Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins was born on July 25, 1844, in Philadelphia, and with the exception of four years of study in Paris and Spain, the city remained his home. Its school, public and private art collections, and community of artists, many of whom were recent emigrants from Europe trained in the academic tradition and familiar with new artistic styles, provided Eakins with an unusually wide-ranging art education for an American artist of his day.
When Eakins arrived in Paris in 1866 to continue his art studies, he was in the vanguard of young artists who would revolutionize American art over the next two decades, breaking away from the literalism of Hudson River School landscapes to emulate the figurative subject mater of European academic art. For the rest of his career, Eakins would remain the most dedicated American proponent of the painstaking, analytical artistic methods taught in European academies. Yet, as soon as he arrived back in Philadelphia, Eakins declared his independence from European conventions by painting subjects close to his own experience. Moreover, he did not behave lake his contemporaries. One critic described him as “much more like an inventor working (out) curious and interesting problems for himself than like an average artist.”
Eakins was widely recognized as a formidable artistic talent almost as soon as he began to exhibit in the mid- 1870’s. However, his scenes of working- and middle- class life found little support from critics and patrons. His decision to concentrate on portraiture after 1886 presented an even greater challenge for his viewer, who expected flattery and stylistic dash, rather than the intense scrutiny and introspective mood that characterized Eakins’ portraits.
After four years of studying in Europe, Thomas Eakins returned to Philadelphia in 1870 and set up a studio in his family home. As did many of his Paris-trained American contemporaries, Eakins brought back a conviction that the figure was the most important subject for art. While his peers remained committed to allegorical, historical, and exotic genre themes, however, Eakins sought his subject’s form the immediate experience of his life in Philadelphia. He began with the now-famous rowing, sailing, and hunting pictures, and made p...
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... artists, culminating in his election in 1902 to the National Academy of Design, the most prestigious art organization in the United States. Designated an associate-elect in March, Eakins painted the required self-portrait in less than two months, and was elected a full academician in May. No other artist in the history of the institution previously had been elected both associate and academician in the same year.
He received a number of commissions from men in the professional and business communities. Yet, the intensely introspective quality that characterized his best portraits was reserved for people he knows well, such as his father-in-law, William Macdowell. In 1908, perhaps reviewing his own career, Eakins revisited the William Rush theme of thirty-two years before. In one of these paintings, he portrayed his own stocky figure helping a nude model down from the modeling stand.
Eakins died on June 25, 1916. In the following year, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York opened a memorial exhibition of sixty of his paintings, and the Pennsylvania Academy mounted and exhibition of more than one hundred of his works.
John Singleton Copley was born in 1738 in Boston, Massachusetts. His mother Martha Babcock Amory was married to Richard Copley who died shortly after John’s birth. A couple of years later his mother remarried to Peter Pelham. Peter would prove to be a big influence on John’s early career. Pelham, one of Boston’s top engravers, would teach him the intricacies of printing and give Copley a chance to access a large library of prints to work from. These would later be used in the compositions of paintings like The Return of Neptune (fig1.1) and Mrs. Jerathmael Bowers. At first he borrowed poses and backgrounds from his step father's mezzotints, and tricks of color and modeling from his elders in Boston's portrait-painting fraternity. But he soon found he could go farther by paying scant attention to the modes and strict attention to his models. He would spend up to 100 hours on a portrait wit...
Ernie Barnes was and still is one of the most popular and well-respected black artists today. Born and raised in Durham, North Carolina, in 1938, during the time the south as segregated, Ernie Barnes was not expected to become a famous artist. However, as a young boy, Barnes would, “often [accompany] his mother to the home of the prominent attorney, Frank Fuller, Jr., where she worked as a [housekeeper]” (Artist Vitae, The Company of Art, 1999). Fuller was able to spark Barnes’ interest in art when he was only seven years old. Fuller told him about the various schools of art, his favorite painters, and the museums he visited (Barnes, 1995, p. 7). Fuller further introduced Barnes to the works of such artists as, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Correggio, which later influenced Barnes’ mannerist style of painting.
While visiting the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, the works of Archibald Motley caught my attention. Two paintings by the same artist are the focus of this compare and contrast paper. Both are oil paintings during the same time period. Portrait of my Grandmother was painted in 1922 and Hot Rhythm was painted in 1934 only 12 years later. Although the paintings are by the same artist and have similarities, there are also differences which make the artist’s work interesting. Portrait of My Grandmother and Hot Rhythm are two paintings by Motley that capture different emotions (aspects would be a better word) of African Americans.
To understand the Ashcan movement it is necessary to look more closely at some of the major artists who were involved. George Bellows moved to New York in 1904 after he dropped out of Ohio State University following his junior year. Once in New York he enrolled in classes at The New York School of Art. He quickly became Robert Henri's star pupil and valued friend. Bellows was fascinated by New York City. He attempted to capture in his art the social change which he noticed in the city. By the time he was twenty four his art had the attention of the cities leading critics, and his work was shown regularly at exhibitions at the national academy of design. Bellows became the youngest artist ever to elected an associate of the National Academy of Design in 1909.
...ent of art education in America. Especially because the United States is comparatively a young nation, it is crucial that we examine our practices and what influenced the development of these practices. Through the work of scholars such as Efland and Smith, it becomes increasingly clear, that the path of art education through America’s past is complex and evolving. Most importantly, it is through their research that we come to understand that the current state of art education, including its strengths and its flaws, can be traced to the events of the past that shaped it.
In 1930, at age 18, Pollock moved to New York City to live with his brother, Charles. He soon began studying with Charles's art teacher, representational regionalist painter Thomas Hart...
On Saturday, March 15, 2014, I visited the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The gallery #753, which is a part of so-called American Wing, features oil paintings of the revolutionary period in America. The paintings seen in this gallery celebrate heroes and hard-fought battles of the new nation. The most popular type of painting of that time remained portraiture. Portraits in extremely large numbers figured in interiors, where they were arranged to convey not only domestic, but political messages as well. Hence, it is natural, that such iconic figure like George Washington became a model for numerous artists of that era, including Gilbert Stuart and Charles Willson Peale, for whom Washington actually sat. Two exceptional portraits of Washington, the general and the the first President of the United States are highlighted in this paper.
Gardner, Helen, and Fred S. Kleiner. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: The Western Perspective. N.p., 2014. Print.
Frederic Edwin Church was clearly an epic and defining figure among the Hudson River School painters, particularly in his collaborative efforts in developing a sense of national identity for America, but also in fostering tourism through landscape painting, political influence, and entrepreneurialism. By answering the national call for artists and writers to define American landscape, Church took the first steps towards becoming, not only one of America’s greatest painters, but also a successful entrepreneur when it came to selling his own work to make a living. Church was dedicated to preserving “scientific accuracy” in his interpretations of nature and beauty, which were stimulated by the scientific writings of geographer and explorer Alexander von Humboldt.1
Irving Penn has always strived for the best presentation of his work, he has become a master printer, revitalizing the platinum-palladium process as well as working with new techniques. The combination of innovative photography and meticulous printing has made Irving Penn one of the most significant photographers of the twentieth century. "Photographing a cake can be art," Irving Penn said when he opened his studio in 1953. Before long he was backing up his statement with a series of advertising illustrations that created a new high standard in the field and established a reputation that has kept him in the top bracket ever since. Penn has won renown as much in editorial photography as in advertising illustration, and his innovations, especially in portraits and still life, have set him apart stylistically.
Homer was born in February 1836 and grew up outside of Boston. He gained an early interest in art from his mother. He gained an apprenticeship with an illustrator upon graduating from high school. He would work as a commercial illustrator for many popular publications including Harper’s Weekly. His most famous early work comes from his time as a war correspondent for Harper’s during the American Civil War. He was at many battles but his work focused more on the difficulties and everyday life of soldiers at war and not on the actual battles. The Civil War marked a transition in his career from commercial illustrator to painter. Following the war he would study in Paris and his work would focus on idyllic rural scenes including his work The Country School which he painted in 1871 at the age of 35.
Archibald Motley Jr. was born in 1891 in New Orleans. Ever since, Archibald was a child he had the desire to be an artist. His family moved to a Chicago neighborhood in the 1890’s, but the family would take frequent trips back to New Orleans in the summer. Later we find out that these two similar settings were the determining factor for Archibald’s paintings. He decided to study art at the Institute of Chicago and was recognized by being one of the few African American artists during that time.
Done by men of a different social class with different backgrounds, ideals, and motivations, produced under different conditions for a different audience, painting could not help but change in fundamental and farreaching ways. (Cahill 4)
The Spiritual in Art : Abstract Painting 1895 – 1985 (New York: Los Angeles County Museum of Art/Abbeville Press, 1985)
Throughout the 1920's, art, through dancing, singing, painting, photographing and acting became a pastime and provided individualized entertainment and lively joy for those of the time. Many had the ability to discover passions that were previously unavailable for everyone to explore, due to the need to be working harsh hours to provide for their families. Edward Harper became immersed in art, with a simple beginning of an illustrator. He was born in 1882, from small town Upper Nyack in the state New York. He took interest in art from a very young age, and would draw extremely well at a young age. His strict, religious, but caring parents were able to support him, and they sent him to school to become an illustrator, as it was the most realistic