Customer Reviews

Thomas Eakins: Motion Portrait [VHS]

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The jury is still out on Eakins. Some consider him to be the greatest American painter, while others simply view him as a major painter. Take your choice, but either way he deserves better treatment than he receives in this vapid documentary.

This is a documentary in the PBS mold-a second-rate actor, pretending to be Eakins, shocks Philadelphia high society by painting people nude. Unfortunately, the film spends more time photographing the actor riding a bicycle beside the Schuylkill River than it does showing Eakins' actual paintings. The rowing paintings are given short shrift, while the great medical paintings ("The Gross Clinic" and "The Agnew Clinic"), generally considered to be Eakins' finest works, flash by in an instant and even then are only partially shown.

As part of their depiction of Eakins as a great iconoclast, the producers emphasize the fact that he encouraged his students to dissect human bodies in order to fully understand their workings, apparently unaware that he was hardly an innovator in that regard-Leonardo and Michelangelo initiated the practice.

If you want to see a fine video documentary about a great artist, buy The Life of Leonardo Da Vinci instead.