An American Classic

Thomas Eakins, born on this day in 1844, spent most of his life in his hometown of Philadelphia.

Thomas Eakins, America's greatest portrait and figure painter, rarely used nude figures in major compositions, although his work was based almost entirely on study of the nude form.

William Rush's Model provides haunting evidence of this lifelong preoccupation; it is the final version of a subject the artist had painted many years earlier, memorializing William Rush, the early Philadelphia carver who was the first American artist known to have worked directly from a nude model.

Anatomical studies and training abroad under the French academic master Jean-Léon Gérôme had convinced Eakins that the nude was the touchstone of art. He later taught this principle to students at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts despite objections from school authorities.

Source: National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and Boston, New York, Toronto, and London: National Museum of American Art with Bulfinch Press, Little Brown and Company, 1995).

Pictured: Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916, William Rush's Model, 1908, oil, 36 1/4 x 48 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. R. Crosby Kemper Jr.