Editing Thomas Eakins (section)

===Portraits===
[[File:Thomas Eakins, American - Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic) - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|''[[The Gross Clinic]]'' (1875), now housed in the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] and [[Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]]]] 
[[File:Eakins, Ashbury W Lee 1905.jpg|thumb|''Portrait of [[Ashbury W. Lee]]'', a 1905 oil canvas, now housed at [[Reynolda House]]]]
[[File:Thomas Eakins 005.jpg|thumb|''[[Miss Amelia Van Buren]]'' (c. 1891), now housed at [[The Phillips Collection]] in [[Washington D.C.]]]]

According to one reviewer in 1876: "This portrait of Dr. Gross is a great work—we know of nothing greater that has ever been executed in America".<ref>Cited in Sewell, p. 43.</ref>

<blockquote>I will never have to give up painting, for even now I could paint heads good enough to make a living anywhere in America.<ref>Eakins in a letter home to his father, June 1869. Goodrich, Vol. I, p. 50.</ref></blockquote>

For Eakins, portraiture held little interest as a means of fashionable idealization or even simple verisimilitude. Instead, it provided the opportunity to reveal the character of an individual through the modeling of solid anatomical form.<ref>Goodrich, Vol. II, pp. 57–58.</ref> This meant that, notwithstanding his youthful optimism, Eakins would never be a commercially successful portrait painter, as few paid commissions came his way. But his total output of some two hundred and fifty portraits is characterized by "an uncompromising search for the unique human being".<ref>Goodrich, Vol. II, pp. 58–59.</ref>

Often this search for individuality required that the subject be painted in his own daily working environment. Eakins' ''[[Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand]]'' (1874) was a prelude to what many consider his most important work.

{{quote box|align=right|width=30%|quote=Stunningly illuminated, Dr. Gross is the embodiment of heroic rationalism, a symbol of American intellectual achievement.|source=– William Innes Homer,<ref>Homer, p. 75.</ref> ''Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art''}}

In ''[[The Gross Clinic]]'' (1875), a renowned Philadelphia surgeon, Dr. [[Samuel D. Gross]], is seen presiding over an operation to remove part of a diseased bone from a patient's thigh. Gross lectures in an amphitheater crowded with students at [[Jefferson Medical College]]. Eakins spent nearly a year on the painting, again choosing a novel subject, the discipline of modern surgery, in which Philadelphia was in the forefront. He initiated the project and may have had the goal of a grand work befitting a showing at the [[Centennial Exposition]] of 1876.<ref>Marc Simpson, p. 32</ref> Though rejected for the Art Gallery, the painting was shown on the centennial grounds at an exhibit of a U.S. Army Post Hospital. In sharp contrast, another Eakins submission, ''[[The Chess Players (painting)|The Chess Players]]'', was accepted by the committee and was much admired at the Centennial Exhibition, and critically praised.<ref>Marc Simpson, pp. 33–34</ref>

At 96 by 78&nbsp;inches (240 × 200&nbsp;cm), ''The Gross Clinic'' is one of the artist's largest works, and considered by some to be his greatest. Eakins' high expectations at the start of the project were recorded in a letter, "What elates me more is that I have just got a new picture blocked in and it is very far better than anything I have ever done. As I spoil things less and less in finishing I have the greatest hopes of this one"<ref>Eakins to Earl Shinn, in a letter dated April 13, 1875, Richard Tapper Cadbury Collection, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.</ref> But if Eakins hoped to impress his home town with the picture, he was to be disappointed; public reaction to the painting of a realistic surgical incision and the resultant blood was ambivalent at best, and it was finally purchased by the college for the unimpressive sum of $200. Eakins borrowed it for subsequent exhibitions, where it drew strong reactions, such as that of the ''[[New York Daily Tribune]]'', which both acknowledged and damned its powerful image, "but the more one praises it, the more one must condemn its admission to a gallery where men and women of weak nerves must be compelled to look at it. For not to look it is impossible...No purpose is gained by this morbid exhibition, no lesson taught—the painter shows his skill and the spectators' gorge rises at it—that is all."<ref>Marc Simpson, p. 33</ref> The college now describes it thus: "Today the once maligned picture is celebrated as a great nineteenth-century medical history painting, featuring one of the most superb portraits in American art".{{citation needed|date=February 2013}}

In 1876, Eakins completed a portrait of Dr. John Brinton, surgeon of the Philadelphia Hospital, and famed for his [[American Civil War|Civil War]] service. Done in a more informal setting than ''The Gross Clinic'', it was a personal favorite of Eakins, and ''[[The Art Journal]]'' proclaimed "it is in every respect a more favorable example of this artist's abilities than his much-talked-of composition representing a dissecting room."<ref>Marc Simpson, p. 35</ref>

Other outstanding examples of his portraits include ''[[The Agnew Clinic]]'' (1889),<ref>''The Agnew Clinic''. [http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kjohnso1/pictures/eakinsagnew.jpg Swarthmore College] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070420041846/http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kjohnso1/pictures/eakinsagnew.jpg|date=April 20, 2007}} Retrieved on March 26, 2007.</ref> Eakins' most important commission and largest painting, which depicted another eminent American surgeon, Dr. [[David Hayes Agnew]], performing a mastectomy; ''The Dean's Roll Call'' (1899; [[:Commons:File:Eakins,_Dean's_Roll_Call_1899.jpg|image link]]), featuring Dr. James W. Holland, and ''Professor Leslie W. Miller'' (1901; [[:Commons:File:Eakins,_Leslie_W_Miller_1901.jpg|image link]]), portraits of educators standing as if addressing an audience; a portrait of [[Frank Hamilton Cushing]] (c. 1895), in which the prominent ethnologist is seen performing an incantation at the Zuñi pueblo;<ref>Goodrich, Vol. II, p. 132.</ref> ''Professor Henry A. Rowland'' (1897; [[:File:Henry Augustus Rowland.jpg|image link]]), a brilliant scientist whose study of spectroscopy revolutionized his field;<ref>Goodrich, Vol. II, p. 137.</ref> ''Antiquated Music'' (1900),<ref>[http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/42535.html ''Antiquated Music'', Philadelphia Museum of Art] Retrieved on March 26, 2007.</ref> in which Mrs. William D. Frishmuth is shown seated amidst her collection of musical instruments; and ''[[The Concert Singer]]'' (1890–1892),<ref>''The Concert Singer''. [http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kjohnso1/pictures/eakinsconcert.jpg Swarthmore College] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070420041927/http://www.swarthmore.edu/Humanities/kjohnso1/pictures/eakinsconcert.jpg|date=April 20, 2007}} Retrieved on March 26, 2007.</ref> for which Eakins asked Weda Cook to sing "O rest in the Lord", so that he could study the muscles of her throat and mouth. To replicate the proper deployment of a [[baton (conducting)|baton]], Eakins enlisted an orchestral conductor to pose for the hand seen in the lower left-hand corner of the painting.<ref>Goodrich, Vol. II, p. 84.</ref>

Of Eakins' later portraits, many took as their subjects women who were friends or students. Unlike most portrayals of women at the time, they are devoid of glamor and idealization.<ref>Goodrich, Vol. II, p. 67.</ref> For ''Portrait of Letitia Wilson Jordan'' (1888; [[:Commons:File:Eakins,_Letitia_Wilson_Jordan_1888.jpg|image link]]), Eakins painted the sitter wearing the same evening dress in which he had seen her at a party. She is a substantial presence, a vision quite different from the era's fashionable portraiture. So, too, his ''[[Portrait of Maud Cook]]'' (1895), where the obvious beauty of the subject is noted with "a stark objectivity".<ref>Homer, p. 224.</ref>

The portrait of ''[[Miss Amelia Van Buren]]'' (c. 1890), a friend and former pupil, suggests the melancholy of a complex personality, and has been called "the finest of all American portraits".<ref>Canaday, p. 95.</ref> Even [[Susan Macdowell Eakins]], a strong painter and former student who married Eakins in 1884,<ref>''Portrait of Thomas Eakins''. Philadelphia Museum of Art. [http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/45681.html Philamuseum.org] Retrieved on March 26, 2007.</ref> was not sentimentalized: despite its richness of color, ''[[The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog]]'' (c. 1884–1889) is a penetratingly candid portrait.<ref>''The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog''. [[Metropolitan Museum of Art]], Timeline of Art History. [http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eapa/hob_23.139.htm Metmuseum.org] Retrieved on March 26, 2007.</ref>

Some of his most vivid portraits resulted from a late series done for the Catholic clergy, which included paintings of a cardinal, archbishops, bishops, and monsignors. As usual, most of the sitters were engaged at Eakins' request, and were given the portraits when Eakins had completed them. In portraits of ''His Eminence Sebastiano Cardinal Martinelli'' (1902; [[:Commons:File:Eakins,_Sebastiano_Cardinal_Martinelli_1902.jpg|image link]]), ''[[Archbishop William Henry Elder (Eakins)|Archbishop William Henry Elder]]'' (1903), and ''Monsignor James P. Turner'' (c. 1906; [[:Commons:File:Monsignor_James_P._Turner_G438.png|image link]]), Eakins took advantage of the brilliant vestments of the offices to animate the compositions in a way not possible in his other male portraits.

Deeply affected by his dismissal from the academy, Eakins focused his later career on portraiture, such as his 1905 ''Portrait of Professor [[William S. Forbes]]''. His steadfast insistence on his own vision of realism, in addition to his notoriety from his school scandals, combined to hurt his income in later years. Even as he approached these portraits with the skill of a highly trained [[anatomist]], what is most noteworthy is the intense psychological presence of his sitters. However, it was precisely for this reason that his portraits were often rejected by the sitters or their families.<ref>When asked why he did not sit for a portrait by Eakins, the artist Edwin Austin Abbey said: "For the reason that he would bring out all those traits of my character I have been trying to conceal from the public for years." Goodrich, Vol. II, p. 77.</ref> As a result, Eakins came to rely on his friends and family members to model for portraits. His portrait of [[Walt Whitman]] (1887–1888) was the poet's favorite.<ref>Whitman famously wrote ''Eakins is not a painter, he is a force''. Goodrich, Vol. II, p. 35.</ref>