Thomas Eakins (1844 - 1916)
Era: 1860s - 1870s - 1880s - 1890s - 1900s
Related: homoeroticicsm - American art - USA
The Agnew Clinic (1889) - Thomas Eakins
Study of a Seated Nude Woman Wearing Mask (detail) (c. 1865-66) - Thomas Eakins
image sourced here.
Naked Series: female with dark mask, poses 1-7 (c. 1883) - Thomas Eakins
image sourced here.Although his personal sexual preference is an ongoing matter of discussion, painter and teacher Thomas Eakins is solidly aligned in the history of art with a homophile sensibility. Throughout his career Eakins sought to evoke a realistic classicism in his depictions and thus produced works that celebrated ideals of form, particularly the male figure. --http://www.glbtq.com/arts/eakins_t.html [Mar 2006]
Biography
Cowperthwaite Eakins (July 25, 1844 - June 25, 1916) was an American Barbizon painter, sculptor, and fine arts educator.
Born in Philadelphia. Studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, then in Europe 1866-1870, notably with Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris. Returned to the Pennsylvania Academy to teach starting in 1876, where his emphasis was on classical techniques of working from life, including use of nude models which brought puritanical criticism against him at the time. Eakins was a pioneer in the use of photography as an aid to composition.
Though his is not a household name, Eakins is regarded as one of finest realist painters and portraitists of his day, and one of the top American artists of any period. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Eakins [Aug 2005]
see also: art - 1866 - 1883 - USA