Art of the American West. Thomas Eakins. A-Z Challenge

                      Franklin Hamilton Cushing. n.d.  Thomas Eakins 1844-1916.

Frank Cushing was an early anthropologist and Smithsonian ethnologist.  His pioneering studies of the Zuni Indians of New Mexico included "going native" and living with them from 1879-1884.  This painting shows him in full native regalia of his own design.

*****************

Thomas Eakins was born in Philadelphia.  He attended anatomy classes in America and studied art in Paris and Spain.  The realism in his paintings was admired. Photography and sculpture added to his artistic production.  And in his lifetime he produced hundreds of portraits of friends, prominent people in Philadelphia which gave an overview of the intellectual life of Philadelphia in the late 19th and 20th century.  Not limiting himself to the indoors, he also painted large canvases of outdoor life.

He was especially noted for his work as a teacher, highly influential in American art.  Unfortunately, his professional life was tainted by sex scandals, primarily because of his fascination with the human figure and his insistence that nude models be used in his classes and his own works.  There was also the implication that he used a device to project photographs on the canvas which he outlined and then later painted.

Eakins was a controversial figure whose work received little official recognition during his lifetime.  However, some art historians are quoted as saying he was "the strongest, most profound realist in 19th and 20th century art."