The Revenge of Thomas Eakins (Hardcover)

~ Sidney D. Kirkpatrick (Author) "Twenty-year-old Thomas Eakins enrolled in a class of aspiring surgeons at Philadelphia's Jefferson Medical College in 1864..." (more)
Key Phrases: Thomas Eakins, Pennsylvania Academy, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Biographer Kirkpatrick brings the cinematic clarity of a documentary filmmaker to this portrait of Thomas Eakins, the controversial Philadelphia portrait artist whose "failure to abide by the artistic trends that defined his times" resulted in work that was richly interesting and highly controversial. Kirkpatrick takes considerable pains to portray the contradictory philosophical moorings and childlike prurience that marked Eakins's eccentric career. Prior to Eakins's resignation from the Pennsylvania Academy amid muddied allegations of impropriety, his students held him-and the capital "E" he would place on canvases in which he saw marked improvement-in great esteem. And though he was a pioneer in the use of photography and a champion of nude modeling (he was "starved for the nude," as one woman who knew him put it), Eakins's stubborn social gracelessness and proclivity for intrigue made his place in the Philadelphia art world "something like that of a blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter." Kirkpatrick's ability to suggest, through the use of letters and family anecdotes, that Eakins was aware of-and to a degree, fostered-the Byronic attitude (drafting his own obituary, Eakins wrote, "My honors are misunderstanding, persecution, & neglect, enhanced because unsought") that characterized his career is both brilliant and subtle. But most importantly, Kirkpatrick gives Eakins convincing depth that reminds readers of the ways biography can enhance appreciation of art.
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From The Washington Post

Once upon a time there was Thomas Eakins, the simple pioneer of American realism, a man unhonored and relatively unknown when he died in 1916. By the 1940s, thanks to the efforts of writers like Lewis Mumford and Lloyd Goodrich, this footnote figure had become a cultural colossus, kindred spirit to that other 19th-century rebel, Walt Whitman. In the 21st century, Eakins's reputation has become a good deal more complicated and taken some decidedly unpleasant turns. Not surprisingly, the focus in our own time has to do with sex and subterfuge.

By now, the Eakins story has something in it for everyone -- mythologists, revisionists, Freudians and everyday art lovers. If there is a good reason that this artist is not as universally well regarded as Manet, Degas, Whistler and Cezanne (he is not in their league of talent and originality), he nonetheless created some paintings of great force and conviction. The best known are "The Gross Clinic" (1875), the sculling on the Schuylkill pictures, the portraits of uneasy women (e.g., Amelia van Buren in the Phillips Collection) and the homoerotic "Swimming." To a nation hungry for giants between the Hudson River School and the Abstract Expressionists, he was never an implausible choice, more dynamic than Sargent and less derivative than the early American modernists.

Eakins's dismissal from his teaching post at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1886 for insisting that female students work from nude male models has always been seen as a great symbolic moment in his career and in post-Civil War American culture. That episode fit the one-dimensional cast of the first biographies and was milked by Eakins scholars right into the 1980s: A champion of artistic freedom takes on Victorian prudery, and the philistines win the first round. For Sidney Kirkpatrick, author of The Revenge of Thomas Eakins, the noble truth-teller approach is still serviceable and the "revenge" of his title refers to the painter's ultimate triumph over his first conservative critics.

The problem is that if one wants to see Eakins enjoy any kind of revenge against those who question the nature of his achievement and intentions, there is a newer, much feistier and more pertinent group to take on. With the discovery in 1983 of a cache of papers and photographs rescued from the family home after his widow's death, the notion of a purely heroic, anti-puritanical Eakins has been harder to create. Evidence suppressed by earlier scholars, primarily Goodrich, suggests a darker, psychologically troubled, more vicious and interesting figure. His own exhibitionism, extreme even by modern standards, and maniacal demand for pupil and model nudity in the classroom were only the half of it.

The information revealed by what are called the Bregler papers has been trickling out for a long time, but the most exhaustive study of its material and of Goodrich's notes appeared last year in Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist, by Henry Adams, who has emerged as the most powerful spokesman for the revisionist view of Eakins. A respected teacher and curator, Adams can be faulted for being as excessive in his conjectures and psychoanalytical readings as Goodrich was in his genteel protectiveness, but there is no question that Eakins Revealed raised profound issues and offered an incisive analysis of the art. The book, strange as it is in parts, is a hard act to follow because it forever altered our view of the man and his more ambiguous paintings. After Adams, Eakins brings to mind Edvard Munch more than Winslow Homer.

Though Kirkpatrick obviously began his lengthy biography long before Adams's work appeared, The Revenge of Thomas Eakins can be viewed in part as a counterweight to anyone who takes the implications of the Bregler papers too much to heart. That Eakins might have forced himself on some of his students and had an improper relationship with one sister and a niece does not have to be relevant to our understanding of his canon. (I admit, though, that knowing the little girl in the National Gallery's "Baby at Play" killed herself 20 years later, claiming that Uncle Tom had molested her, will prevent me from ever seeing the picture in quite the same light.) On the other hand, hints of Eakins's homosexuality, voyeurism and ambivalent feelings toward his wife do help explain aspects of more than a few pictures, including "Swimming" and a fair number of the portraits of oddly discomfited women.

Kirkpatrick tells Eakins's life story with crispness and confidence but fails to make the paintings come alive precisely because he rejects a probing psychoanalytic outlook. It feels inadequate nowadays to end by praising a painter for his skill at honest representation, his love of the human form. Those goals are quaint and don't begin to take the measure of a man of Eakins's truculence, deviousness and intensely creative contradictions. A book more solid and sensible than perceptive, The Revenge of Thomas Eakins takes us back to a more hagiographic time.

This is not to say that Kirkpatrick's ably written biography is without merit. The author is particularly good at chronicling Eakins's time abroad, leaving his provincial homeland behind, studying under the French academic master Gerome and assimilating the wonders of the Louvre and the Prado. He provides a clear, detailed rendering of Philadelphia's art politics in the Gilded Age and the stresses and strains of Eakins's family life. He properly evokes the drive and ambition of the man. Had this book appeared 20 years ago, it would probably have been hailed as the definitive biography. But 2006 is not 1986.

The last decade has brought us to a saturation point in publications about Eakins. It is time to go back to the pictures, to let the interpretive dust settle for a while. Kirkpatrick's book encourages this, though the integrity and purity of motive he attributes to his subject -- haunted by more personal demons than we realized -- are not likely to be the last word any longer.

Reviewed by John Loughery
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; annotated edition edition (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300108559
• ISBN-13: 978-0300108552
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.3 x 2.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #619,924 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another terrific read from Sidney Kirkpatrick, April 11, 2006

By	Dan (New York) - See all my reviews

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.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well-written, beautifully illustrated biography, June 8, 2006

By	Avid reader (Philadelphia) - See all my reviews

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.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Biography brings Eakins and his world to life....., April 2, 2006

By	Movie Maven (USA) - See all my reviews

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!