Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins , more precisely Aikins [1] [2] ( born Thomas Cowperthwaite Eakins ; July 25, 1844 - June 25, 1916 ) is an American artist, photographer, teacher, and the largest (along with Winslow Homer ) representative of American realistic painting.
| Thomas Ikins | |
|---|---|
 Self portrait. 1902 | |
| Birth name | Thomas Cowperwait Eakins |
| Date of Birth | July 25, 1844 |
| Place of Birth | Philadelphia |
| Date of death | June 25, 1916 (71 years old) |
| Place of death | Philadelphia |
| Citizenship |  USA |
| Genre | painter photographer |
| Study | |
| Style | realism |
| Site | |
Biography
He lived and worked mainly in Philadelphia . He graduated from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and then in 1866 - 1870 . improved his skills in Europe, mainly in Paris, under the leadership of Jean Leon Jerome . From 1876 he taught at his native academy, in 1882 he became its director. However, throughout his teaching career, Ikins had friction with the Academy's Board of Trustees due to the fact that Ikins paid very much attention to the study and nudity, while displaying freedom of thought inconsistent with the era (for example, students in Ikins classes posed for a friend nude friend). As a result, in 1886 , Eakins was dismissed because in a class where not only students were engaged, but also students, he placed a male model in completely naked form, without a fig leaf . Ikins continued his studies in the Philadelphia League of Art Students (Philadelphia's Art Students League).
In the painting of Ikins and his photographs, a naked and half-naked body (most often a man) occupies an outstanding place. He owns many images of athletes, especially rowers and wrestlers. Of particular interest to Ikins was the transmission of the movements of the human body, which partially connected with his passion for photography; many well-known paintings of Eakins (including "Arcadia" in 1883 ) were preceded by photographic "studies."
Among the most important works of Ikins are portraits in a multi-figure environment, including the famous Gross Clinic ( 1875 ), depicting the famous Philadelphia surgeon Samuel Gross, who directs the operation (apparently, to remove part of the bone from the patient’s hip) before the amphitheater of the medical academy filled with students . The heroic figure of Dr. Gross is read as a hymn to the achievements of human thought. This painting, one of the artist’s most large-format works (244x198 cm), caused, however, a not very warm welcome by contemporaries shocked by the image in the picture of a surgical procedure, and was sold for only $ 200. For comparison, we can keep in mind that in 2006 , when the painting was again put up for sale and wanted to be acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington , a fundraiser was announced in Philadelphia in order to preserve the Gross Clinic in Ikins' hometown; $ 30 million was raised, allowing the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts to jointly own the painting for a total of $ 68 million.
A number of significant portraits belong to the Ikins brush, including the portrait of Walt Whitman ( 1887 - 1888 ), which the poet himself considered the best.
Among the famous students of the artist - William Kendall and Alice Kent Stoddard .
“Max Schmitt in a solitary boat” (1871)
Gross Clinic (1875)
" Chess Players " (1876)
"May morning in the park" (1879)
Portrait of Whitman (1887)
Notes
- ↑ IKINS (AIKINS), THOMAS in the Around the World.
- ↑ Eakins - Definition and More from the Free Merriam-Webster Dictionary.