About the Artist

Thomas Eakins was born in Philadelphia, where he would spend most of his life. From 1866-70, he traveled to Paris to study with French masters. He gained admission to the École des Beaux-Arts and entered Jean-Léon Gérôme’s atelier in 1866.He was influenced by Gérôme's paintings, later entered the atelier of Gérôme’s friend, Léon Bonnat, in 1869. He preferred the broad style of Bonnat’s paintings to that of his former teacher's meticulous work, he later went to Spain and deeply influenced by the tonalities and loose brushstrokes of Diego Velázquez and Jusepe Ribera, both of whom would deeply affect Eakins’ art throughout his entire career. Although today, Eakins is often heralded as the greatest American painter of the nineteenth century, his artwork found little success in either American collections or by the critics at the time. In 1876, he began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy. He was forced to resign in 1886 because he allowed a class of students of mixed sexes to draw from a nude model. His reputation was restored at the beginning of the twentieth century.