The Force of a Painter

...Either way, however, account must be taken of a subjective, human factor which produces the specific, characteristic, differentiating quality of all art...

...Even the most open-minded among the latter group resented his intrusion and competition...

...It was painted shortly after a crisis in Eakins' life when he was compelled to resign his teaching post at the Pennsylvania Academy because he insisted on subjecting his classes to what the newspapers called "the absolute nude" by removing the loin cloth from a male model while women students were present...

...He began by thinking it looked rather glum but discovered with contemplation and reflection that "it is not seen all at once—it only dawns on you gradually...

...The portrait is reproduced in this book in color (it is one of 16 plates in color...

...This aspect of Eakins is not the least interesting...

...But the best feature of the whole head is something that I should not have been able to define for myself without the help of this book—namely, that its massive quality seems to be the result of its having been constructed from within outwards...

...I but enter by them to an area of my dwelling...

...He developed a camera device which, according to Porter, enabled him...

...in the spring of 1885, to give a series of "lectures on the motions of the horse at the Pennsylvania Academy, using a zoetrope...

...The portrait of Whitman was painted in 1887 when Whitman was 68 years old and Eakins 43...

...Certainly the Eakins who said on one occasion "Respectability in art is appalling...

...There is perhaps first of all the florid countenance and forehead which emerge from the midst of the old man's gray hair and shadowy beard, as if the sitter were before an open fire or as if his face were being warmed from within by his sanguine temperament...

...Even Whitman was not pleased with his portrait at once...

...Whitman said to Traubel: "Eakins is not a painter, he is a force...

...Whitman's appreciation of the strength of Eakins is corroborated by the pictures in this book: "I never knew but one artist, and that's Tom Eakins, who could resist the temptation to see what they think ought to be rather than what is...

...The students build up their figures from the inside rather than fill them up after having lined in the outside...

...Indoor activities portrayed include chess, music, reading, writing and lecturing...

...The great majority of his pupils signed a petition for his return, and when this was refused they seceded from the Academy to form the Philadelphia Art Students League...

...he is something more than a painter...

...The Gross Clinic," one of his best known pictures, in which he showed traces of blood on the anatomist's hands, earned him the title of "butcher...

...Gilbert Parker (it would take little to turn this into a caricature of the Dowager by Toulouse-Lautrec) and of his father...

...Incredible as it may seem, this original and prophetic contribution went entirely unnoticed...

...The beard itself is painted with a remarkable attentiveness to its scraggly sprawl...

...Not all his subjects were as tolerant as Whitman: "A W. Lee paid for but refused to accept the portrait he had commissioned...

...He meant that the same thing was true of Eakins as was true of himself when he wrote in A Backward Glance: "No one will get at my verses who insists upon viewing them as aiming mainly towards art or aestheticism...

...whatever became of what are commonly called the principles of art...

...And with Whitman he could also have added this caution to the scientists: "Your facts are useful, and yet they are not my dwelling...

...in which the photographer and his awkward apparatus are shown in the gondola of a balloon drifting above the rooftops of Paris on which can be seen a hundred ugly signs indicating photographers' shops...

...Eakins, on the other hand, welcomed the camera and tried to perfect it...

...was a man after the poet's own heart...

...Eakins spoke of thought where other artists mention feeling, possibly because he excelled in mathematics...

...64 other pictures are reproduced in black and white), and we have the opportunity to consider at leisure what there is about it to make it so striking and memorable...

...Fortunately Eakins was financially independent and so did not feel the blow (except perhaps to his pride) quite as much as Whitman did when he was dismissed by the Department of the Interior for being the author of Leaves of Grass...

...The more I look at it, the more the ruddiness of the complexion appears to me to be emblematic rather than merely realistic...

...It was painted at Eakins' request, since Whitman's poetry was one of the great literary enthusiasms of the artist—the other two being Dante and Rabelais...

...The age in which he lived was one in which the photographer was looked upon generally as a pushing and too successful upstart by the traditional artists...

...The author quotes Fairman Rogers, a director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, on the subject of Eakins as a teacher: "Eakins teaches that the great masses of the body are the first thing that should be put upon the canvas in preference to the outline...

...Typical of the attitude is Daumier's bitterly satirical cartoon entitled: "Nadier raising photography to the level of art...

...Nevertheless, the experience they had in common undoubtedly disposed Whitman to sympathize with the painter...

...The attitude can likewise be found in Ibsen's Wild Duck, where the photographer, Hjalmar Ekdahl, is portrayed as absurd, obtuse, hopelessly imperceptive and self-important...

...So Eakins believed that there was a limit to the powers of all observation, mechanical or human, and that when this limit was reached only thought could take over...

...Reviewed by Milton Hindus Editor, "Leaves of Grass: One Hundred Years Alter" I COME TO THE work of Eakins by way of his portrait of Walt Whitman, which, in the words of Gay Wilson Allen, has "become the most famous of all...

...Eakins was present at Whitman's last birthday celebration and made a speech on the occasion in which he said that in painting the celebrated picture he had discovered "that the ordinary methods wouldn't do—that technique, rules and traditions would have to be thrown aside...

...A critic condemned the gallery for admitting it "where men and women of weak nerves must be compelled to look at it, for not to look at it is impossible...

...The Eakins portrait sets me down in correct style without feathers...

...The more I get to realize it the profounder seems its insight...

...My interpretation of this statement is somewhat different from the one given by Porter...

...As I see it, Whitman meant: Eakins is not merely a painter...

...One of the interesting things about this collection of pictures is the number devoted to sports: baseball, boxing, wrestling, boating, swimming...

...With Whitman he could have said: "Hurrah for positive science...

...Then there is the sparkling white triangle of collar, delicately edged with lace, emerging from beneath the gray beard...

...We are told that Eakins himself was a great ice-skater, sailor and hunter...

...The attitude of the hand-artists was that of the machine-breakers at the beginning of the industrial revolution...

...There is a postscript to the book on the contributions of Eakins to photography, in which he was very interested and for which he has done considerably more than is generally realized...

...Long live exact demonstration...

...that, before all else, he was to be treated as a man...

...The lack of feathers is evident in the portraits of Mrs...

...Benjamin Eakins (the most lifelike impression in the book...

...a precursor of the motion picture projector...