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A Drawing Manual by Thomas Eakins (Primary Sources in American Art)

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Just when you thought you knew all the ins and outs of the life of one of America's greatest artists, Thomas Eakins, even through attending one of the many fine museum exhibitions of his work that seem to be always in circulation, up pops this publication brought out some five years ago - a first publication of Eakins' 'textbook' on drawing, based on his lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In the well written introductory comments curator and editor Kathleen A. Foster -with tongue in cheek - shares the fact that Eakins rarely spent time with pencil in hand, preferring to guide his students to the brush as soon as possible.

In an essay by Amy B. Werbel we learn that Thomas Eakins was a devoted teacher and had planned to publish all of his lectures and notes and attendant scribbles at some point in his life, but when the scandalous dismissal of Eakins from the Academy occurred, the promised manuscripts were tucked away privately. But thanks to Yale University Press and the Pennsylvania Academy of Art we now have access to the artist's fine techniques of perspective drawing. The drawing manual offers student artists a unique opportunity to meet Eakins as instructor, to get a feel for his personality and teaching philosophy, and understand why he was renowned as an effective teacher. According to Amy Foster "The first five chapters are the most detailed and complete, and the most thoroughly illustrated, carrying the student through the principles and methods of three drawing systems: linear perspective, mechanical drawing and isometric drawing." This then is indeed a find for all art students and art lovers, especially those who appreciated representational art. Grady Harp, October 10