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Johns, Elizabeth

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Bibliographic Essay

Elizabeth Johns

Thomas Eakins: The Heroism of Modern Life

The major figure in Eakins scholarship is Lloyd Goodrich, who published his first study of Eakins in 1933...

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Elizabeth Johns

PublisherPrinceton University Press

Stable URL: https://aaeportal.com/?id=-23375

Bibliographic Essay

Preface

The major figure in Eakins scholarship is Lloyd Goodrich, who published his first study of Eakins in 1933, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work, New York: Whitney Museum of American Art; and an expanded, two-volume study in 1982, Thomas Eakins, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, for the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Goodrich’s early study, a biography and catalogue, climaxed the posthumous championing of Eakins in the 1920s by a number of New York critics who reversed the general neglect of the artist that had prevailed since late in the nineteenth century. Goodrich’s enlarged edition draws more fully on the extensive interviews he conducted with Eakins’ widow, several of his students, and many of his sitters, and includes an updated bibliography of criticism and scholarship on Eakins.

Scholars after 1933 followed Goodrich’s lead to enlarge the canon of biographical data and discuss Eakins’ realistic technique. These include Margaret McHenry, Thomas Eakins, Who Painted, Oreland, Pa.: privately printed, 1946; Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work of Thomas Eakins, New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974 (almost overwhelming in its detail and speculation); the catalogue by Phyllis D. Rosenzweig, The Thomas Eakins Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1977; William Innes Homer et al. in Eakins at Avondale and Thomas Eakins: A Personal Collection, Chadds Ford, Penn.: Brandywine River Museum, 1980; and Darrel Sewell, Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982 (an exhibition catalogue and essay). A single essay that typifies the approach of historians to Eakins’ “exactitude” is Hendricks, “A May Morning in the Park,” The Philadelphia Museum of Art Bulletin 60 (Spring 1965), 48–64.

Scholars who qualified Goodrich’s major emphases but nonetheless treat Eakins as standing apart from his milieu are Fairfield Porter, Thomas Eakins, New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1959; Sylvan Schendler, Eakins, Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1967; and Theodor Siegl, The Thomas Eakins Collection, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978, with an introduction by Evan H. Turner. Siegl and Turner are particularly sensitive in treating Eakins as a complex person.

With new trends in scholarship, Eakins’ sexual nature has become a topic of speculation. Scholars who have offered their opinions include Gordon Hendricks (in his Life and Work, 1974), David Sellin (in The First Pose, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), William Innes Homer (in a paper entitled “Thomas Eakins and Women: A Psycho-Sexual Profile” presented to the annual meeting of the College Art Association in 1981), and Lloyd Goodrich, in his study of 1982.

As an alternative to a biographical approach, a number of historians have focused on Eakins’ achievement in specific media. These include Moussa M. Domit, The Sculpture of Thomas Eakins, Washington, D.C.: The Corcoran Gallery of Art, 1969; Donelson F. Hoopes, Eakins Watercolors, New York: Watson-Guptill, 1971; Gordon Hendricks, The Photographs of Thomas Eakins, New York: Grossman Publishers, 1972; William Innes Homer (with J. Talbot), “Eakins, Muybridge and the Motion Picture Process,” The Art Quarterly 26 (Summer 1963), 194–216; Ellwood C. Parry III and Mariah Chamberlin-Hellman, “Thomas Eakins as an Illustrator, 1878–1881,” American Art Journal 5 (May 1973), 20–45; and Ellwood C. Parry III, “Thomas Eakins and the Everpresence of Photography,” Arts Magazine 51 (June 1977), 111–115. An exhibition that studies Eakins’ work in relationship to that of his wife and sister-in-law is Thomas Eakins, Susan Macdowell Eakins, Elizabeth Macdowell Kenton, exhibition catalogue, text by David Sellin, Roanoke, Va.: North Cross School, 1977.

Very recently, scholars have taken new directions in assessing Eakins’ achievement. Two collections of papers demonstrate the increasing variety in this investigation: first, a group of illuminating essays on Eakins’ photography, sculpture, student days, late portraits, family relationships, Crucifixion, and his only one-man exhibition in Philadelphia, published in Arts Magazine, May 1979. The second collection was a session devoted to new approaches to Eakins at the annual meeting of the College Art Association in Philadelphia in 1983 (Abstracts available), which included assessments of his critical reputation, his watercolor technique, problems in attributing his photographs, his participation in the Carnegie International Exhibition, and his fascination with mental activity; many of these papers will be published as articles.

Essays on Eakins’ paintings discussed in this book will be cited chapter by chapter, below.

Eakins, Modern Life, and the Portrait

Excellent recent studies analyze the political, economic, and social changes in the nineteenth century that had so fundamental an impact on artists. A cross-Atlantic introduction to the period, with illustrations that show the wide variety of artists’ responses, is Asa Briggs, ed., The Nineteenth Century: The Contradictions of Progress, London: Thames and Hudson, 1970. A study that focuses on France (and follows the developments into the mid-twentieth century) is Theodore Zeldin, France, 1848–1945, 2 vols., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973–1977. Ernest L. Woodward, The Age of Reform 1815–1870, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962 (2nd ed.) examines England during its greatest social upheavals. An excellent starting point for the study of America in this period is Daniel Boorstin, The Americans: The Democratic Experience, New York: Random House, 1973, which studies the diffusion of democratic aspirations into all areas of American life and provides an essential bibliography for further investigation.

Of the many works that focus on the latter part of the century in America, several are particularly important. Howard Mumford Jones explores the range of individual experience in The Age of Energy: Varieties of American Experience 1865–1915, New York: The Viking Press, 1971. Robert H. Wiebe examines American anxiety about discontinuity in The Search for Order, 1877–1920, New York: Hill and Wang, 1967 (a work that might logically be read after Arthur A. Ekirch’s study of an optimistic earlier period, The Idea of Progress in America, 1815–1860, New York: Columbia University Press, 1944). A specific discussion of the effects of industrialization on American life is Thomas C. Cochran and William Miller, The Age of Enterprise: A Social History of Industrial America, rev. ed., New York: Harper and Row, 1961. A group of essays assessing the varied dimensions of culture, business, and politics is collected in H. Wayne Morgan, ed., The Gilded Age: A Reappraisal, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1970. Alan Trachtenberg’s recent The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, New York: Hill and Wang, 1982, with extensive bibliography, is invaluable.

Fundamental primary sources for a close study of the period are the popular periodicals: Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Harper’s Weekly, Atlantic Monthly, Scribner’s Monthly, Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, Lippincott’s Magazine (published in Philadelphia), and, more limited in focus but also enjoying a wide audience, Popular Science Monthly. Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, 5 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1930–1968, discusses other periodicals.

A detailed history of Philadelphia as seen from the mid-years of Thomas Eakins’ career is that of J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott, History of Philadelphia, 1609–1884, 3 vols., Philadelphia: L. H. Everts & Co., 1884. A recent perspective is provided by Sam Bass Warner, The Private City, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968, who looks closely at Philadelphia in three separate periods. Specific detail that is valuable for a study of Philadelphia in the Centennial year of 1876 is found in Dennis Clark, ed., Philadelphia: 1776–2076, A Three Hundred Year View, Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1975. E. Digby Baltzell’s analysis of the top social level of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Gentlemen: The Making of a National Upper Class, Glencoe, III.: The Free Press, 1958 (rpt. Chicago 1971), is helpful in placing Eakins in the context of his potential patronage. More recently, Baltzell contrasts the social, professional, and artistic milieus of Philadelphia and Boston in Puritan Boston and Quaker Philadelphia, New York: The Free Press, 1979, and includes a bibliography of studies that examine the many facets of Philadelphia life: political, financial, educational, professional, cultural, and religious. A recent article that discusses a phenomenon that the historian cf Philadelphia culture must recognize is that by Edwin Wolf 2nd, “The Origins of Philadelphia’s Self-Depreciation, 1820–1920,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 104, no. 1 (1980), 58–73.

Surveys of nineteenth-century art show the general artistic context in which Eakins pursued his ambitions. Typifying twentieth-century historians’ emphases on the evolution of landscape, genre painting, and modern style in the nineteenth century, these surveys include, for Europe, Fritz Novotny, Painting and Sculpture in Europe, 1780–1880, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1960, and George Heard Hamilton, Painting and Sculpture in Europe 1880–1940, Baltimore and New York: Penguin Books, 1967. Two surveys of American painting give sensitive (although, in the broadest outlines, traditional) place to Eakins’ work in the context of artists on this side of the Atlantic: Jules D. Prown, American Painting, From its Beginnings to the Armory Show, Geneva: Skira, 1969, and New York: Rizzoli, 1980; and John Wilmerding, American Art, New York and Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1976. A detailed study of the complex currents in Europe during Eakins’ student years is Joseph C. Sloane, French Painting Between the Past and the Present: Artists, Critics, and Traditions, from 1848 to 1870, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. Albert Boime, in The Academy and French Painting in the Nineteenth Century, London and New York: Phaidon, 1971, studies the theoretical and practical context in which Eakins actually learned to paint.

For a study of the realist mode in art in the nineteenth century, the more specific current in which Eakins’ career takes its place, see the stimulating essay by Linda Nochlin, Realism, New York and Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1971. The exhibition The Triumph of Realism: an Exhibition of European and American Realist Paintings 1850–1910, Brooklyn: Brooklyn Museum, 1967 examines cross-Atlantic themes and techniques, with some illuminating comparisons. Gabriel P. Weisberg looks closely at French realism in the exhibition The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830–1900, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981. Barbara Novak argues for a specifically American vision and technique in her study American Painting of the Nineteenth Century: Realism, Idealism, and the American Experience, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969. Forming an invaluable illustration and occasional corrective to these studies are the primary documents drawn from several countries in Elizabeth Gilmore Holt, From the Classicists to the Impressionists (Vol. 3 of A Documentary History of Art), Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1966, and The Triumph of Art for the Public: The Emerging Role of Exhibitions and Critics, Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1979. Providing yet another point of view is the study of popular imagery by Beatrice Farwell in the exhibition The Cult of Images: Baudelaire and the Nineteenth-Century Media Explosion, Santa Barbara: University of California Art Museum, 1977.

The classic study of the role of the arts in America in the late nineteenth century is the provocative essay by Lewis Mumford, The Brown Decades: A Study of the Arts in America 1865–1895, New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1931 (rpt. Dover, 1955). References to primary sources are a strong contribution of H. Wayne Morgan, New Muses: Art in American Culture, 1865–1920, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1978. A variety of documents are reprinted in H. Barbara Weinberg, ed., The Art Experience in Late Nineteenth Century America, New York: Garland, 1978, a group of late-century essays which include William J. Clarke, Jr.’s Great American Sculptures, 1878, G. W. Sheldon, Hours with Art and Artists, 1882, and others.

The art of Philadelphia is explored most thoroughly in the exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art, 1976. Studies of significant Philadelphia artists who shaped the tradition that Eakins inherited include the excellent collection of essays by Edgar P. Richardson, Brooke Hindle, and Lillian B. Miller for the exhibition Charles Willson Peale and His World, New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1982, with a complete bibliography on Peale, and the National Portrait Gallery exhibition on Thomas Sully in 1983 (an earlier exhibition was that at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Catalogue of the Memorial Exhibition of Portraits by Thomas Sully, Philadelphia, 1922). The third major Philadelphia portraitist, John Neagle, was last reviewed in detail in 1925, when the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts presented an exhibition (Catalogue of an Exhibition of Portraits by John Neagle).

The portrait has not received broad emphasis in recent studies of European painting of the nineteenth century. A few studies and catalogues, however, suggest the varied role the portrait played throughout the period. Hugh Honour, in Neo-classicism, Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1968, discusses the interest in portraiture of eminent men that was renewed in the Enlightenment and carried into the next century. Essays and individual entries in Peter Fusco and H. W. Janson, The Romantics to Rodin: French Nineteenth-Century Sculpture from North American Collections, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art and New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1980, analyze the relationship between cultural ideals and sculpted portraits throughout the century. Beatrice Farwell studies portrait prints in French Popular Lithographic Imagery, Vol. 2, Portraits and Types, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Jean Sutherland Boggs, in Portraits by Degas, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962, analyzes the importance of portraiture to an artist generally associated with other interests. The exhibition catalogue From Realism to Symbolism: Whistler and His World, New York and Philadelphia: Columbia University and Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971, demonstrates the attention slightly later artists, also now associated with different interests, gave to the portrait. The mission of English history painter George Frederick Watts to paint at his own expense a gallery of portraits of the most eminent men of his time is studied in the exhibition catalogue of the National Portrait Gallery, G. F. Watts: The Hall of Fame, London, 1975. An English artist (originally German) who pursued a similar goal was Rudolf Lehmann, who recorded his experience in An Artist’s Reminiscences, London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1894. Much of his work was collected in Men and Women of the Century (“being a collection of portraits and sketches by Mr. Rudolf Lehmann”), introduction and biographical notes by H. C. Marillier, London: George Bell and Sons, 1896.

Different historical circumstances—the prominence of the portrait in American painting—have led to a number of essays and exhibitions studying American portraiture that are important in assessing Eakins’ role as a portraitist. (The recent date of these studies, however, shows American historians’ own earlier emphases on landscape and genre, which followed the focus of historians of European art.) Ellen Miles, ed., Portrait Painting in America: The Nineteenth Century, New York: Main Street/Universe Books, 1977, is a collection of essays examining portraiture in various regions of America. William John Hennessey focuses on stylistic changes in American portraiture in The American Portrait from the Death of Stuart to the Rise of Sargent, Worcester, Mass.: Worcester Art Museum, 1973. The exhibition This New Man: A Discourse in Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 1968, examines nineteenth-century portraits as self-conscious records of the new diversity in American life. The recent exhibition and catalogue by Michael Quick, American Portraiture in the Grand Manner: 1720–1920, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1981, probes the development of the formal portrait in America over a range of geography and time.

Important for a study of the role of the portrait in Philadelphia are such institutional collection catalogues as Catalogue of the National Portraits in Independence Hall, comprising many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and other distinguished persons, Philadelphia: John Coates, 1855; A Catalogue of Portraits and Other Works of Art in the Possession of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1961; Agnes Addison, ed., Portraits in the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1940; and Nicholas B. Wainwright, 150 Years of Collecting by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1824–1974, Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1974.

The early role of the portrait print in America is discussed in Harry T. Peters, America on Stone, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1931 (rpt. New York: Arno Press, 1976) and Peter C. Marzio, The Democratic Art: Chromolithography 1840–1900, Boston: David R. Godine, 1979. Nicholas B. Wainwright points to the place of the portrait print in Philadelphia in Philadelphia in the Romantic Age of Lithography, Philadelphia: Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1958. The most important collections of portrait prints published in Philadelphia, which comprise important primary sources, are Joseph Delaplaine, Delaplaine’s Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished American Characters, Philadelphia, 1815–1816; James B. Longacre and James Herring, The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans, 4 vols., Philadelphia and New York: M. Bancroft, 1834–1839; Charles Lester Edwards, ed., The Gallery of Illustrious Americans, from daguerreotypes by Mathew Brady, New York: d’Avignon Press, 1850; Henry Simpson, The Lives of Eminent Philadelphians, Philadelphia: William Brotherhead, 1859; and The National Portrait Gallery of Distinguished Americans: With Biographical Sketches by Celebrated Authors, Philadelphia: Rice, Rutter, 1865.

The photographic portrait is examined in the context of the history of photography by Beaumont Newhall in The History of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day, rev., New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964. Newhall narrows his focus to study the photographic portrait in America in The Daguerreotype in America, 3rd rev., New York: Dover Publications, 1976. Richard Rudisill, Mirror Image: The Influence of the Daguerreotype on American Society, Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1971 examines the social and aesthetic impact of this early portrait imagery. Elizabeth McCauley probes the conventions across the Atlantic in Likenesses: Portrait Photography in Europe 1850–1870, Albuquerque: Art Museum, University of New Mexico, 1980. Ben Maddow surveys the portrait photograph with prominent late nineteenth-century examples in Faces: A Narrative History of the Portrait in Photography, Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1977. Two collections of photographs demonstrate the popularity and the conventions of studio photography later in the century: Victorian Studio Photographs from the Collections of Studio Bassano and Elliott and Fry, London, Boston: David R. Godine, 1976, and Ben L. Bassham, The Theatrical Photographs of Napoleon Sarony, Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1978. Valuable in assessing the role of the portrait photographer as self-styled documentor of the eminent men of his time are three studies of portrait photographers on both sides of the Atlantic: Nigel Gosling, Nadar, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976; National Portrait Gallery, London, The Herchel Album: an Album of Photographs by Julian Margaret Cameron presented to Sir John Herchel, 1975; and Dorothy M. Kunhardt and Philip B. Kunhardt, Jr., Mathew Brady and His World, Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1977.

For the study of portrait photography in Philadelphia, two works are essential: early Philadelphia photographer Marcus A. Root’s The Camera and the Pencil or the Heliographic Art, Philadelphia: M. A. Root, 1864; and Kenneth Finkel, Nineteenth-Century Photography in Philadelphia, New York: Dover Publications, 1980.

A study of heroism as a Western idea should begin with the brilliant work of Sidney Hook, The Hero in History, a Study in Limitation and Possibility, New York: The John Day Co., 1943. Focusing on the development of the idea in the nineteenth century is Benjamin H. Lehman, Carlyle’s Theory of the Hero: Its Sources, Development, History, and Influence on Carlyle’s Work; A Study of a Nineteenth-Century Idea, New York: AMS Press, 1966 (orig. 1928). For Carlyle’s own presentation of his theories, see Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History, New York: AMS Press, 1974; and The Works of Thomas Carlyle, edited and introduced by H. D. Traill, New York: AMS Press, 1974. Baudelaire’s attention to the idea can be traced in Art in Paris 1845–1862; Salons and other exhibitions reviewed by Charles Baudelaire, translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne, London and New York: Phaidon, 1970; and The Painter of Modern Life, and other essays, translated and edited by Jonathan Mayne, London and New York: Phaidon, 1970. Emerson’s convictions are scattered throughout his Works, 12 vols. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1904, and discussed in detail in his essay entitled “Heroism,” in vol. 2, p. 250.

Several studies look at ideals of heroism in America. Henry F. May’s The Enlightenment in America, New York: Oxford University Press, 1976, discusses the ideals of discipline and morality that informed American intellectual life and ideals during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with specific sections on Philadelphia. Two studies specifically focused on heroism consider literary contributions to the ideal: Dixon Wecter, The Hero in America: a Chronicle of Hero Worship, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1972; and Marshall William Fishwick, The Hero, American Style, New York: D. McKay Co., 1969. Drawing on popular magazines, Theodore P. Greene studies America’s Heroes: The Changing Models of Success in American Magazines, New York: Oxford University Press, 1970.

Max Schmitt in a Single Scull

American rowing in the nineteenth century is given an immediacy by histories of the sport written during the period, which convey the excitement of rowing’s partisans. Charles A. Peverelly, The Book of American Pastimes, New York (published by the author), 1866, champions the sport in its context as a leisure activity among many others. Focusing exclusively on rowing, Robert B. Johnson, A History of Rowing in America, Milwaukee: Corbitt and Johnson, 1871, includes chapters on its history, on training and health, boatbuilding, biographical sketches of prominent oarsmen, and a glossary of rowing terms. By far the most thorough exposition of rowing and its implications—much more thorough than similar material in later histories—is The Annual Illustrated Catalogue and Oarsman’s Manual, Troy, N.Y.: Waters, Balch and Company, 1871 (published only in 1871). Waters and Balch discuss in detail the history of rowing (including rowing in England), various rowing techniques, boatbuilding techniques (illustrated by a number of actual plans), and the benefits of outdoor exercise.

The best of the American rowing almanacs, valuable for records of races and regattas, are those of Fred J. Engelhardt, The American Rowing Almanac and Oarsman’s Pocket Companion, New York: Engelhardt and Bruce, 1873 (and also editions in 1874 and 1875). Ed. James, The Modern Oarsman, New York: Ed. James, 1878, features wood engraved portraits of famous professional oarsmen. James Watson, Rowing and Athletic Annual for 1874, New York: Watson, 1874 (and an edition in 1875), gives additional racing results.

Specialized American sporting periodicals of the middle and late century provide detailed reports and analyses of rowing philosophy, heroes, clubs, and races that cannot be found elsewhere. The most important are Spirit of the Times (published in New York first as Wilkes’ Spirit of the Times from 1831 on); The Clipper (published in New York from 1853–1924); Turf, Field and Farm (published in New York from 1865–1906); and Aquatic Monthly (published in New York from 1872–1881, then published as Brentano’s Monthly). The more general periodicals Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Magazine, Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, and Harper’s Weekly paid increasing attention to rowing all across the continent after 1860. Philadelphia newspapers, particularly the Press and the Evening Bulletin, began to devote attention to rowing in Philadelphia in the early 1870s.

Starting points in a study of English rowing, which played so crucial a role in the development of the sport in America, are the summaries and handbooks by “Argonaut” [Edwin D. Brickwood], The Arts of Rowing and Training, London: Horace Cox, 1866, and Archibald Macleren, Training, in Theory and Practice, London: Macmillan and Co., 1866 (both were strongly recommended to American readers by Waters and Balch in their Annual Illustrated Catalogue, 1871). William F. MacMichael writes an early history of university rowing in The Oxford and Cambridge Boat Races 1829–69, Cambridge: Deighton, Bell, and Co., 1870.

Histories of rowing written in the twentieth century place the nineteenth-century preoccupation with the sport in perspective, but they also convey little of the earlier flavor preserved in the specialized periodicals. The best general treatment of American recreation is John R. Betts, America’s Sporting Heritage: 1850–1950, Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1974. The most recent history of American rowing is Thomas C. Mendenhall, A Short History of American Rowing, Boston: Charles River Books, 1980. Much of the history of rowing in Philadelphia is treated by Louis Heiland, History of the Schuylkill Navy of Philadelphia, Philadelphia: Drake Press, 1938. Of the twentieth-century accounts of English rowing, that of R. C. Lehmann, The Complete Oarsman, London: Methuen and Co., 1908 shows particularly well the rapid change in the character of rowing; also valuable are the photographs illustrating rowing techniques. Early twentieth-century studies of rowing, although informative, tend to be more celebratory than analytical. A good example is the work by former rower and coach Robert F. Kelley, American Rowing: Its Background and Traditions, New York and London: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1932. The most balanced and concise recent history of English rowing is that of Keith Osborne, Boat Racing in Britain 1715–1975, London: Amateur Rowing Association, 1975.

As far as I know, there are no published studies of American rowing imagery. Informative articles on the history of English rowing imagery include V. Philip Sabin, “Old rowing prints; scarce but inexpensive views of early Oxford and Cambridge boat races,” Antique Collector (London) 3 (1932), 134–136; 230–231; and Gordon Winter, “Rowing prints for the collector,” Apollo (London) 25 (1937), 187–191. Helpful for its inclusion of many rowing prints from early in the history of rowing is Lionel S. R. Byrne and E. L. Churchill, The Eton Book of the River with Some Account of the Thames and the Evolution of Boat-Racing, Eton: Alden and Blackwell Ltd., 1952. The few rowing prints and paintings in the Paul Mellon Collection are catalogued and illustrated in Judy Egerton and Dudley Snelgrove, British Sporting and Animal Drawings 1500–1850, Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron, 1978; Judy Egerton, British Sporting and Animal Paintings 1655–1867, Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron, 1978; and Dudley Snelgrove, British Sporting and Animal Prints 1658–1874, Woodbury, N.Y.: Barron, 1981.

For specific discussions of Eakins’ painting of Schmitt, see Bryson Burroughs, “An Early Painting by Thomas Eakins,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 29, no. 9 (September 1934), 151–153; and Gordon Hendricks, “The Champion Single Sculls,” The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin (March 1968), 306–307.

The Gross Clinic

A clear, comprehensive introduction to the history of medicine and surgery, a grasp of which is essential to an analysis of the Gross Clinic, is Arturo Castiglioni, A History of Medicine, translated and edited by E. B. Krumbhaar, 2nd ed., New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958. A survey specifically of surgery—again, an essential context—is Owen H. Wangensteen and Sarah D. Wangensteen, The Rise of Surgery: From Empiric Craft to Scientific Discipline, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1978. Both of these studies are illustrated with reliefs, manuscript illuminations, engravings, portraits, history paintings, and genre scenes inspired by the medical and surgical practice of the era.

On the history of medicine and surgery in America, twentieth-century analytical studies provide the general historian the best survey of the variety of issues important in Dr. Gross’s career and in Philadelphia. Discussing the training of physicians and surgeons, their social role, the scientific basis of their practice, and their ethical and professional ideals, three studies are by the pioneering American medical historian Richard Harrison Shryock: Medicine and Society in America: 1660–1860, New York: New York University Press, 1960; American Medical Research Past and Present, New York: The Commonwealth Fund, 1947; and Medicine in America: Historical Essays, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1966. Two are by other authors: William G. Rothstein, American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century: From Sects to Science, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972; and Gert H. Brieger, ed., Medical America in the Nineteenth Century, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972. An article by Courtney R. Hall looks closely at surgery in the era in which Dr. Gross began his career: “The rise of professional surgery in the U.S., 1800–65,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 26 (1952), 231–262.

Because French surgery and medical education had such an impact on American practice, the following twentieth-century studies of French surgery are important: John Chalmers Da Costa, “The French School of Surgery in the Reign of Louis Philippe,” Annals of Medical History 4 (1922), 77–79; Erwin H. Ackerknecht, “Medical Education in Nineteenth-Century France,” Journal of Medical Education 32, no. 2 (February, 1957), 148–152, and Medicine at the Paris Hospital 1794–1848, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967.

For a perspective on the relationship between medicine and the scientific tradition in the nineteenth century, two collections of essays are particularly valuable: David D. Van Tassel and Michael G. Hall, eds., Science and Society in the United States, Homewood, III.: The Dorsey Press, 1966; and George H. Daniels, ed., Nineteenth-Century American Science: A Reappraisal, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1972.

Studies of medicine and surgery written in the nineteenth century are important in revealing ideals and points of view contemporary with Gross. On the development of surgery in France, see Jules E. Rochard, Histoire de la chirurgie française au XIXe siècle, Paris: Baillière, 1875. Also valuable in an investigation of French practice through the mid-century years are the French medical periodicals Bulletin et mémoires de la Société des Chirurgiens de Paris, and L’Union médicale. On the development of surgery and medicine in America the work edited by Edward H. Clarke is particularly important. His A Century of American Medicine 1776–1876, Philadelphia: H. C. Lea, 1876 (rpt. New York: Lenox Hill Publishing and Distributing Co., 1971), contains Gross’s essay, “A Century of American Surgery.” Two other important essays in the collection are John S. Billings, “Literature and Institutions,” tracing the rise of medical periodicals and medical colleges, and Henry J. Bigelow, “A History of the Discovery of Modern Anesthesia.” Helpful in establishing Gross’s place in the evolution of surgery just after his era had ended is the essay by J. S. Billings, “The History and Literature of Surgery,” in Frederic S. Dennis, ed., Systems of Surgery, Vol. 1, Philadelphia: Lea Brothers and Co., 1895.

The following medical journals published in Philadelphia during Gross’s career provide rich information and insights about American as well as European (especially French) surgery and medicine: The American Journal of the Medical Sciences, n.s. (1841–1888); The North American Medico-Chirurgical Review, 1857–1861 (edited by Gross himself); The Medical and Surgical Reporter, from 1859; The Philadelphia Medical Times, 1870–1889; and The College and Clinical Record (a Jefferson Medical College publication), from January 1880.

The relationship between the study of anatomy and the practice of surgery and medicine is placed in historical perspective by Jack Kevorkian, The Story of Dissection, New York: Philosophical Library, 1959. Gweneth Whitteridge gives insight into the evolution of anatomical study in Rembrandt’s era (so essential a consideration for the analysis of anatomy lessons as painting subjects) in “How Physiology grew from Anatomy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,” Journal of Physiology (London) 263, no. 1 (December 1976), 1P-9P. Viewpoints on anatomical study contemporary with Eakins are expressed in the several published introductory lectures of Joseph Pancoast (Eakins’ instructor at Jefferson) to his courses in surgery, from 1834–1869, and in the book by William W. Keen (the surgeon for whom Eakins acted as demonstrator of anatomy), A Sketch of the Early History of Practical Anatomy, Philadelphia: P. Madiera, 1870. Keen also wrote on anatomical teaching specifically in Philadelphia: The History of the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, and Its Relations to Medical Teaching, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1875.

Several histories focus on Philadelphia medicine. Burton A. Konkle, ed. by Fred P. Henry, Standard History of the Medical Profession of Philadelphia, Chicago, 1897 (2nd ed., New York: AMS Press, 1977), contains biographical and topical summaries. R. H. Shryock discusses the complex factors in Philadelphia in the first part of the century in “The Advent of Modern Medicine in Philadelphia, 1800–1850,” Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 13 (1941), 725–731. The exhibition catalogue The Art of Philadelphia Medicine, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1965 is invaluable for its historical essays and illustrated portraits.

The history of Jefferson Medical College is told by James F. Gayley, A History of the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia, with Biographical Sketches of the Early Professors, Philadelphia: J. M. Wilson, 1858; George M. Gould, The Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia: A History, New York: Lewis Publishers, 1904; and Edward Louis Bauer, Doctors Made in America, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1963. All three viewpoints are valuable.

The best account of Gross’s very active life is his autobiography: Autobiography of Samuel D. Gross, M.D., 2 vols., edited by Samuel W. Gross and A. Haller Gross, Philadelphia: George Barrie, Publisher, 1887 (rpt. New York: Arno Press Inc., 1972). Of his many publications, the two works that brought him the most attention were his Elements of Pathological Anatomy, Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon & Webb, 1839 (3rd rev. Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea, 1859); and A System of Surgery, 2 vols., Philadelphia: Blanchard & Lea, 1859 (6th ed. 1882). Of enduring importance were his centennial essays, the History of American Medical Literature from 1776 to the Present Time, Philadelphia: Collins, 1876; and “A Century of American Surgery,” published in A Century of American Medicine 1776–1876, edited by Edward H. Clarke, Philadelphia: H. C. Lea, 1876.

Gross researched and brought to public attention many of the achievements of isolated American surgeons and physicians, in 1861 editing and publishing The Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the 19th Century, Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston. His essay on the great French surgeon Ambroise Paré, Discourse upon the Life, Character, and Services of Ambroise Paré, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1861, was reprinted twice. The texts of many of Gross’s addresses are in the Library of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, in the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and in the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda.

There are a number of well-illustrated surveys of medical imagery. Among the most comprehensive are, for early imagery, Pierre Huard and Mirko D. Grmek, Mille ans de chirurgie en occident: Ve–XVe siècles, Paris: Les Editions Roger Dacosta, 1966; and for later medical imagery and its significance, Jean Rousselot, Medicine in Art: A Cultural History, New York and Toronto: McGraw-Hill, 1967; Leon Binet and Pierre Vallery-Radot, Médecine et art: de la Renaissance à nos jours, Paris: Expansion Scientifique Française, 1968; Carl Zigrosser, Medicine and the Artist, New York: Dover Publications (3rd ed.), 1970; and Albert S. Lyons and R. Joseph Petrocelli, Medicine, an Illustrated History, New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1978. Valuable for its reproduction of nineteenth-century images is Album Gonnon: Iconographie médicale, Lyon: Gonnon, 1909. There is an excellent reference collection of medical images in the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda.

Several works catalogue and discuss collections of images, particularly portraits. Basic surveys of important French images are Noë Legrand, La galerie historique et artistique de la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, Paris: Steinheil, 1903, and Les collections artistiques de la Faculté de Médecine de Paris, Paris: Masson, 1911. Essays that discuss the collection assembled by the professional society of Parisian surgeons are Bulletin de la Société des Chirurgiens, 3 (20 October 1852), 154–159; and L. Hahn and E. Wickersheimer, “Les collections artistiques de la Société de Chirurgie de Paris (1843–1908),” Bulletin et mémoires de la Société des Chirurgiens de Paris, n.s. 34 (1908), 35–67. For a more general audience, Delpech, Paris issued the collection of portrait prints called Médecins et chirurgiens célèbres in 1837. Bound portrait collections were also popular in England: Thomas Joseph Pettigrew, Medical Portrait Gallery, London: Fisher, 1838–1840; Photographs of Eminent Medical Men of all Countries, London: Churchill, 1867–1868. There was even a small edition of Philadelphia medical portraits: Portraits of the Professors of the Medical Departments of the University of Pennsylvania and in the Jefferson Medical College, 2 vols., Philadelphia: V. F. Harrison, 1846 (engraved after daguerreotypes by M. P. Simmons). Several aspects of this surge of portraits are examined in Helen T. Knojias, “Medical Portraits of the Nineteenth Century,” Ciba Symposia 6, no. 1 (April 1944), 1772–1777; 1780.

Several exhibitions have probed the relationship between art and medicine. In addition to the exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art already mentioned, a valuable contribution is 200 Years of American Medicine (1776–1976), Washington, D.C.: National Library of Medicine, 1976. William H. Gerdts, in The Art of Healing: Medicine and Science in American Art, Birmingham: Birmingham Museum of Art, 1981, assembles a number of medical portraits. The William Bradley Collection at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia is an index (with photographs) of images of Philadelphia physicians from early in the nineteenth century.

In addition to Goodrich, the following art historians and other writers have discussed the Gross Clinic. The most important work is that of Ellwood C. Parry III, in two articles, “Thomas Eakins and the Gross Clinic,” Jefferson Medical College Alumni Bulletin 16 (June 1967), 2–12, and “The Gross Clinic as Anatomy Lesson and Memorial Portrait,” Art Quarterly 32 (Winter 1969), 373–391. Gordon Hendricks, in “Thomas Eakins’s Gross Clinic,” Art Bulletin 51 (March 1969), 57–64 emphasizes critical assessment of the painting. Neil Hyman, “Eakins’s Gross Clinic Again,” Art Quarterly 35 (Summer 1972), 158–164 suggests a pictorial precedent. David Sellin devotes attention to the exhibition circumstances of the painting in his The First Pose, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976. In addition there are two appreciations of Eakins’ paintings of members of the Jefferson medical community by Gonzalo E. Aponte, M.D.: “Thomas Eakins,” Jefferson Medical College Alumni Bulletin 12 (December 1969), and “Thomas Eakins: Painter, Sculptor, Teacher,” Transactions and Studies of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia 32 (April 1965), 160–163.

William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River

The first exhibition devoted to Rush was Henri Marceau, William Rush 1756–1833: The First American Sculptor, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Museum of Art, 1937. The more recent—and only the second—exhibition, was curated by Linda Bantel, with a catalogue that features essays on several aspects of Rush’s work: William Rush, American Sculptor, Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1982.

The first history of American art to discuss Rush was that by William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, New York: George P. Scott and Company, 1834 (rpt. Dover, 1969). Recent histories of American sculpture that discuss Rush’s career are Wayne Craven, Sculpture in America, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1968; and the exhibition catalogue 200 Years of American Sculpture, New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1976.

Valuable insights into Philadelphia during Rush’s era and indications of Rush’s place in city life are found in John Fanning Watson, Annals of Philadelphia, Philadelphia: E. L. Carey & A. Hart, 1830, rev. 1845, 1857, and 1879. Another important source is Abraham Ritter, Philadelphia and Her Merchants, as Constituted Fifty or Seventy Years Ago, Philadelphia: published by the author, 1860. A particular aspect of Philadelphia history in which Rush was involved is discussed in Nelson M. Blake, Water for the Cities, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1956. Discussing Philadelphia’s water supply system, Blake includes illuminating detail about Rush’s occasionally controversial advocacy of proposals.

Studies about the history of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, a topic especially pertinent to Eakins’ career from 1876 until 1886 and to his creation of the William Rush painting, include the essays by Frank H. Goodyear, Jr., “A History of The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1805–1976,” and Louise Lippincott, “Thomas Eakins and the Academy,” in In This Academy, Philadelphia: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1976. Evan Turner, in The Thomas Eakins Collection, Philadelphia Museum of Art, discusses Eakins’ role at the academy.

Several scholars have studied the motif of the artist in his studio, a theme that Eakins explored to make his tribute to Rush. A recent examination of artists’ interest in this motif in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is Ronnie L. Zakon, The Artist and the Studio in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Perhaps the best-known painting of this type is Courbet’s The Studio of the Painter; it is studied by Benedict Nicolson in Courbet: The Studio of the Painter, New York: The Viking Press, 1973. Although Courbet’s Studio is a major monument of nineteenth-century painting for twentieth-century historians, the extent of its influence in the nineteenth century (and certainly on American painters) after its initial exhibition in 1855 was limited: it was shown only twice after 1855 during Courbet’s lifetime (and not in Paris), and was not acquired by the Louvre until 1920 (see Nicolson, p. 73). Studies of other paintings on the studio theme include entries on Octave Tassaert by Gabriel P. Weisberg in The Realist Tradition: French Painting and Drawing 1830–1900, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1981, catalogue 127 and pp. 310–311; Gabriel P. Weisberg, “Fantin-Latour and Still-Life Symbolism in Un Atelier aux Batignolles,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, 90 (December 1977): 205–215; on a related theme as explored by Degas, Henri Zerner, “The Return of ‘James’ Tissot,” Art News 67, no. 1 (March 1968) 32–35; 68–70; on Manet’s portrait of Zola (another work closely related to the studio motif), Theodore Reff, “Manet’s Portrait of Zola,” Burlington Magazine 117 (1975), 34–44. A number of less well-known paintings with the theme are illustrated in The Triumph of Realism: An Exhibition of European and American Realist Paintings, Brooklyn Museum, 1967.

Francis Haskell studies the variation on the studio theme that Eakins was to tap for his painting of Rush in “The Old Masters in Nineteenth-century French Painting,” Art Quarterly 34 (1971), 55–85. A related aspect is discussed by R. Verdi, “Poussin’s Life in Nineteenth-century Pictures,” Burlington Magazine 111 (December 1969), 741–750. Charles de Tolnay looks specifically at Delacroix’s exploration of the theme in “Michel-Ange dans son atelier par Delacroix,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts, ser. 6, 59 (1962), 43–52. Ann Coffin Hanson illustrates Manet’s tribute to Velazquez in Manet, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1966–1967, p. 8. H. W. Janson and Peter Fusco, in the exhibition catalogue Romantics to Rodin, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1980, discuss and illustrate a number of nineteenth-century sculptural tributes to Old Masters, pp. 160–161.

Besides the attention given by Goodrich, Sellin (The First Pose, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1976), Siegl (The Thomas Eakins Collection, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978), and others to Eakins’ painting of Rush, Gordon Hendricks discusses the work in “Eakins’ William Rush Carving His Allegorical Statue of the Schuylkill,” Art Quarterly 31 (Winter 1968), 382–404.

The Concert Singer

Comprehensive and balanced introductions to music in the nineteenth century are found in the essays in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by Stanley Sadie, London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1980. Focused on cities, musical forms, types of instruments, and themes, these essays include extensive bibliographies. A recent survey of American music, into which the musical life of the late nineteenth century and that of Philadelphia assume perspective, is H. Wiley Hitchcock, Music in the United States: A Historical Introduction, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 2nd ed., 1974. An invaluable study that focuses specifically on music during Eakins’ era is Joseph A. Mussulman’s Music in the Cultured Generation: A Social History of Music in America, 1870–1900, Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971, which includes an index of articles about music in the major late nineteenth-century periodicals. Illuminating books about American music written contemporary with Eakins are those by Frederick Louis Ritter, Music in America, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1883; and Louis C. Elson, The History of American Music, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1904.

Music in Philadelphia received basic study in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but there has been no recent comprehensive analysis. The best general survey is Robert A. Gerson, Music in Philadelphia, Philadelphia: Theodore Presser Co., 1940. More specifically focused are the essays of Louis C. Madeira, Annals of Music in Philadelphia and the History of the Musical Fund Society from its Organization in 1820 to the year 1858, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1896 (rpt. New York: Da Capo Press, 1973); Centenary, Musical Fund Society of Philadelphia, 1820–1920, Philadelphia, 1920; and W. G. Armstrong, Record of the Opera in Philadelphia, Philadelphia: Porter and Coates, 1884. The introductory chapter of Frances A. Wister, Twenty-five Years of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Philadelphia: Stern, 1925, surveys orchestral music in Philadelphia before the twentieth century.

The most detailed sources for a study of nineteenth-century musical life are contemporary music journals. These are indexed in William J. Weichlein, Checklist of American Music Periodicals 1850–1900, Detroit: Information Coordinators, Inc., 1970. Featuring essays on music, news of local, national and international musicians, illustrations and photogravures, and advertisements (and samples) of the latest best-selling music, particularly valuable in a study of Eakins’ period are the American Art Journal (1864–1905), published in New York (and devoted primarily, despite its title, to music), the Boston journal Musical Record (1878–1885), and three Philadelphia journals—the Amateur (1870–1875), the Philadelphia Musical Journal (also called North’s Philadelphia Musical Journal, 1886–1891), and Etude (1883–1957). The journals published in Philadelphia discuss the musical milieu of the city in great detail; the names of Eakins’ sitters and colleagues occur frequently.

In addition to these major sources, a number of shorter-lived periodicals are preserved at the Free Library of Philadelphia and the Library of Congress. Musical programs on file in Philadelphia at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, the Free Library, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Academy of Music, and in the Library of Congress (especially in the collected scrapbooks of Thomas A’Beckett, an accompanist active in Philadelphia musical circles from 1865 to 1915) provide further insights.

For general surveys of musical imagery, helpful in assessing Eakins’ treatment of musical instruments, see Donald D. Celender, Musical Instruments in Art, Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Co., 1966; and Robert Bragard, Musical Instruments in Art and History, London: Barrie and Rockliff, 1968. A valuable discussion that focuses on Renaissance and baroque imagery—the heritage of which was still very strong in the nineteenth century—is that of Emanuel Winternitz, Musical Instruments and their Symbolism in Western Art, London: Faber and Faber Ltd., 1967. An illuminating survey of historicizing nineteenth-century paintings of Old Master musicians is provided by Walter Rowlands, Among the Great Masters of Music: Scenes in the Lives of Famous Musicians, Boston: Longwood Press, 1978 (rpt. from 1900).

Several studies reveal the social, technological, and artistic role of types of instruments during Eakins’ era. The best study of the development of the piano and of its social role is that of Arthur Loesser, Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954; detailed and witty, the study probes into virtually every aspect of the spread of the instrument across Europe and America. Earlier points of view may be found in Daniel Spillane, History of the American Pianoforte: Its Technical Development, and the Trade, New York: Spillane, 1890 (rpt. New York: Da Capo Press, 1969); and Albert E. Wier, The Piano: Its History, Makers, Players and Music, London, New York, Ontario: Longmans, Green and Co., 1940. Helpful to the art historian because of the many reproductions of paintings and drawings that show keyboard instruments is Helen Rice Hollis, The Piano: A Pictorial Account of Its Ancestry and Development, London: David and Charles, 1975.

Josef Brandlmeier analyzes the zither in its great variety in Handbuch der Zither, Munich: Süddeutscher Verlag, 1963. Sibyl Marcuse, in A Survey of Musical Instruments, New York and London: Harper and Row, 1975, places the instrument in historical context. Paul N. Hasluck, ed., Violins and Other Stringed Instruments: How to Make Them, London: La Belle Sauvage, 1906 and Philadelphia: David McKay, 1907, provides the reader with measurements and materials for actual nineteenth-century instruments. Issues of The Zitherplayer, Washington, D.C., 1879–1881, in the music collection of the Library of Congress, discuss zithers and equipment, zither clubs in America, and zither repertory.

In assessing Eakins’ interest in the violincello, two histories of the instrument written during his lifetime are particularly illuminating: Wilhelm Joseph von Wasielewski, The Violincello and its History, New York: Da Capo Press, 1968 (originally, 1894), and Edmund S. J. van der Straeten, History of the Violincello, the Viol da Gamba, Their Precursors and Collateral Instruments, with Biographies, 2 vols., London: William Reeves, 1915 (rpt: New York: AMS Press, 1976). For a recent study, see Elizabeth Cowling, The Cello, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975.

Invaluable in studying the development of theories of music history in the nineteenth century is the work by Warren Dwight Allen, Philosophies of Music History: A Study of General Histories of Music 1600–1960, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1962 (orig. 1939).

On the phenomenal popularity of singers and opera in the nineteenth century, see, for treatments contemporary with Eakins, Ellen C. Clayton, Queens of Song, Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1972 (orig. 1863); and George T. Ferris, Great Singers: Faustina Bordoni to Henrietta Sontag, 2 vols., New York: D. Appleton, 1888. A more recent point of view is that of Oscar Thompson, The American Singer: A Hundred Years of Success in Opera, New York: Dial Press, 1937 (rpt. New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1969). These works include many reproductions of portrait photographs. Images of singers in prints are discussed by Heino Maedebach in Die Singenden in der Graphischen Kunst, 1500–1900, Coburg: Druckhaus A. Rossteutscher, 1962.

Several works are important for a detailed study of the parlor song. Frances M. R. Ritter, in Some Famous Songs: An Art-Historical Study, New York: Schuberth and Company, 1878, reveals the new historical point of view that informed many musicians’ study of their work. Illustrations of actual songs, with illuminating accompanying discussion, are provided by Wilson Flagg, “Parlor Singing,” Atlantic Monthly 24 (October 1869), 410–420; and, more recently, William Treat Upton, Art-Song in America, Boston: Oliver Ditson Co., 1930 (with supplement, 1938); Paul Fatout, “Threnodies of the Ladies’ Books,” Musical Quarterly 31, no. 4 (October 1945), 464–478; Nicholas E. Tawa, Sweet Songs for Gentle Americans: The Parlor Song in America, 1790–1860, Bowling Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1980; and Michael R. Turner, ed., The Parlour Song Book: A Casquet of Vocal Gems, New York: The Viking Press, 1973. On the song, particularly, Mussulman (Music in the Cultured Generation) is invaluable.

Cowboy songs are recorded and studied in Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads, collected by John A. Lomax and Alan Lomax, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1938 (orig. ed. 1910); Nathan H. Thorp, Songs of the Cowboys, New York: C. N. Potter, 1966; and Samuel J. Sackett, Cowboys and the Songs They Sang, New York: William R. Scott, Inc., 1967. Frederic V. Grunfeld, The Art and Times of the Guitar, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1969, discusses the guitar in the West, pp. 235ff. S. S. Stewart discusses almost every aspect of contemporary attitudes toward the banjo in “The Banjo Philosophically: Its Construction, Its Capabilities, Its Evolution, Its Place as a Musical Instrument, Its Possibilities, and Its Future,” S. S. Stewart’s Banjo and Guitar Journal (a Philadelphia publication), 3, no. 12 (October/November 1886), 6.

James W. Fosburgh has written on Eakins’ music paintings in “Music and Meaning,” Art News 56, no. 12 (February 1958), 24–27, 50–51.

Walt Whitman

The best introduction to Walt Whitman is his own voice. His poetry and prose are collected in The Collected Writings of Walt Whitman, New York: New York University Press, 1961–1978, in which is published the “Comprehensive Reader’s Edition” of the Leaves of Grass, edited by Harold W. Blodgett and Sculley Bradley, 1965. Many insights are provided by Whitman’s conversations and reminiscences during his last years in Camden, as preserved by Horace Traubel, With Walt Whitman in Camden, 5 vols., Vol. 1: Boston: Small, Maynard and Co., 1906; Vol. 2: New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1908; Vol. 3: New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914; Vol. 4: Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953; Vol. 5: Carbondale, III.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964.

The classic study of Whitman’s achievement in the contexts of literature and ideas in America is that of F. O. Matthiessen, “Whitman,” in American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, New York: Oxford University Press, 1941. A sensitive biography is that of Gay Wilson Allen, The Solitary Singer, New York: The Macmillan Co., 1955. The more recent biography by Justin Kaplan, Walt Whitman, A Life, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980, challenges earlier emphases on Whitman’s sudden flowering of poetic genius in 1855. Special focus on one aspect of Whitman’s poetic development is pursued by Robert D. Faner in Walt Whitman and Opera, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1951. In The Historic Whitman, University Park and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1973, Joseph Jay Rubin roots Whitman in a detailed historical context, in part to redress the early twentieth-century idolatry of the poet, the subject of Charles B. Willard’s Whitman’s American Fame: The Growth of His Reputation in America after 1892, Providence: Brown University, 1950. Gay Wilson Allen lists the many portraits of Whitman in several media in “The Iconography of Walt Whitman,” in Edwin Haviland Miller, ed., The Artistic Legacy of Walt Whitman, New York: New York University Press, 1970.

On the relationship between Eakins and Whitman, Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, 2 vols., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, for the National Gallery of Art, 1982, vol. II, 28–38, draws a sensitive, incisive picture. Henry B. Rule, in “Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins: Variations on some common themes,” Texas Quarterly 17, no. 4 (Winter 1974), 7–57, analyzes a broad range of the two men’s shared concerns.

A number of studies are invaluable in assessing the vast cultural changes that influenced Eakins in the last years of his life. Stephen Toulmin and June Goodfield, in The Discovery of Time, New York: Harper and Row, 1965, trace the evolution of the ideas about time, antiquity, and the meaning of change that had an increasingly greater impact toward the end of the century. Gertrude Himmelfarb discusses the influence of the work of Charles Darwin in Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1967 (c. 1962). Two studies draw a valuable broad picture of the intellectual climate of the age: Walter Houghton, The Victorian Frame of Mind, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957, and Gertrude Himmelfarb, Victorian Minds, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968. Focusing primarily on America is Larzar Ziff, The American 1890s, New York, Viking Press, 1966, who pays close attention to shifting ideas of American writers. Paul Carter examines the American religious climate in The Spiritual Crisis of the Gilded Age, De-Kalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1971. The special issue of American Quarterly in December 1975 (vol. 27, no. 5) entitled “Victorian Culture in America” includes essays particularly valuable in insisting on the complexity of the period: Daniel Walker Howe, “American Victorianism as a Culture,” pp. 507–532, and D. H. Meyer, “American Intellectuals and the Victorian Crisis of Faith,” pp. 585–603.

Developments in anthropology in the nineteenth century, including its character in the United States and Philadelphia, are discussed by T. K. Penniman, A Hundred Years of Anthropology, New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1935 (rpt. 1970). Valuable for an analysis of American advancements in the discipline are June Helm, ed., Pioneers of American Anthropology: The Uses of Biography, Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1966, and Curtis M. Hinsley, Jr., Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846–1910, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981. A. Irving Hallowell, “Anthropology in Philadelphia,” in Jacob W. Gruber, ed., The Philadelphia Anthropological Society, Philadelphia: Temple University Publications, 1967, discusses the implications of Philadelphia’s activities in the field. Joan Mark devotes a chapter to one of Eakins’ sitters, Frank Hamilton Cushing, in Four Anthropologists: An American Science in its Early Years, New York: Science History Publications, 1980.

An excellent introduction to the evolution of the study of the mind, a development that had major influence at the end of the century, is Henri F. Ellenberger, The Discovery of the Unconscious, New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1970, with a comprehensive bibliography. Although William James (The Principles of Psychology, 1890, and The Will to Believe and Other Essays on Popular Philosophy, 1897) was the major American figure in psychology, two Philadelphia physicians achieved prominence also: S. Weir Mitchell and Horatio C. Wood. Richard D. Walter’s S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.—Neurologist, Springfield, Mass.: Thomas, 1970, studies Mitchell’s scientific career. Mitchell’s own writings include Wear and Tear, or Hints for the Overworked, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1871 (with eight subsequent editions and rpt., 1973, Arno Press); Fat and Blood: and How to Make Them, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1878 (2nd ed., with six subsequent editions); Lectures on Diseases of the Nervous System, Especially in Women, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1886 (see especially, “Outdoor and Camp-Life for Women,” pp. 155–179). Horatio C. Wood discusses his most influential theories in Brain-Work and Overwork, Philadelphia: Presley Blakiston, 1880, and Nervous Diseases and Their Diagnosis: A Treatise Upon the Phenomena Produced by Diseases of the Nervous System, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott and Co., 1887.

Several studies of American portraitists active late in the century show the significant contrast of their careers to that of Eakins. Ronald G. Pisano has studied William Merritt Chase, New York: Watson-Guptill, 1979. Carter Rat-cliff examines the implications of Sargent’s flamboyant career in John Singer Sargent, New York: Abbeville Press, 1982. H. Barbara Weinberg traces the recent renewed interest in Sargent’s career in “John Singer Sargent: Reputation Redidivus,” Arts Magazine 54, no. 7 (March 1980), 104–109. Cecilia Beaux: Portrait of an Artist, exhibition catalogue of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadephia, 1874, shows the scope of work of this Philadelphia portraitist. Other popular portrait painters are discussed in American Portraiture in the Grand Manner: 1720–1920, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1981.

Essays about portraits by Eakins discussed in this chapter include William H. Gerdts’ survey of Eakins’ clerical portraits in “Thomas Eakins and the Episcopal Portrait: Archbishop William Henry Elder,” Arts Magazine 53, no. 9 (May 1979), 154–157. Phyllis Rosenzweig, The Thomas Eakins Collection of the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, pp. 153–156, discusses Eakins’ preparations for his portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing; Judith Zilczer adds information in “Eakins Letter Provides More Evidence on the Portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing,” The American Art Journal 14, no. 3 (Winter 1982), 74–76. John Wilmerding discusses a number of Eakins’ late bust portraits in “Thomas Eakins’ Late Portraits,” Arts Magazine 53, no. 9 (May 1979), 108–112.

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