Foreword

Vogel, Susan M.

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Foreword

Susan M. Vogel

Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures

We are pleased to present Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures, the first exhibition to survey this extraordinary group of paintings, watercolors, and drawings by one of America’s greatest artists at the beginning of his career. Although other exhibitions have included some of the rowing pictures, never before have all the extant works been brought...

Author

Susan M. Vogel

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00169.003

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15305

Foreword

We are pleased to present Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures, the first exhibition to survey this extraordinary group of paintings, watercolors, and drawings by one of America’s greatest artists at the beginning of his career. Although other exhibitions have included some of the rowing pictures, never before have all the extant works been brought together. Viewers will have an unprecedented opportunity to witness firsthand the creative process itself. We watch the artist as he works and reworks his theme, adding, subtracting, and turning the elements about. As Eakins’ ideas unfolded, he created some of the most widely recognized and acclaimed images in American art.

This project has received crucial and most generous support from The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., and from the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency, for which we express our sincere thanks. We are also grateful to the Virginia and Leonard Marx Publication Fund, The Andrew Mellon Fund, Mr. and Mrs. Holcombe T. Green, Jr., and Jan and Frederick Mayer, whose support ensured the high quality of the exhibition and book.

The exhibition has been organized by Helen A. Cooper, The Holcombe T. Green Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture. We owe special thanks to her, and to the other scholars whose essays form this book: Martin A. Berger, Christina Currie, and Amy B. Werbel. In her acknowledgments, Helen Cooper thanks the many colleagues who have been instrumental in the organization of the exhibition, and I can only underscore our appreciation for their contributions.

We are proud to share Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures with two of America’s greatest museums. Earl A. Powell III, director, National Gallery of Art, and Robert P. Bergman, director, The Cleveland Museum of Art, were enthusiastic partners from the beginning.

Above all we are most indebted to our lenders, and are gratified that every loan request found a positive response. Through their generosity, Thomas Eakins’ rowing paintings, watercolors, and drawings have been brought together in an exhibition that will surely surprise and move even those long familiar with the artist’s achievements.

SUSAN M. VOGEL
The Henry J. Heinz II Director

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Book details

BOOKThomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures

Helen A. Cooper

https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00169

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-15302

During the 1870s rowing became a tremendously popular sport in the United States. An enthusiastic rower, the young Thomas Eakins painted, sketched, and drew an extraordinary series of rowing pictures that were the most ambitious project of his early career. Eakins' 24 rowing works, which include some of the most celebrated and recognized images in the history of American art, are brought together and examined as a group for the first time in this book. Together they shed light on the artist's creative process and subsequent achievements as well as on social, cultural, and artistic concerns central to nineteenth-century audiences.

Helen A. Cooper, along with essayists Martin A. Berger, Christina Currie, and Amy B. Werbel, discusses various aspects of Eakins' rowing series, explaining his affection for the sport, his adoption of the images of popular culture into the realm of fine art, his commitment to novel, "modern" subjects, his preoccupation with perspective and measurement, and his belief that the most profound artistic truths were best expressed through the human figure—particularly the male figure. A comparison of the rowing pictures reveals that over the four years in which they were created, Eakins moved subtly from the analytic and descriptive toward the more feeling and suggestive. As a group devoted to a single subject, the series is unmatched in the oeuvre of this masterful painter.

Author

Helen A. Cooper

PublisherYale University Art Gallery

Print publication date July 1998 (out of print)

Print ISBN 9780300069396

EISBN 9780300232509

Illustrations 72 illus.

Print Status out of print

Publisher (out of print)

WorldCat

Google Books

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