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EAKINS, THOMAS COWPERTHWAITE
and his teaching at PAFA and the Philadelphia Art
Students’ League. Many of these images were made
with the assistance of or, often, by his students, includ-
ing Susan Macdowell, whom he married in 1884. One
group of nudes, taken in the studio, was comprised of
photographic “académies”—studies of poses echoing
classical sculpture and painting—that might be used
in the creation of narrative art. Insisting that students
should learn from life rather than by drawing or paint-
ing only from classical casts, he had them pose for each
other in these photographs. Depicting a reclining nude
Bill Duckett or an unnamed female model reposed in
the manner of an odalisque, he and the students created
beautiful and technically useful images.
In 1883 Eakins also pictured his students, profes-
sional models, and himself posing in a separate group
of images he called the “naked series.” “J. Laurie Wal-
lace: Naked Series” and others from the group showed
subjects in uniform standing poses seen from seven
perspectives. Mary Panzer has linked these photographsto Eakins’s motion series, stating that whereas the mo-
tion photographs revealed the body’s position in action,
the naked series showed comparable views of weight
shifts in the stationary fi gure. (see Danly and Leibold,
42, Further Reading). Hanging these images together
in the PAFA studio, Eakins and his students used them
to determine both the fi gures’ centers of gravity and
their differences of physique within identical poses.
The photographs helped them to paint, draw, or sculpt
fi gures with lifelike volume and movement.
Eakins’s third collection of nudes featured himself
and his students together in idyllic communion with
nature. These pictures were taken during outdoor
excursions to nearby locations in Pennsylvania and
New Jersey and provided the backbone for Eakins’s
paintings Arcadia (c. 1883), An Arcadian (c. 1883),
and The Swimming Hole (1884–85). Referencing both
a classical past and a present of unashamed camarade-
rie, the photographs exhibited the bonds of friendship
and honest integrity that linked teacher and studentsEakins, Thomas. Eakins, Thomas. Nude
Men on the Beach.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1943
(43.87.23) Image © The Metropolitan
Museum of Art.Hannavy_RT72353_C005.indd 460 7/5/2007 11:18:01 AM