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Philadelphia Story: Gary Wills on Thomas Eakins
May 5, 2008
Thomas Eakins's study for a second round of images of the Rush workshop from the SAAM collection: William Rush's Model
What would you choose if someone were to ask you to pick an iconic work of art that spoke to you like no other? Apparently, when historian Gary Wills was asked to participate in the American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series, he knew immediately that he'd speak about Thomas Eakins's painting, William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River. Wills took his listeners on a tour of Eakins's life and works, with a concentration on his homage to Rush, who is considered one of the first great American sculptors.
"I saw a Thomas Eakins exhibit in the 1970s and that started it," Wills said when I asked how he first became acquainted with this image, "This one seemed to be one of Eakins's most personal." There are more famous works by Eakins, notably his paintings of sculling on the Schuylkill River, or those depicting medical procedures. But it was this image that spoke to Wills who, as a historian, was perhaps attracted to the painting's narrative layers that he set out to uncover.
The story of Eakins and Rush is very much a Philadelphia story. They came from different backgrounds: Rush was the son of a craftsman who was apprenticed in his father's shop. Eakins came from a more privileged background and was supported by his father. Rush became one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Eakins would later study.
In the painting, Rush is sculpting the model in wood (it would then be painted white to suggest marble). Her chaperone sits to her right, apparently doing what chaperones do—which is to be present and not present at the same time. The model's clothing covers a Chippendale chair that belonged to Eakins, while Rush works in the background. Each character has a job to do; it's kind of a play without words.
Eakins created this image in 1876, when the country was celebrating its one-hundredth birthday. Inspired by centennial fervor, critics had elevated William Rush into the role of America's sculptor; there's even a hint of that patriotism in the model's red, white, and blue clothing. About ten years after painting this work, Eakins ran into some serious trouble with the board of the Academy of Fine Arts due in part to his use of nude models in his drawing classes, in part to his practice of photographing the models (as well as himself) in the nude. Eakins was fired. Defiant as ever, Eakins created a new version of Rush's workshop in 1908, this time with the nude model facing the viewer. He turned the model around, shocked his viewers, and brought his art into the twentieth century.
- Thomas Eakins, William Rush, Gary Wills, Philadelphia Museum of Art, American Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Posted by Howard on May 5, 2008 in American Art Elsewhere, American Art Here
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Garry Wills gave a very wonderful lecture on the historical context for Eakins`s painting of William Rush Carving. He delivered it in such a conversational style that his evocation of time and place made you feel you were present tense in that centennial year.
I was really fortunate to be in the museum the next day when I noticed that the great man himself was roaming the first floor corridors of SAAM! Naturally I ran up to him to compliment him on the previous day`s lecture, and we began a conversation. At one point he enthusiastically took my arm and led me to to Jasper Francis Cropsey`s painting Greenwood Lake, in the South Wing, and said: "Look, look at that tree!" He was pointing to the very red autumnal tree on the left side of the landscape. When I finished appreciating the tree, he told me that Queen Victoria had seen the painting and thought the coloring false, as such bright trees, she insisted, simply do not exist.
Well, maybe not in England but they do exist in the American northwest, he said (or did I say that? I forget). Laughing about this Mr. Wills then said that a red leaf in the same fall foliage was packaged and sent to Queen Victoria to prove it.
Now this is the kind of art talk I love!
Posted by: Robyn Johnson-Ross | May 5, 2008
Robyn: Wow! I'm jealous. A private tour with Gary Wills. Thanks for sharing that great story with us.
Posted by: Howard | May 7, 2008
There was a small detail in Garry Wills`s lecture on Eakins and Rush, almost an aside, that made me ponder the artistic context of the "Philadelphia Story" and compare it to contemporary situations on the other side of the Atlantic. It all started with the large anatomical models Rush had created as teaching aids for the medical lectures by Casper Wistar, the famous Philadelphia physician. It intrigued me that even in the early 19th century there was a natural reciprocity in America between the applied and fine arts; that Rush could just as easily apply his talent to his great neo-classical public sculptures as well as to educational models which served the advancement of science.
In one of those moments of close historical simultaneity, the French physician Louis Auzoux had popularized the same idea with his factory produced "Auzoux" model- not carved from wood like the work of Rush, but made of Papier-mâché, and fabricated so as to be taken apart and reassembled, sort of like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle. The vision behind these affordable models was to improve public health through the study of anatomy and physiology. But to my mind, the most remarkable thing about them is how gorgeous they are.
You would think that their beauty would be obvious, but in France, the hierarchies between high and low art held fast. As late as 1881 Gustave Flaubert was mocking those "cardboard dummies" along with the ridiculous notion of self improvement, in his satiric novel Bouvard and Pécuchet. And the hierarchy continued in Duchamp`s contemptuous “I threw the bottle rack and the urinal into their faces as a challenge, and now they admire them for their aesthetic beauty.” Duchamp of course went on to become a living icon for the higher logic of chess, higher I guess even than what used to be called the "fine arts!"
Eakins in his own work also demonstrated the lack of boundaries in American art, and the success of his paintings- notwithstanding his frontal nude which was just one example in this very complex artist of épater les bourgeoise- as well as the major contributions he made to the analysis of physical motion through his photographic studies, seems to be proof enough.
I often think that with Warhol (it wasn`t called "The Factory" for nothing) the symbiosis started up again after the American flirtation with the old hierarchal distinction, probably caused by an inferiority complex, had dissipated.
Obviously I simplify, but Garry Wills`s contextual analysis does inspire such speculation!
Posted by: Robyn Johnson-Ross | May 14, 2008
I agree that Walt Whitman is awesome. His poem "Oh Captain, Oh Captain" was a great tribute to Lincoln. The analogy is awesome for teaching in Language Arts as well as history. We discuss that poem during my Civil War unit.
Posted by: Melinda | May 22, 2008
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