The Humanistic Tradition, Book 5 Romanticism, Realism, and the Nineteenth-Century World

103

TJ123-8-2009 LK VWD0011 Tradition Humanistic 6th Edition W:220mm x H:292mm 175L 115 Stora Enso M/A Magenta (V)

MAKING CONNECTIONS

103

the poet Walt Whitman (see Figure 27.12). Like most
nineteenth-century American artists, Eakins received his
training in European art schools, but he ultimately
emerged as a painter of the American scene and as an
influential art instructor. At the Pennsylvania Academy of
Fine Arts, he received criticism for his insistence on work-
ing from nude models and was forced to resign for remov-
ing the loincloth of a male model in a class that included
female students.
Eakins was among the first artists to choose subjects
from the world of sports, such as boxing and boating. A
photographer of some note, Eakins used the camera to col-
lect visual data for his paintings. He was among the first

artists to use his own photographs as the basis for true-to-

life pictorial compositions.

Eakins’ fascination with scientific anatomy—he dissect-

ed cadavers at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia—

led him to produce some unorthodox representations of

medical training and practice. One of his most notable can-

vases, The Agnew Clinic(see Figure 30.21), is a dispassion-

ate view of a hospital amphitheater in which the surgeon P.

Hayes Agnew lectures to students on the subject of the

mastectomy that is being performed under his supervision.

Eakins’ student, Henry Ossawa Tanner (1859–1937)—

like many other African-American artists—found Paris

more receptive than America. A talented genre painter,

In 1889 Eakins accepted a commission offered by students at the

University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine to paint a portrait

commemorating the retirement of a one of their favorite professors.

Eakins suggested a clinic scene that would include the surgeon’s

collaborators and class members. In drafting the composition, he

surely had in mind Rembrandt’s famous group portrait, The Anatomy

Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp(Figure 30.22). Eakins’ painting (Figure

30.21) shares Rembrandt’s dramatic staging, use of light to

illuminate figures in darkened space, and dedication to realistic

detail. Both paintings communicate a fresh and stubbornly precise

record of the natural world.

Figure 30.21 THOMAS EAKINS, The Agnew Clinic, 1889. Oil on canvas, 6 ft. 2^1 ⁄ 2 in. 10 ft. 10^1 ⁄ 2 in.

This wall-sized painting is the largest of Eakins’ canvases. At the far right is the likeness of Eakins

himself, painted by his wife Susan.

Figure 30.22 REMBRANDT VAN RIJN,

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp,

1632. Oil on canvas, 5 ft. 3^3 ⁄ 8 in. 7 ft. 1^1 ⁄ 4 in.