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Thomas Eakins
Miss Eleanor S.F. Pue, 1907
The celebrated Philadelphia realist Thomas Eakins was also an influential teacher. He served as the director of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and professor of painting from 1882 until his controversial resignation four years later. During his tenure, the academy was known for offering the most exhaustive and "radical" art education in the country, defined by Eakins's insistence on an early introduction to painting from the nude and a "scientific" study of the human figure that required dissection classes for advanced students and anatomy lectures for all.
Miss Eleanor SD Pue, dating from later in Eakins's career, is representative of his general portrait practice and particular approach to female subjects. Uncommissioned, the painting came about through a personal invitation from the artist, who had met the 18-year-old Philadelphia at a musical soiree. Typical of so many of his portraits, it did not please the sitter; Miss Pue found it disagreeable, lacking a notable resemblance and youthful vivacity that had attracted Eakins in the first place. (One of the sitter's artist friends dubbed the portrait "goddess of murder.") Instead, the artist produced a work that expressed his fascination with Pue's "beautiful bones" and strength of character. By the time VMFA acquired this portrait, in 1945, Eakins's reputation as a "noble" and uncompromising American master was secure. |