Amy Werbel
Amy Werbel is associate professor at FIT.
Werbel, Amy
Werbel, Amy
United States of America
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Description: Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures
The ten perspective drawings Thomas Eakins made for his rowing paintings rank among the most remarkable works of his career. These drawings record the dimensions and positions of boats, rowers, and landscape elements with such precision that we can determine the time of day and orientation represented in each scene...
PublisherYale University Art Gallery
Related print edition pages: pp.79-89
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00169.008
Description: Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia
https://doi.org/10.37862/aaeportal.00168
The life and work of Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), America’s most celebrated portrait painter, have long generated heated controversy. In this fresh and deeply researched interpretation of the artist, Amy Werbel sets Eakins in the context of Philadelphia’s scientific, medical, and artistic communities of the 19th century, and considers his provocative behavior in the light of other well-publicized scandals of his era. This illuminating perspective provides a rich, alternative account of Eakins and casts entirely new light on his renowned paintings.

Eakins’ modern critics have described his artistic motivations and beliefs as prurient and even pathological. Werbel challenges these interpretations and suggests instead that Eakins is best understood as an artist and teacher devoted to an exacting and profound study of the human body, to equality for women and men, and to middle-class meritocratic and Quaker philosophies.
Print publication date June 2007 (in print)
Print ISBN 9780300116557
EISBN 9780300230956
Illustrations 69
Print Status in print