Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Werbel, Amy

The life and work of Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), America’s most celebrated portrait painter, have long generated heated controversy. In this fresh and deeply researched interpretation of the artist, Amy Werbel sets Eakins in the context of Philadelphia’s scientific, medical, and artistic communities of the 19th century, and considers his provocative behavior in the light of other well-publicized scandals of his era. This illuminating perspective provides a rich, alternative account of Eakins and casts entirely new light on his renowned paintings.

Eakins’ modern critics have described his artistic motivations and beliefs as prurient and even pathological. Werbel challenges these interpretations and suggests instead that Eakins is best understood as an artist and teacher devoted to an exacting and profound study of the human body, to equality for women and men, and to middle-class meritocratic and Quaker philosophies.

Author

Amy Werbel

PublisherYale University Press

Print publication date June 2007 (in print)

Print ISBN 9780300116557

EISBN 9780300230956

Illustrations 69

Print Status in print

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List of illustrations

Thomas Eakins nude, holding nude female in his arms, looking down
Scandalous Sketch of B. Franklin and Young Woman
Portrait of David Rittenhouse
Portrait of Benjamin Howard Rand, M.D.
Professor Henry A. Rowland
George Cuvier
The Exhumation of the Mastodon
The Gross Clinic
The Artist in His Museum
Danäe and the Shower of Gold
The Roman Daughter
Slave Market
The Court of Death
The Agnew Clinic
The Agnew Clinic, detail
Dr. William H. Pancoast's anatomy dissection laboratory
The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull)
An Eclogue
The Crucifixion
Swimming
Six males, nude, two wrestling at right
Agnew clinic
Dissecting room, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
Spinning
Back of Male Torso
Portrait of Mary Adeline Williams
Anatomy Book, Plate IX
Anatomical Lecture by Dr. William Williams Keen
A Compendium of Picturesque Anatomy, Adapted to the Arts of Design, Painting, Sculpture, and Engraving: Plate IV
Dissection Study: Human (Tendons Crossing the Joint of the little Finger, Left Arm)
Dissection Study: Lion (Muscles of Hind Quarters and Leg)
The Women's Life Class
Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical: Vertical Section of Bladder, Penis, and Urethra (fig. 436)
William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River
Miss Amelia Van Buren
William Williams Keen, Jr., M.D.
A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand)
Eakins at about age six
Margaret Eakins and other figures on beach at Manasquan, New Jersey (?)
Thomas Eakins at about age thirty-five, leaning against fence
Posed nude couple
Nude with a bonnet
Nude female, reclining, from rear
Female nude kneeling on table
Thomas Eakins nude, semireclining on couch, from rear
John Wright nude, posing for George Reynolds at easel
Thomas Eakins and J. Laurie Wallace (both nude) standing by a boat at shoreline
Youths in grotto
William Rush and His Model
Plate VII. Venous Tumor
General Tom. Thumb, wife & child
Naked Series: Thomas Eakins in front of cloth backdrop, poses 1–7
Mécanisme de la physionomie humane, ou, Analyse électro-physiologique de l'expression des passions, fig. 7
Comparative Analysis of Anatomical Photographs
Renty, Frontal
Naked Series: African-American male, poses 1–7
Three Crowell boys nude, in creek at Avondale, Pennsylvania
Alice Liddell as a beggar child
Making a Train
Baby at Play
Arcadia
Woman pouring a bucket of water over another woman
La Première Pose
William Smith Forbes, M.D.
Self-Portrait
The Chess Players
The Writing Master (Portrait of Benjamin Eakins)
Woman in a Plaid Shawl

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Contents

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

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Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

In 1985, I had the good fortune to sit in Lloyd Goodrich’s living room on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. We drank tea, and for most of the interview his dry lips inhaled deeply on a cigarette that looked as though it had been planted there for several decades. He was an old man then, and I was a senior in college, working on an honors thesis about some drawings attributed to Thomas Eakins. He helped me with my project, and toward the end of the hour he looked into my eyes and advised me not …

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Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Historians of American art, and those writing on Eakins in particular, are blessed by an exceptionally generous group of colleagues. Various friends and mentors including Elizabeth Milroy, W. Douglass Paschall, Darrel Sewell, Alexander Nemerov, and H. Barbara Weinberg all have provided me with a great example and sound advice through years of research. I am grateful for more specific assistance with this project from Jonathan Weinberg, whose wisdom and brilliant insights make him easily a …

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Amy Werbel

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1. From Benjamin Franklin to Thomas Eakins: A Century of Philadelphia Scientists, Artists, and Provocateurs

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Sometime between 1883 and 1885, a colleague photographed Thomas Eakins unclothed and holding aloft a naked female student at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (fig. 1). In recent decades, this image has been tendered as the most tangible proof of the artist’s indiscretions. Although the scene undoubtedly is worthy of critique, it also is worth noting that Eakins hardly was the first indiscreet Philadelphian. More than a century before that shutter snapped, Charles Willson Peale sketched …

Author

Amy Werbel

Subjects: Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Science in artNudity in artArtists and models in art

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2. The Agnew Clinic, The Gross Clinic, The Crucifixion, and Swimming: Dissecting Eakins’ Paintings

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

When Charles Willson Peale painted Exhumation of the Mastodon, he intended it as a backdrop for the bones of the beast, installed in his encyclopedic museum. Both the painting and the bones were impressive and tangible evidence of the artist’s accomplishments and legacy. Eakins created several works with that same impulse, but the three that stand out most prominently in his career are The Gross Clinic, painted expressly for the Centennial Exhibition of 1876 in Philadelphia; Swimming (1885), …

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Amy Werbel

Subjects: Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Science in artNudity in artHuman anatomy

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3. Body Casts and "Anatomical Eyes": Thomas Eakins, William Williams Keen, and the Curriculum at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

In 1893, Dr. William Williams Keen found himself in a distinguished, though presumably nerve-wracking, position. Floating on a private yacht in Long Island Sound, Keen assisted in the removal of a cancerous tumor from the mouth of Grover Cleveland. Because Cleveland was president at the time, and undoubtedly considered his condition nobody’s business but his own, Keen waited until 1917 to discuss the secret operation. In that year, he proudly wrote about the procedure in the Saturday Evening Post …

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Amy Werbel

Subjects: Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Science in artNudity in artHuman anatomy

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4. Art, Pornography, Freak Shows, Medical Pictures, and the Guilty Pleasures of Photography in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Thomas Eakins’ artistic methods never have been the subject of much debate. The artist created preparatory drawings, photographic studies, oil sketches, and modellos that survive in preparation for finished works, and he wrote a lengthy manuscript on perspective that carefully explains his approach to the formulation of pictorial space. The surfaces of his finished works rarely hide the marks of brushes, palette knives, carving tools, pencil, or wash. In addition to the self-evident process in …

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Amy Werbel

Subjects: Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Science in artNudity in artPhotography

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5. Scandalous Exposures: The Trials of Thomas Eakins, William Smith Forbes, and Oscar Wilde

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

Thomas Eakins, Dr. William Smith Forbes, and Oscar Wilde all endured scandalous trials in the late nineteenth century as a result of their infractions of rules governing human bodies. For Eakins, the bodies were nude and female, for Forbes they were dead and black, and for Wilde, young and male. Although Wilde’s trial took place in London’s Old Bailey, Forbes’ in the courts of Philadelphia, and Eakins’ in the less litigious arenas of workplace and home, all three men were front-page news in …

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Amy Werbel

Subjects: Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Science in artNudity in artScandals

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Conclusion: Thomas Eakins’ Family Values

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

For Benjamin Franklin, resisting authority and extolling the middle class were the basis for a strident patriotism that shaped a young democracy. For Thomas Eakins, the same ideology informed his sensibilities, but resisting the establishment and its pretensions was better business for a revolutionary than it was for a high-end portrait painter. …

Author

Amy Werbel

Subjects: Eakins, Thomas, 1844-1916Science in artNudity in artFathers and sons

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Index

Amy Werbel

Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

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Amy Werbel

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Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

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