Thomas Eakins

Thomas Eakins - Painter, sculptor and photographer

Born in Philadelphia, Eakins studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where he would later teach, from 1862, before traveling to Paris where he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts. His final six months in Europe were spent in Spain. Returning to Philadelphia in July 1870, he set himself up as a portrait painter with financial support from his father.

Eakins' study of anatomy extended to the study of human movement and in 1884 he assisted the photographer Myibridge in his studies of human and animal locomotion. Eakins himself was a keen photographer and produced a number of photographic studies of the figure in motion.

Many of his paintings depict the athletic male body in action. The importance of the male figure for Eakins is particularly evident in the many photographs that he took throughout the 1880s of himself and his (mostly male) students posing nude either in the studio or else engaged in vaious outdoor sporting activities.






John Biglin in a Single Scull 1873-74
Oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut








Max Schmitt in a Single Scull 1871
Oil on canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York









The Pair-Oared Shell 1872









Starting Out after Rail 1874
Oil on canvas mounted on Masonite
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston








The Swimming Hole 1884-85
Oil on canvas
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth









Baseball Players Practicing
Watercolor on paper









The Wrestlers








The Crucifixion 1880
Oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art








The Thinker (Portrait of Louis N. Kenton) 1900
Oil on canvas
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York






Nudity both inside the studio and beyond was intrinsic to Eakins' aim of fostering camaraderie amongst his students, as he sought to recreate within his circle the ethos and practices of an ancient Greek Academy.

The painting The Swimming Hole (c. 1884), which was based upon photographs taken by Eakins and depicts a group of seven nude men comprised of Eakins and his students, can be viewed as a contemporary rendering of a classical Arcadian theme.

Following a dispute between Eakins and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts over students admissions, the Board of Directors forced him to resign in 1886 - ostensibly over a claim that he had removed the loincloth from a male model in a mixed life drawing class.

Eakins died in Philadelphia, his growing reputation as a key figure in American realist painting secured by exhibitions held in New York and Philadelphia. After his death, a number of his negatives of nude men were distroyed.

Excerpts from: Aldrich R. & Wotherspoon G., Who's Who in Gay and Lesbian History, from Antiquity to WWII, Routledge, London, 2001






Portrait of Douglass Morgan Hall 1889
Oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art








Self-Portrait 1902
Oil on canvas
National Academy of Design, New York








Portrait of Walt Whitman
Oil on canvas 1887-88
Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia








Three Boys Wading in a Creek 1883
Gift of Charles Bregler, 1944









Thomas Eakins and J. Laurie Wallace at the Shore 1883
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1943








George Reynolds: Seven Photographs
American, Pennsylvania, 1883









Reclining Male Nude 1887–92
David Hunter McAlpin Fund, 1943






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