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Chronology
Kathleen Brown
Description: Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins’s father, Benjamin, is born to Frances Fife (c. 1778–1836) and Alexander Eakins (originally Akens or Akins, c. 1771–1839), a tenant farmer and itinerant weaver living in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Benjamin is the third of four children.
Author
Darrel Sewell (Editor)
PublisherPhiladelphia Museum of Art
Copyright© 2001 Philadelphia Museum of Art
Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-100255
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Chronology
KATHLEEN BROWN
1818
February 22
Thomas Eakins’s father, Benjamin, is born to Frances Fife (c. 1778–1836) and Alexander Eakins (originally Akens or Akins, c. 1771–1839), a tenant farmer and itinerant weaver living in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Benjamin is the third of four children.
~
Description: Benjamin Eakins by Willard, Oliver H.
Oliver H. Willard, Benjamin Eakins, early 1860s. Albumen carte-de-visite. Private Collection.
1820
Eakins’s mother, Caroline Cowperthwait, is born to Margaret Jones (c. 1780–1864) and Mark Cowperthwait (1767–1822), a Quaker cobbler. Caroline is the youngest of ten children.
~
Description: Caroline Coperthwait Eakins by Willard, Oliver H.
Oliver H. Willard, Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, early 1860s. Salt print. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
1828
September 16
Alexander Eakins, who lived in the United States since at least 1812 and possibly as early as 1802, petitions to become a citizen. It seems likely that at this time the spelling of the family name is officially changed from Akens or Akins to Eakins (The Lloyd Goodrich and Edith Havens Goodrich, Whitney Museum of American Art, Record of Works by Thomas Eakins, Philadelphia Museum of Art; hereafter Goodrich Papers).
1843
McElroy’s Philadelphia Directory lists Benjamin Eakins’s residence as 10 Sergeant Street in Philadelphia. His profession is given as “teacher.”
October 19
Benjamin Eakins marries Caroline Cowperthwait. The couple resides at the home of Caroline’s mother, 4 Carrolton Square (now 539 Tenth Street) in Philadelphia.
1844
July 25
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins is born. He is the first of five children.
~
Description: Eakins at about Age Six by Unknown
Photographer unknown, Eakins at About Age Six, c. 1850. Daguerreotype. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Charles Bregler’s Thomas Eakins Collection, purchased with the partial support of the Pew Memorial Trust (1985.68.2.1) (hereafter Bregler Collection).
1848
November 1
Frances Eakins Eakins (“Fanny”) is born. According to the birth records listed in the Eakins’s family bible, three of the five children are given this middle name. The other two children, Thomas and Margaret, are given Cowperthwait for their middle name (Archives, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia).
1849
Benjamin Eakins’s occupation is listed as “teacher writing” in McElroy’s Philadelphia Directory.
1850
October 27
Benjamin Eakins Eakins is born, but dies five months later.
1852
The Eakins family moves to 1201 Green Street.
1853
Fall
Eakins, age nine, enters Zane Street Grammar School, located at Zane (now Filbert) Street between 7th and 8th Streets.
November 3
Margaret Cowperthwait Eakins (“Maggie”) is born.
1855
The Eakins family moves to 505 Green Street.
1857
July 11
Benjamin Eakins buys a house at 1725 Washington Court (now 1729 Mount Vernon Street).
~
Description: Thomas Eakins House by Unknown
The Eakins House at 1729 Mount Vernon Street, Philadelphia, c. 1940. Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Fall
Eakins succeeds in passing the entrance examination to the Central High School in Philadelphia.
1861
July 11
Eakins graduates from the Central High School. He ranks fifth among fifteen students receiving bachelor of arts degrees, having a four-year average of 88.4 with marks especially high in mathematics, science, and languages, particularly French. Every year he receives a mark of 100 in drawing. Eakins is listed in the commencement program as giving the “scientific address.”
After graduation, Eakins assists his father as a calligrapher and teacher of penmanship.
~
Description: Central High School Group Photograph by Willard, Oliver H.
Oliver H. Willard, Central High School Graduating Class, 1861. Composite salt print. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.3).
1862
September 5–6
Eakins competes for the position of professor of drawing, writing, and bookkeeping at the Central High School. Out of the original four applicants he is one of only two to complete the arduous two-day examination. Former schoolmate Joseph Boggs Beale is awarded the position.
October 7
Eakins registers at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia to draw from antique casts and attend lectures on anatomy given by Dr. A. R. Thomas.
1863
McElroy’s Philadelphia Directory lists Eakins as “teacher” until 1866, when he appears as “writing teacher.”
February 23
Eakins is admitted to the life drawing classes at the Pennsylvania Academy. He probably continues his studies there through the 1865–66 season. Though the Academy had no formal faculty at this time, students benefit from the advice and criticism of established Philadelphia artists Peter F. Rothermel and Christian Schussele.
1864
August 26
Eakins, who had become eligible for the Civil War draft on his twenty-first birthday a month earlier, pays the twenty-four-dollar fee required to avoid conscription into the Union Army.
October 10–February 28, 1965
Eakins attends anatomy lectures taught by Dr. Joseph Pancoast at Jefferson Medical College, the leading medical school in Philadelphia.
~
Description: Admission ticket to Dr. Pancoast's anatomy class, Jefferson Memorial College by...
Admission ticket to Dr. Pancoast’s anatomy class, Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, 1864–65. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Charles Bregler Archival Collection, 1966.
1865
February 1
Caroline Eakins Eakins (“Caddie”) is born.
1866
September 11
Albert Lenoir, the Secretary of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, responds to Eakins’s inquiries regarding admission and advises him that the Ecole is accepting foreign students. Lenoir writes that Eakins need only “pick up a letter from your embassy to solicit permission from the Superintendent to study at the school, which he will accord you on presentation of your letter. . . . As soon as the Superintendent writes us to admit you, I will inscribe you on the list of whichever atelier you would like to choose.” Although Lenoir mentions that many Americans were turned away the previous year owing to lack of available spaces, he reassures Eakins that “today there is no more reason to raise obstacles” (Lenoir to Eakins, September 11, 1866, transcribed in French by Eakins into his account book, Philadelphia Museum of Art; translation by David Sellin).
September 12
Eakins applies for a United States passport. His father apparently agrees to finance his study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and seems to support his son’s decision wholeheartedly.
September 22
Eakins boards the steamship Pereire, which sets sail from New York to Le Havre, France. Eakins takes a second-class cabin, and his letters home express his prejudices: “The second cabin is I think prefereable [sic] to the first at least on this trip. . . . I forget to thank Heaven that all the Englishmen are in the first cabin, and a nastier looking set of young snobs I never saw in my life. They avoid coming near us but we sometimes see them. They keep close back to the rudder for the second class passengers often overstep their limits” (Eakins to Caroline Eakins, October 1, 1866, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, Charles Bregler’s Thomas Eakins Collection, purchased with the partial support of the Pew Memorial Trust; hereafter Bregler Collection).
October 3
Eakins arrives in Paris and locates Lucien Crépon, an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy, who helps him find lodgings (Eakins to Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, October 8, 1866, Bregler Collection).
October 29
Eakins is accepted into Jean-Léon Gérôme’s atelier at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.
November
Eakins begins his studies at the Ecole by drawing from the nude for the next five months, building upon the educational foundation he received at the Pennsylvania Academy.
~
Description: Illustrated letter from Thomas Eakins to his mother by Eakins, Thomas
Detail of illustrated letter from Eakins to his mother, November 8–9, 1866. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Charles Bregler Archival Collection, 1966.
1867
March 21
In a letter to his father, Eakins reports that “Gérôme has at last told me I might get to painting & I commence Monday” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, March 21, 1867, Bregler Collection).
~
Description: Jean-Léon Gérôme by Reutlinger, Charles
Charles Keutlinger, Jean-Léon Gérôme, c. 1867–68. Albumen carte-de-visite. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
May
Eakins visits the Exposition Universelle several times. His letters home express particular admiration for the machinery and the success of the American department, but he scarcely mentions the art exhibitions: “I have been to the Great Exhibition twice I think since I last wrote. . . . One of the most amusing things in the American department is the soda water fountains. The foreigners above all the French have begun to taste the ice cream soda water and its fame has spread so that there is a long tail like at a theatre all waiting their turns” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, May 31, 1867, Goodrich Papers).
August–September
At his father’s recommendation, Eakins travels to Switzerland, where he is joined by his close friends and Central High School classmates William J. Crowell and William Sartain. The group stops in Strasbourg to visit Christian Schussele, who had returned to Europe for medical treatment.
~
Description: Christian Schussele by Gutekunst, Frederick
Frederick Gutekunst, Christian Schussele, 1860s. Albumen carte-de-visite. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
Late September
Eakins moves to a studio at 64, rue de l’Ouest (street name and number changed to 90, rue d’Assas in July 1868) to paint independently, while continuing to attend the Ecole: “The studio will enable me to commence to practice composing and to paint out of school which I could not do before. As soon as I can get knowledge enough to enable me to paint quickly I will make pictures, but I have been only 4 months at the brush and can’t do it yet” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, September 20, 1867, Bregler Collection).
1868
January
Eakins begins to paint compositions and writes to his father of his progress: “Color is becoming little less of a mystery than it was & more of a study in proportion. When it ceases altogether to be a mystery and it must be very simple at the bottom, I trust I will soon be making pictures. One consolation is that I am composing, it was hard to begin, I felt I ought to know more, but now I am at it and whatever I can gain in it, is straight towards making a selling picture” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, January 17, 1868, Goodrich Papers).
February
Eakins reads Methode et entretiens d’atelier (Conversations on Art Methods, 1867), written by the French academic painter Thomas Couture. It is one of the few instructional manuals on painting that he ever mentioned: “Tell Bill Sartain that Couture has written a book on art. It is curious & very interesting. I had read it as soon as it came out” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, February 1868, Bregler Collection).
March 5
Eakins begins to study sculpture at the Ecole with Augustin-Alexandre Dumont.
~
Description: Students in the Courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, detail by Unknown
Photographer unknown, Detail of Students in the Courtyard of the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, c. 1868. Albumen print. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
March 17
Although he only recently has begun painting compositions, Eakins confidently informs his father of his progress: “I am less worried about my painting now than at one time last spring and consequently am in better order to study. . . . I am getting on faster than many of my fellow students and could even now earn a respectable living I think in America” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, March 17, 1868, Bregler Collection).
Early May
Eakins visits the Salon and finds that “there are not more than twenty pictures in the whole lot that I would want. The great painters dont care to exhibit there at all. Couture Isabey Bonnat Meissonnier [sic] have nothing. The rest of the painters make naked women, standing sitting lying down flying dancing doing nothing which they call Phrynes, Venuses, nymphs, hermaphrodites, houris & Greek proper names” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, May 9, 1868, Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II).
June 13
Benjamin and Fanny Eakins set sail from New York to Liverpool, England. They arrive on June 24 and travel to London, where they spend ten days before leaving for Paris to meet Thomas.
July 4
Benjamin and Fanny Eakins reach Paris. Fanny sends a report on Thomas’s health and appearance to their mother: “He has changed very little, he's just the same old Tom he used to be, and just as careless-looking” (Frances Eakins to Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, July 7, 1868, Thomas Eakins Research Collection, Philadephia Museum of Art). The three travel together in Italy, Germany, and Belgium before Benjamin and Fanny return to Philadelphia in September.
~
Description: Thomas Eakins as a Young Man by Gutekunst, Frederick
Frederick Gutekunst, Thomas Eakins at About Age Twenty-Four, c. 1868. Gelatin silver print. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
Fall
Eakins still has not produced a finished painting. Possibly in reply to his father’s concern, he writes, “There is a common mistake made by those who do not know drawing, and that it [sic] that one should have the habit of finishing studies. This is a great mistake. You work at a thing only to assure yourself of the principle you are working on & the moment you satisfy yourself you quit it for another. Gérôme tells us every day that finish is nothing that head work is all & that if we stopped to finish our studies we could not learn to be painters in a hundred life times & he calls finish needle work and embroidery & ladies’ work to deride us” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, October 29, 1868, Bregler Collection).
Late December
Eakins returns to Philadelphia for Christmas and stays for more than two months.
1869
March 6
Eakins sails from New York; he arrives in Brest, France, on March 16.
April
Eakins and William Sartain move into a new studio at no. 8, rue de Rennes (formerly rue Cassette) (Eakins to Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, April 14, 1869, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.).
~
Description: William Sartain by Unknown
Photographer unknown, William Sartain, c. 1870. Albumen carte-de-visite. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich 11.
August
For one month, Eakins joins Sartain in the atelier of the painter Léon Bonnat, a fashionable portraitist.
~
Description: Léon Bonnat by Mulnier, Ferdinand J.
Ferdinand Mulnier, Léon Bonnat, c. 1868. Albumen carte-de-visite. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
September 8
In reference to the time he spent in Bonnat’s studio, Eakins writes to his father: “I have now given up going to Bonnat, he is in the country. . . . I am very glad to have gone to Bonnat & to have had his criticisms, but I like Gerome best I think” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, September 8, 1869, Goodrich Papers).
September 14
Eakins considers leaving Paris and contemplates a trip to Algiers to be “in the sunlight & paint landscape. Open air painting is now important to me to strengthen my color & to study light” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins, September 14, 1869, Goodrich Papers).
November 29
After debilitating illness and depression, Eakins leaves Paris: “I am going to Spain. I have been pretty sick here in spite of my precautions against the weather and feel worn out. I will go straight to Madrid, stay a few days to see the pictures and then go to Seville” (Eakins to Benjamin Eakins?, November 29, 1869, Goodrich Papers).
December 1
Eakins arrives in Madrid where he studies the work of Velázquez in the Prado.
December 3
Eakins leaves Madrid for Seville. He is joined by Harry Humphrey Moore, a fellow Philadelphian and classmate from Gérôme’s studio.
1870
Early January
William Sartain joins Eakins and Moore in Seville.
Late January
Eakins begins his first finished composition, A Street Scene in Seville (fig. 32), which will occupy him for at least three months.
Late May
Eakins departs Seville and returns to Madrid to study the paintings in the Prado. He records his observations in the Spanish notebook (Bregler Collection).
June
Eakins leaves Madrid for Paris. On the eve of the Franco-Prussian War, the city is politically volatile, and he stays for only two weeks. On the 18th, Eakins sets sail for the United States.
July 4
Eakins arrives in Philadelphia and establishes a studio in his family’s home. There he takes family members as his subjects and paints works such as Home Scene (pl. 5), Portrait of Margaret Eakins in a Skating Costume (Philadelphia Museum of Art), and Elizabeth Crowell with a Dog (pl. 9). Concurrently, he undertakes The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull) (pl. 1), the first of the rowing scenes that will occupy him for the next four years.
~
Description: Portrait of Margaret Eakins in a Skating Costume by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Margaret Eakins in a Skating Costume, 1871. Oil on canvas, 24 ⅛ × 20 ⅛”. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Mrs. Thomas Eakins and Miss Mary Adeline Williams, 1929.
~
Description: Max Schmitt by Schreiber & Son
Schreiber and Son, Max Schmitt, c. 1871. Albumen carte-de-visite. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
1871
April 26–May 6
Eakins has his first public exhibition at the Union League of Philadelphia’s third art reception. He shows The Champion Single Sculls and a portrait (now lost), which receive mixed reviews.
1872
Eakins paints his first full-length portrait, titled Kathrin (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven). His sitter is Kathrin Crowell, who would become his fiancée in 1874.
June 4
Eakins’s mother dies. The cause of death is given as “exhaustion from mania.” Three days later she is buried in Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.
August 15
Fanny Eakins marries William J. Crowell. The couple settles in the Eakins home at 1729 Mount Vernon Street.
~
Description: Frances Eakins by Gutekunst, Frederick
Frederick Gutekunst, Frances Eakins, c. 1868. Albumen carte-de-visite. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Purchased with funds donated by the Pennsylvania Academy’s Women’s Committee (1988.10.7).
Autumn
Eakins paints a portrait of photographer Henry Schreiber’s dog, titled Grouse (fig. 138). It is the first known Eakins painting based on a photograph.
1873
Eakins paints The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake-Boat (pl. 6).
~
Description: The Biglin Crew, International Regatta at Halifax, Nova Scotia by Notman, William
William Notman, The Biglin Crew, International Regatta at Halifax, August 31, 1871. Modern print from original collodion wet-plate negative. McCord Museum of Canadian History, Montreal. Notman Photographic Archives.
January 27
Eakins exhibits a rowing picture, entitled Boating on the Schuylkill, at the Ladies’ Day Reception of the Lotos Club in New York City. This is the first documented instance of the public exhibition of an Eakins painting in New York.
May 10
By the spring, Eakins completes a watercolor of a rower that he feels confident enough to send to his teacher Gérôme, who compliments him on his progress: “I have received the watercolor that you sent me, I accept it with pleasure and thank you for it. It has been so much more agreeable to me because in this work I have been able to ascertain singular progress and above all a manner of proceeding which can only lead you to good” (Gérôme to Eakins, May 10, 1873, Goodrich Papers; translation by Lloyd Goodrich).
Early Autumn
While out hunting, Eakins contracts malaria and is bedridden with a fever for two months.
1874
Eakins becomes engaged to Kathrin Crowell.
~
Description: Kathrin by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, Kathrin, 1872. Oil on canvas, 62 ¾ × 48 ¼". Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven. Bequest of Stephen C. Clark, B.A. 1903.
Eakins completes The Schreiber Brothers (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), two works called Starting Out after Rail (pl. 12 and a watercolor at the Wichita Art Museum, Kansas), Sailboats Racing on the Delaware (pl. 10), Pushing for Rail (pl. 11), and two versions of Whistling Plover (a lost oil painting and a watercolor at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York).
Hoping to attract public portrait commissions, Eakins begins the first in a series of life-size, full-length portraits of prominent professionals. His first sitter is Professor Benjamin Howard Rand, who teaches at Jefferson Medical College and was one of Eakins’s instructors at the Central High School (portrait at the Jefferson Medical College of Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia).
February
Eakins exhibits for the first time with the American Society of Painters in Water Colors (later the American Water Color Society), and secures his first sale, The Sculler, for eighty dollars (location unknown).
April
Eakins, who began attending life classes at the Philadelphia Sketch Club in the winter, agrees to provide criticism, without pay, for fellow students—his first teaching position. He teaches there until the Pennsylvania Academy reopens in its new building in 1876.
April–June
Eakins registers at Jefferson Medical College for surgical demonstrations with Dr. Samuel David Gross and for lectures on anatomy with Dr. Joseph Pancoast.
~
Description: Portrait of Thomas Eakins by Gutekunst, Frederick
Frederick Gutekunst, Thomas Eakins, mid-1870s. Albumen cabinet card. Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Lloyd Goodrich and Edith Havens Goodrich, Whitney Museum of American Art, Record of Works by Thomas Eakins.
May
In his first exhibition held in Paris at Goupil’s, Eakins shows two hunting subjects, one of them Starting Out after Rail (pl. 12).
1875
February
At the eighth annual exhibition of the American Society of Painters in Water Colors, Eakins exhibits Whistling Plover (Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York), Baseball Players Practicing (pl. 14), and Drifting (private collection).
March
Eakins submits The Schreiber Brothers as his first contribution to the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design in New York; it is rejected.
April
Eakins begins The Gross Clinic (pl. 16), which will occupy much of his time over the next six months.
~
Description: Parody of The Gross Clinic by Eakins, Thomas
Circle of Thomas Eakins, Parody of “The Gross Clinic,” 1875 or later. Modern gelatin silver copy print. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of George Barker.
Spring
Eakins exhibits two paintings—one of them probably Starting Out after Rail (pl. 12)—in the Paris Salon and four others at Goupil’s galleries in Paris and London. At Goupil’s, the oil painting Whistling Plover sells for sixty dollars.
1876
Eakins begins his painting William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River (pl. 41). He completes The Chess Players (pl. 19) and Baby at Play (pl. 18), a portrait of his niece Eleanor (“Ella”) Crowell.
March 7
At a Penn Club reception, Eakins exhibits a photograph of his painting The Gross Clinic, giving the public a preview of this major work.
April
Eakins exhibits The Gross Clinic at Haseltine’s Gallery in Philadelphia.
April 22
At the first exhibition in the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts’ new building at Broad and Cherry streets, Eakins exhibits The Zither Player (The Art Institute of Chicago) and a photograph of The Gross Clinic.
~
Description: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by Gutekunst, Frederick
Frederick Gutekunst, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, c. 1878. Albumen cabinet card. Collection of Daniel W. Dietrich II.
~
Description: Fourth of July in Centre Square by Krimmel, John L.
John Lewis Krimmel, Fourth of July in Centre Square, 1812. Oil on canvas, 22 ¾ × 29”. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Purchased from the estate of Paul Beck, Jr.
May 10
The Centennial International Exhibition opens in Philadelphia with widespread celebration. Eakins shows five works in the ambitious art exhibition, but The Gross Clinic is rejected as unsightly and relegated to the United States Army Post Hospital.
September
When classes commence at the Pennsylvania Academy, Eakins volunteers his services both as an assistant to Christian Schussele, the professor of drawing and painting, and as a dissection assistant for the anatomist Dr. William W. Keen.
~
Description: Susan Macdowell Eakins with daisies in buttonhole by Unknown
Photographer unknown, Susan Macdowell, 1877–80. Tintype. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.80).
Eakins meets Susan Hannah Macdowell, a new student at the Pennsylvania Academy.
1877
April 3–June 2
The National Academy of Design in New York accepts Rail Shooting on the Delaware (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven) as Eakins’s first successful submission to its annual exhibition.
April 22–June 4
Eakins exhibits The Chess Players and portraits of Archbishop James Wood (Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary, Overbrook, Pa.) and Dr. John H. Brinton (pl. 17), at the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy.
May 14
A decree issued by the board of the Pennsylvania Academy demands that Christian Schussele not delegate his teaching responsibilities. Eakins is forced to stop assisting in Schussele's life classes but continues to assist Dr. Keen in the Academy’s anatomy lectures. In the following months, Eakins assumes the role of unpaid instructor at the Art Students’ Union, created by students who have left the Pennsylvania Academy.
June
Eakins receives a commission from the Union League of Philadelphia to paint a portrait (now lost) of the new United States president, Rutherford B. Hayes.
August
Writing from Washington, D.C., Eakins complains to his fiancée, Kathrin, about his progress on the portrait of President Hayes: “The President gave me two sittings. He posed very badly. However, I had good results with a sketch in which I was able to give enough animation” (Eakins to Kathrin Crowell, August 29, 1877, Bregler Collection).
1878
February
Eakins exhibits at the American Water Color Society’s eleventh annual exhibition, where his work receives favorable notice.
March
Eakins resumes his position as Christian Schussele’s assistant at the Pennsylvania Academy.
March 6–April 5
Eakins participates in the first exhibition of the Society of American Artists in New York. He shows William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River, In Grandmother’s Time (fig. 83), and a photograph of The Gross Clinic.
September 2–November 2
In the exhibition at the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics’ Association in Boston, Eakins receives a silver medal for Fifty Years Ago, Young Girl Meditating (pl. 43), and The Dancing Lesson (Negro Boy Dancing) (pl. 45).
Autumn
For Fairman Rogers, Eakins adapts Eadweard Muybridge’s photographic sequences of animal locomotion for display in a zoetrope.
November
Eakins’s illustrations for Bret Harte’s “The Spelling Bee at Angel’s” are published in Scribner’s Monthly.
~
Description: The Spelling Bee at Angel's by Unknown
Wood engraving after a drawing by Thomas Eakins, in “Truthful James” [Bret Harte], “The Spelling Bee at Angel’s,” Scribner’s Monthly, vol. 17, no. 1 (November 1878), p. 38.
1879
During the course of the year, Eakins sends works to various exhibitions nationwide, including the Louisville Industrial Exhibition, the Inter-State Industrial Exposition of Chicago, annual exhibitions at the National Academy of Design, the Pennsylvania Academy, and art club exhibitions throughout the Northeast.
February 3–March 1
Eakins receives critical acclaim for A Quiet Moment, his entry to the American Water Color Society’s twelfth annual exhibition.
February 6
Eakins is elected an honorary member of the Philadelphia Sketch Club.
March 10–29
Eakins exhibits The Gross Clinic at the second exhibition of the Society of American Artists.
April
For the first time, Eakins serves on the jury for the Pennsylvania Academy’s annual exhibition. It awards Susan Macdowell the newly established Mary Smith Prize, which is given to the best female painter in the exhibition.
April 6
Fiancée Kathrin Crowell dies of meningitis.
May
The Smith College Museum of Art purchases In Grandmother’s Time (fig. 83), Eakins’s first work to enter a public collection.
June
Eakins visits Fairman Rogers at his Newport home and begins painting A May Morning in the Park (The Fairman Rogers Four-in-Hand) (pl. 51).
August 21
Christian Schussele dies.
September 8
The Pennsylvania Academy’s Committee on Instruction recommends Eakins as professor of drawing and painting at a salary of six hundred dollars a year; the board accepts the recommendation.
~
Description: An Eakins Class at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by Eakins, Thomas
Photographer unknown, [Male Students at the Pennsylvania Academy], c. 1878. Gelatin silver copy print. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of George Barker.
December
Eakins serves on the jury for the McCreary Prizes at the Philadelphia Sketch Club.
1880
March
Eakins delivers the first of his formal series of lectures on perspective at the Pennsylvania Academy.
May 1
Eakins is elected to the Society of American Artists.
June 9
The Mutual Assurance Company pays Eakins the first of two installments of two hundred fifty dollars for a commissioned portrait of General George Cadwalader.
Summer
Eakins purchases his first camera, which enables him to use photographs as one would use a sketchbook.
November 1–December 6
Eakins exhibits The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake-Boat and A May Morning in the Park in the second annual exhibition of the Philadelphia Society of Artists.
Eakins paints The Crucifixion (pl. 54).
1881
Spring
Eakins presents The Chess Players to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
April
Eakins makes the first of several photographic studies of shad fishermen in Gloucester, New Jersey (pls. 69–71, 73, 74).
June
Eakins completes two paintings titled Shad Fishing at Gloucester on the Delaware River (pls. 72, 76). Both are composed from photographic studies taken in April and May.
September
Eakins completes Mending the Net (pl. 85), another painting composed from photographs.
The Brooklyn Art Guild announces that it has hired Eakins to teach classes two days a week from October to April. He continues to teach there until 1885.
1882
Eakins receives his first sculpture commission—panels representing Spinning (pl. 92) and Knitting (pl. 93)—from merchant James P. Scott of Philadelphia.
February
The Pennsylvania Academy decides to charge tuition, beginning in October, with the intention that its classes will become self-supportive. Eakins is given the new title of director of the schools. His salary is raised to twelve hundred dollars, with a promise that it will rise to twenty-five hundred dollars as tuitions come in.
~
Description: Seven male students in Pennsylvania Academy studio by Unknown
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Male Students at the Pennsylvania Academy], c. 1882. Albumen print. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.804).
April 11
An angry mother writes to James Claghorn, president of the Pennsylvania Academy, to protest the use of nude models in Eakins’s life classes. While this is the first recorded condemnation of Eakins’s emphasis on study from the nude model, it will not be the last (R. S. to James L. Claghorn, April 11, 1882, Archives, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia).
September 27
Eakins becomes engaged to Susan Macdowell.
December 22
Eakins’s sister Margaret dies of typhoid fever at the age of twenty-nine. She is buried two days later at Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia.
~
Description: Margaret Eakins with Thomas Eakins's setter Harry at beach by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, [Margaret Eakins and Harry at Manasquan, New Jersey], c. 1880. Albumen print. Bregler Collection (1988.10.12).
1883
In a written agreement with his father, Eakins formalizes his use of the top floor of the family home as his private studio, with the proviso that he be allowed “the right to bring to his studio his models, his pupils, his sitters, and whomsoever he will, and both Benjamin Eakins and Thomas Eakins recognizing the necessity and usage in a figure painter of professional secresy [sic], it is understood that the coming of persons to the studio is not to be the subject of comment or question by the family” (Written agreement between Eakins and Benjamin Eakins, undated, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.).
Eakins explores pastoral themes in photographs using his students as models. From these photographs and life study, he begins a series of sculptural reliefs and paintings with classical subject matter.
February 12 and 16
Eadweard Muybridge demonstrates his photographs of animal locomotion in lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy.
~
Description: Abe Edgington Trotting by Muybridge, Eadweard
Eadweard Muybridge, “Abe Edgington” Trotting, 1878–79. Photograph courtesy William Innes Homer.
March
Pennsylvania Academy students organize the Academy Art Club as an additional venue to exhibit and sell their works. Eakins is elected the club’s single honorary member.
~
Description: Two male students in Grecian Costume at the Pennsylvania Academy by Eakins, Thomas
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Two Male Students in Classical Costume at the Pennsylvania Academy], c. 1883. Albumen print. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (84.XM.254.3).
July 2–late October
Eakins exhibits Singing a Pathetic Song (pl. 63), Mending the Net, and an unidentified genre drawing (probably a watercolor) in an international exhibition at the Munich Glaspalast.
August 7
The University of Pennsylvania agrees to provide grounds for Muybridge’s project to photograph human and animal locomotion.
Autumn
Thomas B. Clarke commissions Eakins to paint Professionals at Rehearsal (pl. 121).
November 2
Eakins loses his strongest advocate at the Pennsylvania Academy when Fairman Rogers resigns as chairman of the Committee on Instruction. Rogers is replaced by Edward H. Coates.
December 5
At a meeting of the Photographic Society of Philadelphia, Eakins demonstrates a camera equipped with his own design for “an ingenious exposer for instantaneous work” (Robert S. Redfield, “Society Gossip: Photographic Society of Philadelphia,” The Philadelphia Photographer, vol. 21, no. 241 [January 1884], p. 15).
1884
January 19
Eakins marries Susan Macdowell at her parents’ home. The couple moves to the former studio of Arthur B. Frost at 1330 Chestnut Street.
March
Eakins is one of nine overseers appointed to the Muybridge Commission to “insure its thoroughly scientific character” (Minutes of the Board of Trustees, April 1, 1884, Archives, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia).
May
Eakins considers resigning from the Society of American Artists when his two reliefs Spinning and Knitting are rejected as exhibition submissions.
June
Muybridge's photographic experiments begin in Philadelphia, and initially Eakins provides advice and assistance. After a few months, however, their methods diverge, and Eakins embarks on separate, parallel experiments.
June 14
Eakins’s youngest sister Caddie marries his student Frank Stephens.
~
Description: Caroline Eakins by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, Caroline Eakins, c. 1883. Albumen cabinet card printed by Louis Blaul. Private Collection.
December 1, 1884–May 31, 1885
Eakins exhibits The Crucifixion and Shortening Sail (current title and location unknown) at the World’s Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition in New Orleans.
1885
Eakins completes Swimming (pl. 149), but Edward H. Coates, who commissioned the painting, asks to exchange it for Singing a Pathetic Song.
March
Eakins exhibits William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River, Baseball Players Practicing, Elizabeth at the Piano (pl. 13), and a rail-shooting picture at a loan exhibition held by the Ontario Society of Artists in Toronto.
May 22
Using Muybridge’s motion studies in a zoetrope, Eakins lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy on equine movement.
~
Description: Marey Wheel Photographs of Unidentified Model, with Eadweard Muybridge Notations by...
Thomas Eakins, [Motion Study: “History of a Jump”], 1885. Albumen print. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. (83.59)
November 10
Eakins begins lecturing on anatomy at the Art Students’ League of New York. His lectures on perspective follow in the spring 1886 term.
1886
Early January
During one of his anatomy lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy, Eakins removes a loincloth from a male model in the presence of female students. After receiving complaints, Edward H. Coates, chairman of the Committee on Instruction, writes Eakins and informs him that there should be “no removal of the band worn by the male model, for purpose of Demonstration in class, until such change is decided upon by the Committee of Instruction. I write this personally believing it very important for the welfare and present success of the schools, and also because it is of great moment that at this time you should act in carrying out the wishes expressed above rather than that the Directors should do so” (Coates to Eakins, January 11, 1886, Bregler Collection).
January 11–16
Eakins exhibits one of his motion photographs, entitled History of a Jump (pl. 153), at an exhibition held by the Photographic Society of Philadelphia at the Pennsylvania Academy.
February 8
Edward H. Coates writes to Eakins and asks him to tender his resignation as the Director of the Schools and Professor of Painting at the Pennsylvania Academy.
February 9
Responding to the request made by Coates on behalf of the board of the Pennsylvania Academy, Eakins resigns, and his post is abolished. Eakins passionately defends his use of nude models: “The thing is a nightmare. . . . It seems to me that no one should work in a life class who thinks it wrong to undress if needful. . . . Was ever so much smoke for so little fire? I never in my life seduced a girl, nor tried to, but what else can people think of all this rage and insanity” (Eakins to Coates, February 15, 1886, Bregler Collection).
~
Description: Thomas Eakins nude and Female nude in University of Pennsylvania photography shed by...
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Eakins and Female Nude at the University of Pennsylvania], 1885. Modern print from original gelatin dry-plate negative. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.1006).
February 22
Thirty-eight students resign from the Pennsylvania Academy and establish the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia to provide Eakins with a forum for his life classes.
March 6
Eakins’s detractors, led by his brother-in-law Frank Stephens, seek to expel him from the Philadelphia Sketch Club on the vague charge of “conduct unworthy of a gentleman & discreditable to this organization” (Thomas P. Anshutz, G. F[rank] Stephens, and Charles H. Stephens to the president and members of the Philadelphia Sketch Club, March 6, 1886, private collection).
~
Description: George Frank Stephens by Potter and Company (G. C. Potter and J.P. Silver)
G. C. Potter and Co., Frank Stephens, c. 1880. Albumen print. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Purchased with funds donated by the Pennsylvania Academy’s Women’s Committee (1988.10.38).
March 13
In correspondence with John V. Sears, the chairman of the committee investigating charges made before the Philadelphia Sketch Club, Eakins indicts his accusers: “The action of the club in advising me as it has done, without stating what the charges are, or by whom they are preffered [sic], is so inconsistent with the principles of plain and fair dealing that I can only regret that the club has permitted itself to be put in such an equivocal position. It is evident that there is an organized movement to do me mischief, and that its course is reckless and extravagant” (Eakins to John V. Sears, March 13, 1886, private collection).
March 22
Eakins receives notification of his expulsion from the Academy Art Club.
April 17
The members of the Philadelphia Sketch Club vote against proceedings to expel Eakins from the club.
April 23
Eakins is paid the first installment for a portrait of Dr. Horatio C. Wood (The Detroit Institute of Arts), professor of materia medica and an authority on nervous diseases at the University of Pennsylvania.
Late June–Early July
Eakins takes a two-week pleasure trip to the Lake Champlain summer home of University of Pennsylvania engineering professor William D. Marks, of whom he is painting a portrait (fig. 157).
July
Benjamin Eakins has turned his daughter Caddie and her husband, Frank Stephens, out of the house on Mount Vernon Street in response to their attacks on his son. Thomas and Susan Eakins move into the home.
~
Description: Stephens Family in Germantown by Unknown
George B. Wood, Stephens Family in Germantown, 1888. Gelatin silver copy print by unknown photographer. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Purchased with funds contributed by the Daniel W. Dietrich Foundation, the J. J. Medveckis Foundation, and Harvey S. Shipley Miller and J. Randall Plummer.
August 28–October 23
At the Southern Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky, Eakins exhibits Swimming, The Veteran (Portrait of George Reynolds) (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), and watercolors Drawing the Seine (pl. 87) and Mending the Net (private collection).
September 18
In a vote, the members of the Philadelphia Sketch Club officially censure Eakins and ask for his resignation from honorary membership. Eakins does not resign.
1887
Muybridge's plates of Animal Locomotion are published by the University of Pennsylvania.
February 15
In a special exhibition for the opening of the Art Club of Philadelphia’s new building, Eakins shows The Crucifixion, Portrait of Professor William D. Marks, The Dancing Lesson, and bronze casts of Spinning and Knitting.
July 10
Edward H. Coates purchases bronze casts of Spinning and Knitting, which he donates to the Pennsylvania Academy.
Late July–September
Suffering from acute depression following his dismissal from the Pennsylvania Academy, Eakins sojourns at the B-T Ranch in the Bad Lands of the Dakota Territory, where he makes photographs and oil sketches of cowboy life (pls. 159–63).
~
Description: Cowboy sitting on ground playing harmonica by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, [Cowboy Playing Harmonica], 1887. Modern print from original gelatin dry-plate negative. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.1085).
Early August
Eakins writes to his wife, “I am in the best of health. . . . The living on a round up is better than in the palace Pullman dining cars. A fine beef is killed as needed, we eat beef three times every day, and beans & bacon, and canned corn, canned tomatoes, rice and raisins, and everything of the very best. I think you would laugh to see me devour a big hunk of meat lifted out of the big fat pot it was fried in” (Eakins to Susan Eakins, early August 1887, Bregler Collection).
August 28
In correspondence with his wife, Eakins reports on his departure from the Dakotas: “I am going to bring my own horse back with me for a model. He is a broncho, a very beautiful and a good type of cow boy horse, also a mustang, a small Indian pony, the ugliest you ever saw but a fine cow horse. This Indian pony is exceedingly tough, funny, and good natured and is for Fanny and the children to ride and drive” (Eakins to Susan Eakins, August 28, 1887, Bregler Collection).
October 18
Eakins returns to Philadelphia.
Late October
Eakins begins lecturing part-time on anatomy at the Women’s Art School of the Cooper Union in New York.
Winter
Eakins begins a portrait of Walt Whitman (pl. 165). When it was finished the following spring, Whitman would state, “Of all the portraits of me made by artists I like Eakins’ best: it is not perfect but it comes nearest being me.” A few days later he added, “The Eakins portrait gets there—fulfills its purpose: sets me down in correct style, without feathers—without any fuss of any sort. I like the picture always—it never fades—never weakens” (quoted in Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, 2 vols. [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press for the National Gallery of Art, 1982], vol. 2, p. 34).
~
Description: Portrait of Walt Whitman by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins or Samuel Murray, Walt Whitman, 1891. Modern gelatin silver print. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Bequest of Mark Lutz.
1888
A volume of essays to accompany Muybridge’s plates, Animal Locomotion. The Muybridge Work at the University of Pennsylvania—The Method and the Result, is published by the University of Pennsylvania. Eakins’s description of his methods is incorporated into the essay by William D. Marks.
March
Eakins abruptly halts his work on a portrait of his former student Lilian Hammitt, Girl in a Big Hat (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.), after receiving a disturbing letter (now lost) in which Hammitt stated her belief that Eakins would soon divorce Susan to marry her. Eakins responds immediately, reiterating his devotion to his wife. “I was inexpressibly shocked to read the letter you left in my box. You have through your companionship with my dear wife seen the great love that exists between us and heard from me many expressions of my devotion to her. You are laboring under false notions and will surely injure your reputation if you give expression to them. . . . There is wisdom in your decision to stay away from my studio now for a long time, and I have abandoned my portrait of you and taken up other work” (Eakins to Hammitt, March 2, i888, Bregler Collection).
~
Description: Portrait of Lillian Hammit (Girl in a Big Hat) by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, Girl in a Big Hat (Portrait of Lilian Hammitt), 1888. Oil on canvas, 24 ⅛ × 20 ⅛”. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of Joseph H. Hirshhorn, 1966.
Fall
Eakins begins lecturing on artistic anatomy at the National Academy of Design in New York.
Eakins’s restored spirits are evident in several Western subjects, including his last landscape painting, Cowboys in the Bad Lands (pl. 164), and portraits of friends: “I have nearly completed a little cow boy picture, and hope to make more. The. cow boy subject is a very picturesque one, and it rests only with the public to want pictures” (Eakins to John Laurie Wallace, October 22, 1888, Bregler Collection).
1889
Late February
Students in the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania commission Eakins to paint a portrait of Dr. David Hayes Agnew. Eakins completes The Agnew Clinic (pl. 175), his largest painting, in three months.
May 1
At the commencement ceremony, held at the Academy of Music, the graduating class presents The Agnew Clinic to the University of Pennsylvania Medical School.
May 5–November 5
Eakins exhibits three works—a Portrait of Professor George F. Barker (Mitchell Museum at Cedarhurst, Mount Vernon, III.), The Dancing Lesson, and The Veteran—at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.
November 30
Caddie Stephens dies at the age of twenty-four of typhoid fever. At the time of her death, she and Eakins had not reconciled.
1890
April 7
Eakins’s nieces Eleanor (“Ella”) and Margaret (“Maggie”), children of Fanny and William Crowell, come to stay with the Eakinses to study painting.
Autumn
Eakins, up to now only a visiting lecturer at the Women’s Art School of the Cooper Union in New York, is promoted to faculty, a position he will retain through the spring of 1897.
1891
January
For the first time since his dismissal from the Pennsylvania Academy, Eakins submits six works to its annual exhibition (including pls. 165, 172, 173). The Agnew Clinic, nevertheless, is rejected on a technicality.
~
Description: Thomas Eakins, Woman, and William O'Donovan on a Couch by Unknown
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Thomas Eakins, Unidentified Woman, and William R. O’Donovan in Eakins’s Studio], c. 1891. Platinum print. Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania. Seymour Adelman Collection.
Eakins collaborates with the sculptor William R. O’Donovan on a commission to sculpt equestrian statues of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn (pl. 198).
June 4–July 13
Eakins exhibits Retrospection (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), The Veteran, and The Artist’s Wife and His Setter Dog (pl. 158), at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris.
1892
Eakins completes The Concert Singer (pl. 192).
Samuel Murray, a sculptor and former student, begins to share Eakins’s studio at 1330 Chestnut Street.
~
Description: Samuel Murray with His Bust of Franklin Schenck, in the Chestnut Street Studio by...
Thomas Eakins, [Samuel Murray with His Bust of Franklin Louis Schenck in the Chestnut Street Studio], c. 1892. Modern gelatin silver print. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Bequest of Mark Lutz.
March 26
Walt Whitman dies. Four days later, Eakins is one of twenty-three honorary pallbearers at Whitman’s funeral, which is held at Harleigh Cemetery, near Camden, New Jersey.
May 7
Eakins resigns from the Society of American Artists when his works, including The Agnew Clinic, are rejected three years in succession: “For the last three years my paintings have been rejected by you, one of them the Agnew portrait, a composition more important than any I have ever seen upon your walls. Rejections for three years eliminates all elements of chance; and while in my opinion there are qualities in my work which entitle it to rank with the best in your society, your society’s opinion must be that it ranks below much that I consider frivolous and superficial. These opinions are irreconcilable” (Eakins to the Society of American Artists, May 7, 1892, Goodrich Papers).
Autumn
Eakins receives a commission to sculpt historical relief panels commemorating the Revolutionary War for the Trenton Battle Monument in New Jersey (pls. 199, 200).
December 5–25
Despite his formal resignation from the Society of American Artists, Eakins submits nine works (including pls. 10, 85, 96, 158) to its Retrospective Exhibition.
1893
Enrollment at the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia declines sharply, and it is closed. Around this time, Eakins begins to lecture at the Art Students’ League of Washington, D.C.
May 1–October 30
Eakins exhibits eleven paintings—constituting a small survey of his work—at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and receives a medal for Mending the Net. His submissions represent the second largest number of paintings by a single Pennsylvania artist.
1894
During this year, Eakins paints relatively little and invests considerable effort both in promoting Samuel Murray as a sculptor and in assisting him with large-scale commissions.
May 1
Eakins lectures at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia on “The Differential Action of Certain Muscles Passing More Than One Joint.”
~
Description: Differential-action study: man on ladder, leaning on horse's stripped foreleg by...
Thomas Eakins, [Differential-Action Study], 1885. Modern print from original gelatin dry-plate negative. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.1004).
June 18
Eakins’s beloved dog Harry dies.
~
Description: Harry by City Gallery of the Union Photograph Company
City Gallery of Union Photograph Company, Harry, 1880. Tintype. Bryn Mawr College Library, Pennsylvania. Seymour Adelman Collection (Special Collections SA 107).
1895
Eakins ceases to lecture at the National Academy of Design in New York.
Eakins increasingly concentrates on producing portraits of friends, his primary artistic activity for the next decade. Art critic, poet, and novelist Sadakichi Hartmann publishes Conversations with Walt Whitman, “Dedicated to Artist Thomas Eakins of Philadelphia, as an Admirer of Walt Whitman, in his own Native Independence, Simplicity and Force, without Crankiness and Subserviency.”
February
Eakins begins a course of lecture on artistic anatomy at the Drexel Institute of Art, Science, and Industry in Philadelphia (now Drexel University).
March 3
The Drexel Institute dismisses Eakins amid controversy over his use of a nude model in coeducational classes.
1896
May 11
Eakins’s first and only solo exhibition during his lifetime opens at the Earles Galleries in Philadelphia. The show of twenty-nine paintings is a critical success, but no works are sold.
August
Eakins’s niece Ella Crowell is committed to a hospital for an undisclosed mental illness.
~
Description: William Crowell Family by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, [William Crowell Family], c. 1890. Modern gelatin silver copy print. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia. Purchased with funds donated by the Pennsylvania Academy’s Women’s Committee.
September 9
Samuel Murray is awarded a commission to sculpt figures of prophets for the exterior of an office building in Philadelphia, a project on which Eakins will assist him for more than a year.
November 5, 1896–January 1, 1897
Eakins submits three works to the first annual exhibition of the Carnegie Art Galleries (later the Carnegie Institute) in Pittsburgh. Only one, The Writing Master (Portrait of the Artist’s Father) (pl. 96), is exhibited.
1897
February
The Pennsylvania Academy purchases The Cello Player (pl. 206), the first painting by Eakins to enter its collection.
Spring
With the end of his lectures at the Cooper Union, Eakins officially stops teaching. He continues to take private students on a sporadic basis.
July 2
Ella Crowell commits suicide at her family home in Avondale. Recriminations following her death lead to a severance of ties between Eakins and the Crowell family.
Mid-July
Eakins travels to Maine to work on a portrait of Professor Henry A. Rowland (pl. 211).
1898
Eakins returns to sporting subjects, this time boxing and wrestling, for his paintings Taking the Count (pl. 213), Salutat (pl. 214), Between Rounds (pl. 215), Wrestlers (unfinished, 1899, Philadelphia Museum of Art), and The Wrestlers (1899, The Columbus Museum of Art, Ohio).
~
Description: Two Wrestlers by Eakins, Thomas
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Wrestlers], 1890s. Modern gelatin silver copy print. Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Charles Bregler.
1899
January 2
Eakins’s aunt Eliza Cowperthwait dies.
Autumn
For the first time, Eakins serves on the jury for the fourth annual exhibition at the Carnegie Institute.
December 29
Benjamin Eakins dies at the age of eighty-three.
~
Description: Benjamin Eakins and Samuel Murray with bicycles on stone bridge by Eakins, Thomas
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Benjamin Eakins and Samuel Murray], c. 1895. Platinum print. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.233).
1900
The Eakinses invite long-standing family friend Mary Adeline Williams (“Addie”) to live with them at Mount Vernon Street.
Sunday afternoon visits to the Saint Charles Borromeo Seminary in nearby Overbrook with Samuel Murray influence Eakins’s choice of Catholic clerics as subjects for a series of portraits.
April 14–November 12
Eakins receives an honorable mention at the Exposition Universelle in Paris for The Cello Player and Salutat.
October
Eakins and Samuel Murray vacate the studio at 1330 Chestnut Street, which is scheduled for demolition.
Autumn
Eakins serves on the jury for the Carnegie Institute’s fifth annual exhibition.
1901
January
Eakins serves on the jury for the annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy for the first time since 1879.
February 16
Stewart Culin organizes a large exhibition of Eakins’s paintings and Murray’s sculptures at the Faculty Club at the University of Pennsylvania.
May 1–November 1
At the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York, the jury awards Eakins a gold medal for his Portrait of Professor George F. Barker.
May 29
Eakins begins construction of a new studio on the top floor of the Mount Vernon Street house.
Autumn
Eakins serves on the jury for the Carnegie Institute's sixth annual exhibition.
1902
February
Eakins travels to Washington, D.C., to paint a portrait of Sebastiano Cardinal Martinelli (pl. 226).
March
Eakins is elected an associate of the National Academy of Design and, in May, an academician. He is the only artist ever to receive both honors in the same year.
1903
January
Eakins serves as a juror for the annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy.
January 19–February 28
Several of Eakins’s ecclesiastical portraits, including that of Cardinal Martinelli, are exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy.
Autumn
Eakins serves as a juror for the Carnegie Institute’s annual exhibition.
December
Eakins travels to Ohio to paint the Portrait of Archbishop William Henry Elder (pl. 227): “I have just finished in Cincinnati a full length, life sized portrait of the venerable Archbishop Elder which I did in one week” (Eakins to Frank W. Stokes, December 15, 1903, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.).
Eakins receives a rare commission to paint a portrait of businessman Robert C. Ogden in New York (Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.).
~
Description: Robert C. Ogden by Eakins, Thomas
Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Robert C. Ogden, 1904. Oil on canvas, 72 ¼ × 48 ⅜”. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Gift of the Joseph H. Hirshhorn Foundation, 1966.
1904
January
Eakins’s Portrait of Archbishop William Henry Elder earns him the coveted Temple Gold Medal at the Pennsylvania Academy’s annual exhibition. However, when Eakins arrives to receive the award from Edward H. Coates, he remarks, “I think you’ve got a heap of impudence to give me a medal.” Afterward, he and Samuel Murray ride their bicycles to the United States Mint, where Eakins cashes the medal for seventy-three dollars (cited in Goodrich 1982, vol. 2, p. 201).
Spring
Eakins serves on the jury for the United States section of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in Saint Louis. He exhibits seven works, including The Gross Clinic, which is awarded a gold medal.
1905
Eakins receives commissions from Jefferson Medical College students and alumni for a portrait of Professor William Smith Forbes, from the Fidelity Trust Company for a portrait of John B. Gest (The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston), and for a portrait of Asbury W. Lee (pl. 235), who pays for, but refuses, the picture.
Eakins assists Samuel Murray on a statue of Commodore John Barry for Independence Square in Philadelphia.
~
Description: Thomas Eakins with Sculpture by Samuel Murray by Unknown
Photographer unknown, Thomas Eakins with Sculpture by Samuel Murray, c. 1914. Silver print. Archives, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.
January
Eakins receives the Thomas R. Proctor Prize for his Portrait of Leslie W. Miller (pl. 225) at the annual exhibition of the National Academy of Design.
Autumn
Eakins serves on the jury for the Carnegie Institute’s tenth annual exhibition.
1906
January
Eakins serves on the jury for the annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy.
January–February
Eakins exhibits Singing a Pathetic Song in the sixth exhibition of the International Society of Sculptors, Painters and Gravers, held at the New Gallery in London.
1907
Eakins donates a bald eagle he has found in New Jersey to the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia in order to have its skeleton preserved.
April
At the eleventh annual exhibition of the Carnegie Institute, Eakins is awarded a second-class medal for Portrait of Leslie W. Miller.
October
At the American Art Society of Philadelphia annual exhibition, held at the Haseltine Galleries,
Eakins receives a gold medal for a portrait of Admiral George W. Melville (private collection).
1908
Eakins revisits the theme of William Rush and his model (pls. 238, 239).
November 12
Eakins declines membership in the National Institute of Arts and Letters, writing to them, “Although I had the honor of an invitation to join your Institute of Arts and Letters, I did not feel that I could afford to do so and made no application. Will you kindly scratch off my name and oblige” (Eakins to Hamilton W. Mabie, November 12, 1908, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York).
1909
January
Eakins serves on the jury for the annual exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy.
1910
January
Eakins tries to interest curator Bryson Burroughs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to purchase his work. “I have always felt inadequately represented in the Metropolitan Museum. Hearing that the Museum was now buying some American pictures I have hopes that something of mine may be included” (Eakins to Burroughs, January 12, 1910, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
February 25
Former student Charles Henry Fromuth visits Eakins, whom he finds “dispirited.” Fromuth adds that “his wife told me that he had abandoned all hope of recognition. I left the more sorrowfull [sic] than ever as to American possibilities of recognition of art which aims higher than the capacity of American comprehension” (retrospective journal, Fromuth Papers, Library of Congress).
1911
April 22–November 1
Eakins exhibits The Thinker (Portrait of Louis N. Kenton) (pl. 220) at the Esposizione Internazionale in Rome.
1912
With his wife’s assistance, Eakins works on his last completed painting, a second commissioned portrait of Rutherford B. Hayes (Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site, Yonkers, N.Y.).
November
In a rare moment of public recognition, Eakins receives a spontaneous ovation at an exhibition of portraits, including The Agnew Clinic, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
1913
October 6
Artist and critic Charles E. Dana presents his portrait by Eakins to the Pennsylvania Academy.
1914
Eakins’s eyesight deteriorates, and he is essentially housebound.
~
Description: Thomas Eakins by Unknown
Circle of Thomas Eakins, [Thomas Eakins at About Age Seventy], c. 1914. Gelatin silver print. Bregler Collection (1985.68.2.70).
February 8–March 29
The Portrait of Dr. Agnew (Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven), a study for The Agnew Clinic, draws unexpected attention when it is shown at the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy. The art collector Dr. Albert C. Barnes purchases the portrait for four thousand dollars.
1915
February 7–March 28
Eakins’s portrait of Mrs. Talcott Williams (The Black Fan, Philadelphia Museum of Art), painted in the early 1890s, is accorded a place of honor in the annual exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy, earning consistent praise in the press.
February 20–December 4
At the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, Eakins exhibits The Bohemian (Portrait of Franklin Louis Schenck) (Philadephia Museum of Art), The Veteran, The Concert Singer, The Crucifixion, Home Ranch (pl. 191), and Portrait of Henry Ossawa Tanner (pl. 212).
1916
April
The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchases Pushing for Rail. Eakins writes to thank curator Bryson Burroughs, but adds, “I sincerely wish the Museum had chosen a larger and more important picture, such as ‘The writing master.’ The portrait of Henry A. Rowland of the Johns Hopkins University, Prof. George Barker of the University of Pennsylvania—and others” (Eakins to Burroughs, April 23, 1916, Archives, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).
April 25
Eakins is elected an honorary member of the Art Club of Philadelphia.
June 25
Eakins dies; there is no service. His ashes are later buried in Woodlands Cemetery in 1939 with those of his wife. At the time of his death, his estate is appraised for $33,805.61 and includes many of his finest works, valued together at $2,860.
December
In an exhibition of members’ works, the National Association of Portrait Painters includes Eakins as an honorary member (deceased).
1917
November 5
The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens a memorial exhibition of sixty paintings by Eakins.
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Description: Thomas Eakins Memorial Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,...
Thomas Eakins Memorial Exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, November 5–December 3, 1917. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
December 23
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, responding to considerable local pressure, opens its own memorial exhibition of 139 works by Eakins.
Chronology