Thomas Eakins : The Absolute Male [Hardcover]

John Esten (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 5, 2002

Often criticized during his lifetime for his insistence on studying and painting the male nude, accomplished draftsman, anatomist, and artist Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) is now acclaimed as one of America's greatest realist painters. Eakins believed in a classical approach to art, and made no compromises with the mores of his time. His insistence on having female students draw from live male nude models caused him to be dismissed from one important teaching post and created a storm of controversy which substantially hurt his career. Only at the end of his life was his work fully recognized as equal to that of some of the great European old masters. Taken from collections across the globe, this book features a stunning collection of drawings, paintings, and photographs of Eakins's male nudes, which showcase the artist's immense and still influential skill in rendering the male form. A major Eakins retrospective will be at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring of 2002.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Thomas Eakins's (1844-1916) reputation has long since recovered from the ostracism he suffered when he exposed female drawing students at the Philadelphia Academy of Art to nude male models and was forced to quit teaching. In recent years, the rehabilitation of this 19th-century realist painter has continued, with several books and museum retrospectives of his work. Perhaps, then, it was inevitable that the erotic potential of Eakins's working materials-extensive photographic documentation of the bodies of his male models and students-would be seized upon. This sexy but unnecessary book compiles many of his photographs of nude youths, often engaged in such unlikely athletic pursuits as wrestling, boxing, or tugs-of-war while in the buff in some Arcadian setting. Translated onto canvas by Eakins, these beautifully composed images became lyrical and timeless. Few of the final paintings are seen here, however. Lacking the interpretive analysis contained in Kathleen Foster's excellent Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, this thin volume is instead best thought of as Victorian-era eye candy. Libraries seeking insight into Eakins's visual methods would be better served by Foster's book.
Douglas F. Smith, Oakland P.L., CA
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Abstraction gets the most ink whenever modern art is the subject, but surely another vital modernist development was the revival of the male nude. Thomas Eakins (1844-1915), one of America's greatest painters and art teachers, became enthralled with the male nude as a student in Europe and under the influence of the Renaissance masters. He and a fellow student posed nude for one another then, and when he started teaching back in Philadelphia, he regularly had a male student pose. For reference purposes, he made studio photographs resembling Eadweard Muybridge's famous motion studies (he had worked with Muybridge), series of single-figure images regarding the body from different angles, and outdoor groupings, the best-known of which were models for his painting Swimming. Esten discusses Eakins' use of male nudes, which got him fired from one post when he pulled the loincloth from a male model in a class including female students, and presents a lovingly reproduced selection of Eakins' photographs and a few paintings based on them. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 80 pages
• Publisher: Universe; 1ST edition (July 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0789306786
• ISBN-13: 978-0789306784
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 9.8 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #917,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Credibility of Observation Unveiled, September 23, 2002

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thomas Eakins : The Absolute Male (Hardcover)

THOMAS EAKINS: THE ABSOLUTE MALE is a beautifully assembled volume of the photographs and paintings of America's premiere artist. The concept behind this very fine volume is to emphasize the importance of the strong-willed pioneer of figurative art in a time when the country was in the throws of Victorianism in art (have things changed in over a century?). In his short but fine essay John Esten simply outlines the chronology of Eakins career and then lets the works speak for themselves. Eakins trained both in America and in Paris, in the latter with the artist Gerome who insisted on classical perfection in his depictions of the human figure. This attitude rankled Eakins who believed that anything less than the observed representation of the body made it ugly. "I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure." And with that he absorbed all the good in the classes in Paris (which included the first use of photography in providing reference for drawing and painting) and returned to America where he resumed his sportsman activities, all the while using his observing eye to reclaim the beauty of the human form in action. His photographs are now considered some of the finest wroks of their kind. He worked with the famous Muybridge, adopting his technique of serial photography to study the nude male form. When he returned to teaching at the Philadelphia Academy he insisted on allowing fully nude models to pose for the students. His defiance of the mores of the day in requiring that the women students be given equality in this aspect of his Life Studies courses resulted in his dismissal as a teacher, but added to his importance as a mentor.

This excellent book includes Eakins many photographs of the nude male, posed and at play and sport. Where applicable the photograph used as a reference is displayed adjacent to the subsequent canvas. Here is the most singularly bold and creative presentation to the age-old, cloaked secret that artists should not use photographs as reference if they say they 'draw only from the figure'. If ever there existed an homage to the marriage of the photograph with painting it is here. This is a very fine book, worth placing in all libraries both private and public.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Do Not Buy This Book, August 14, 2002

By 

E. Ross Bradley (EDMONTON, Alberta Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas Eakins : The Absolute Male (Hardcover)

Unless you have more money than you know what to do with or you must have every book on Eakins do not waste you time on this book. It is supposed to be a survey of Eakins drawing, painting and photography of the male nude. There are three so called drawings, two white forms that are supposed to be knees, a scribbled thumbnail sketch for a painting that is not reproduced and one small drawing of a figure. There are only a few paintings, most of which we have seen reproduced better elsewhere. Most of the blurry photographs are not even identifies as by Eakins; in fact some include him in them so could not have been taken by him (although they may have been set up by him?).
What a wasted opportunity to do a comprehensive survey of a great artist's work; an opportunity to compare the three media and how he used the photos and drawings to develop the major works. Even a good survey of the drawings and paintings would have been more interesting and useful.

4.0 out of 5 stars Well illustrated, January 18, 2011

By 

Benjamin (UK) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Thomas Eakins : The Absolute Male (Hardcover)

Thomas Eakins was a firm believer in the importance of the male nude as a subject for drawing, and encouraged his students by insisting that they no only draw from the male nude but spend recreation together in the nude, and this book clearly demonstrates that he practised this.

The text is relatively brief, what follows is a collection of about 50 images including Eakins' paintings but predominately his photographs of the posing male nudes that he he had his students draw, along with photographs he took of his naked students engaged in activities such as swimming.

With ten full-colour plates of paintings, and most of the sepia photographs also reproduced in full-colour the beauty of this book is in its illustrations. It is well produced with most of the images full-page in size, and often sensible presented against a neutral background as opposed to the stark white page. The book includes a chronology, bibliography, notes to the text and an index.