner's Monthly Illustrated, XVIII, 1879, p. 742).

Eakins preferred to teach from the nude model since he felt an artist could not paint a clothed figure if he did not understand the anatomical movement and form of the body underneath. This firm belief  fueled his radical teaching methods when he started as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1876. His classes involved life drawing from both male and female models which were generally nude or minimally covered.  Though anatomy had been a part of the Academy's curriculum before Eakins's arrival, Eakins underscored the need for his students to go beneath the surface of the skin and understand the core basics of the figure.  He also involved his students in photographic studies of the figure, using stop-action photography to observe bodies in motion, and multiple cameras to document a single pose from various angles.

Eakins quickly rose among the ranks at the Academy and became director by 1882. Despite his prominent role, some of Eakins' students and fellow teachers disagreed with his progressive teaching methods. His insistence on studying from the nude incited a controversy that, when coupled with the ambitions of his younger associates to oust him, eventually led to the demise of his teaching career. In 1886, when he removed the loincloth of a male model in a class where female students were present, he was forced to resign from the Academy.

In 1877, a year after accepting his teaching position at the Academy, Eakins completed William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River to commemorate one of the first great American sculptors, William Rush. Rush, a fellow Philadelphia artist, produced several sculptures to celebrate the city's Fairmount Water Works, which pumped water from the Schuylkill River to the city's inhabitants. Despite the painting's title implying Rush as the subject, a nude model and her discarded clothes are the focal point of the composition, while Rush, carving his Nymph and Bittern sculpture, is a secondary figure occupying the shadows of the background.

In William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River, Eakins aligned himself, as well as his working methods, with a long-respected artist of Philadelphia's past. Though Eakins places a chaperone in Rush's studio, it is doubtful that Rush's model -- a successful merchant's daughter-- would have dared to pose nude, an assignment traditionally given to prostitutes. The suggestion that Rush worked from a nude model is therefore Eakins' own; a flourish he likely invented to lend an aura of historical authenticity to the concept of working from the nude.

By the early twentieth century, Eakins had largely stopped painting historical and genre subjects, preferring instead to paint portraits. But in 1908, Eakins returned once again to the subject of William Rush and his model, painting two versions. Of these two later versions he completed, his first composition (Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York) has the same title as the 1876 work and includes many of the same elements: the artist, the model, the chaperone, and details of the artist studio. In the second, William Rush and His Model (Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, Hawaii), the majority of these details are largely absent, leaving the focus purely on the model and artist. The present work is a highly finished study for this last variation, and as is often the case with his studies, differs only slightly from the finished painting.

With the details eliminated, William Rush and His Model transcends its specific reference to Rush, to become a symbol of the universal relationship of artist and model.  Scholars have noted that the artist in this last version looks more like Eakins than Rush. William Homer notes "Rush (now looking like Eakins) is presented as a workman and in no way superior to [his model]; she receives the greater amount of light and, by virtue of her frontal pose, is identifiable as a specific person. The artist exists to reveal the truth of nature to the viewer, not to intercede and call undue attention to himself. In this painting, Eakins summarizes his central belief about art and its making" (Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art, 2002, p. 246-246). There are only a few instances in which Eakins inserted himself into his paintings: Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (The Champion Single Sculling) (1874, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), The Gross Clinic (1876, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), and The Swimming Hole (1883, Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas). All of these pictures underscore aspects of the body – through athleticism, anatomy and the nude – and focus on Eakins' core artistic principles.