Synopses & Reviews
A brilliant historian's reconstruction of the life of an American painter.
Thomas Eakins, a native of Philadelphia, painted two worlds: one sure of its values the surgeons, inventors, musicians, and athletes of his time and another that reflected his own struggles with depression and sexual identity. In this evenhanded account of those struggles, William S. McFeely sheds new light on Eakins's genius and on the evocative melancholy of his portraits, particularly of women, which include many of his remarkable wife, Susan McDowell Eakins. Those deeply perceptive paintings may be the greatest expressions of his art.
One of America's leading historians, McFeely has long been an interpreter of nineteenth-century American writing. A fascinating aspect of this narrative is how he brings the painter into the company of Thoreau, Melville, and Whitman, with whom Eakins formed a deep friendship. The famous painting Swimming, for example, is likened to Walden, Typee, and to passages in Leaves of Grass,16 pages of color; 40 black-and-white illustrations.
Synopsis
Thomas Eakins painted two worlds in nineteenth-century America: one sure of its values--statesmen, scientists, and philosophers--and one that offered an uncertain vision of the changing times. From the shadow of his mother's depression to his fraught identity as a married man with homosexual inclinations, to his failure to sell his work in his day, Eakins was a man marked equally by passion and melancholy.In this enlightening examination of Eakins's defining artistic moments and key relationships--with wife Susan MacDowell, with subject and friend Walt Whitman, and with several leading scientists of his time--William S. McFeely sheds light on the motivations and desires of a founder of American realism.
Synopsis
"Provocative.... McFeely sensitively chronicles the maturation of this enigmatic Philadelphian."--Matthew Price,
About the Author
William S. McFeely, the Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, at the University of Georgia, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Grant. He lives in Wellfleet and Cambridge, Massachusetts.