Customer Reviews

The Revenge of Thomas Eakins

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I'm a fan of Sidney Kirkpatrick's writing.

In previous efforts that I've read he has revealed (usually having in fact discovered) amazing true drama from the lives of little known individual heroes in the middle of well-known enormous events; the story of an archeologist who happened upon the largest Pre-Columbian Peruvian art discovery, the story of a disenfranchised marine biologist who took on one of the largest drug dealers in the 1980's cocaine traffic trade, the story of a 75 year old film director who tried to resurrect his career by solving Hollywood's most famous unsolved murder, as well as an amazing biography of the Michael Jordan of psychics- Edgar Cayce. Kirkpatrick has a knack for identifying and tackling great drama and he writes it beautifully to boot.

I knew of Thomas Eakins from his paintings of rowers on the Schuykill. From Kirkpatrick I was more properly introduced to Eakins and learned that he was a fiercely independent genius who was castigated, disgraced and impoverished.

The Revenge of Thomas Eakins is an apt title. Eakins was just far too ahead of his time.

Kirkpatrick's effortless style and attention to detail really drops you right into the mid to late 1800's, comfortably sharing the historical context along with development of Eakins.

I recommend you read this one right away.

I highly recommend this well-written, balanced biography of Thomas Eakins. It would be a perfect choice for readers with any level of familiarity with Eakins' paintings. I agree with the other reviewers that the book does an excellent job of placing Eakins' work in its historical context. Eakins emerges as a fascinating personality, and a guy who would have been great to know. In my opinion, Kirkpatrick deals honestly with the controversial aspects of Eakins' character, but without dwelling on them ad nauseum.

I thought that the descriptions of the paintings themselves were especially effective. The book communicated exactly the information I wanted to read about for paintings like The Gross Clinic and Max Schmitt in a Single Scull: the main points of the design, the background and tecnhical details, the dramatic impact, and the pyschological levels. I have read very few biographies of artists that were this helpful.

The book is generously and beautifully illustrated. There are 42 color plates, and each of those paintings is described in detail in the text. There are also a number of drawings, sketches, maps, and photographs (some taken by Eakins, and others of Eakins and his family and friends). The photos in particular (such as the one of Eakins, himself nude, carrying a nude female toward the camera) underscore the independent and controversial aspects of Eakins' character.

This was a very enjoyable read, and a tribute to a great artist.

This is really the first book written that tells the full Thomas Eakins biography in context and gives all the details without the kind of filter that sometimes says more about the writer than it does about the subject. Kirkpatrick takes us back to turn-of-the-century America and allows us to see Eakins' life and work in the context of his times--and lets us make up our own minds. It is a wonderful read and an excellent biography for everybody-even those who don't know of Eakins or his work. I loved it!

When I picked up this very well done bio the little I knew about Eakins was the wonderful scull portraits, the shad fishing pictures and that a vague scandal surrounded his name. Now having read almost 500 pages, I want to know even more and there is a lot more to know.

Kirkpatrick covers the whole life, giving balance to each stage. It is a full book. There is no "filler". The research and background knowledge of the author shine forth on every page. The author shows great restraint in sticking to the known facts, otherwise this would be a 1000+ page book!

For instance, Eakins' fixation with the body, down to using mechanical contraptions on dead animals to demonstrate movement to students is factually presented. It is not sensationalized or psychoanalyzed. Similarly, whether Eakins was oblivious to or had discounted the consequences of asking so many females (again and again) to pose nude in this Victorian age is not discussed. The known instances of these invitations and the resulting alienation of those who said no, and the alienation of the friends and families of those that said yes are covered. With this background we learn the known facts of the tragedy of his niece Ella, and student Lillian, and about accusations regarding his sister Margaret. There are some documented opinions of family members, but the author stays with the known record.

No wonder, the self portrait that adorns the cover shows a tortured man with barely restrained sadness and anger.

It's ironic that the lack of appreciation for Eakin's works served to maintain the integrity of the collection for future generations. It's interesting that due to the nondescript Charles Bregler's collecting and acquiring memorabilia of his beloved teacher, today's researchers have a large collection of personal letters, photos and sketches to work with.

This is a very readable book. It is rich in plates and photographs that illuminate the text. I am ready for another biography to take on the "whys" of this remarkable life.

I find all of Kirkpatrick's books to be great reads. They combine impeccable scholarship with elegant style and profound insight. As I am interested in art, I found this one to be especially powerful -- the first major biography of Eakins that brings this enigmatic man into focus for me. Kirkpatrick has filled in the puzzling gaps in Eakins's life and brought new and unexpected meaning to Eakins's artistic and personal struggles against the conservative art establishment in Philadelphia that denied him recognition in his lifetime.

A common myth of all poor starving artists is that they will be discovered after they're dead and be venerated forever. In an age when you can get rich and famous by glueing broken crockery to canvas or stuffing a dead fish into a tank of formaldehyde, it is usually a case of a poor choice of publicists than undiscovered talent and the real loser is the poor fool who buys contemporary art for a high price only to watch the value crash when the artist moves on and his work starts to fall apart or rot.

But there was a time when truly great artists did suffer. We all know about Van Gogh, but Thomas Eakins was also a classic example. Everyone loves his sports pictures and his two group portraits of heroic doctors lecturing their students (the Gross Clinic and the Agnew Clinic) even make a Christian Scientist envy those who have chosen the medical profession.

But for my money, his portraits stake the primary claim to Eakins' greatness. His sitters usually refused to accept their portraits, some destroyed them, others refused to sit at all (Mr. Kirkpatrick quotes one lifelong friend of Eakins who always refused to sit for him because he was afraid that Eakins would uncover what he had spent his lifetime trying to conceal).

And I'd imagine that viewing your Eakins-painted portrait for the first time must have been an eerie, almost supernatural event. Looking at his splendid portraits today, you KNOW the subjects, their hardships and triumphs, their hopes and fears. These are not prettified and bowdlerized pictures to hang on a wall, these are the real thing. It is as if Eakins stripped away the skin of his sitters to reveal the pure psyche underneath. They are beautiful and informative and moving. Fifteen minutes with an Eakins is more enlightening than a month in a room of Sargeants.

Mr. Kirkpatrick's fine biography is one of the best on any subject. He manages to capture the man and his times and the man IN his times, in a way that few biographers can accomplish. He manages to make the story exciting, even as he takes the reader through an almost brushstroke by brushstroke description of Eakins' painting process.

At first, my only reservation was the title. The point of it is to show how Eakins fame after death was his revenge for the tragedy of his career (a close and valued student conspiring to replace him, loss of reputation for insisting on painting things as they are, base and highly publicized accusations [about which Mr. Kirkpatrick carefully assembles the evidence for and against, describing the scandals as fairly and dispassionately as he can], rejection of his works, etc.), but the author discusses Eakins death only two pages before the end of the book, hardly enough time to develop the world's slow acceptance of Eakins' genius.

But then I realized that the book itself is Eakins' revenge. Very few people of even the first rank ever have a biography written about them as fine as this one. This book will be read as the classic text for the next one hundred years and it should be read, merely for its quality, by everyone no matter how slim their interest in American painting.

I have read and enjoyed several of Kirkpatrick's other books (on very different subjects), and was eager to see how he would handle a subject as complicated and controversial as Thomas Eakins. Through his telling of the Eakins story, the reader becomes privy to moments of nearly cosmic dimension as well as deep emotion. It's utterly convincing, lucid and intelligent, highly informative and extremely compelling. His most moving book to date.

Refreshingly pleasant writing style. I couldn't put it down. Was glad that several color plates included--amazingly, so many art biographies don't include the actual art work.

This is a fine biography of the great American painter. It is a very substantial look into Eakins life, era, and evolution as a painter. The author treads very lightly on Eakins personal proclivities, a dated but acceptable reluctance. If only all artist biographies were so excellent. An essential read for anyone interested in painting, you will learn a great deal.

I came to this book seeking to renew my acquaintance with Eakins scholarship following a visit to Philadelphia to see the newly-restored Gross Clinic, never having read any of Kirkpatrick's previous books. Could this book really be better than Lloyd Goodrich's definitive 2 volume biography? In a word: yes. It is nothing short of a masterful page-turner, comprised of relatively short chapters that keep the book flowing along. Kirkpatrick incorporates the relatively recently rediscovered Bregler Collection of Eakins letters, etc., which wonderfully illuminate many previously obscure aspects of Eakin's life and scandals. Approaching Eakins primarily as a story teller, rather than as an art historian has worked wonderfully. This book would probably be the best biography with which to begin a study of Eakins. I think that Elizabeth Johns' Thomas Eakins: The Heroism of Modern Life remains the best scholarly analysis of Eakins paintings (and maybe the best book ever written about Eakins), and would be an excellent pairing to Kirkpatrick's modern biography.