On the recommendation of Dr Horatio C. Wood, a professor of nervous diseases, Thomas Eakins fled to North Dakota and lived on the B-T Ranch in Little Missouri Territory of the Badlands. In the wide-open spaces, he thrived.
Eakins scholar Elizabeth Johns, PhD writes of his stay: “So he was at a very low ebb when he came out here. And I think what this experience gave him was a vital contrast to the constricting landscape of Philadelphia. This was a sanctuary that he would remember. A largeness of the physical universe. A hardiness of the characters that made their living on this soil that would inspire him the rest of his life.”[19]
His enthusiasm for the rugged life and its restorative powers come through a letter to his wife, Susan: “Dear Sue, Only last fall a horse thief was shot full of holes a few miles north of here and fall before last they hung one… While I was holding down the ranch I had all the chores to do: milking the cows, cleaning the stables, watering and feeding stock, etc. On the second day the twin calves broke out of the stable. I tried to shoo them in but they wouldn’t go. Then I ran into the stable and picked up the first rope I saw and made a loop and tried to catch one. The rope was too short and mean and I couldn’t get them so then I went and got my good lariat… I chased them up and down throwing at them for about an hour till I was so hot and mad I should have enjoyed branding those same calves… The boys had a good laugh when they heard how I had tried to rope the calves afoot. They got on their horses and caught them right away. I killed a big rattlesnake the other day and will bring home the rattle for Ella. My horse is the fastest of all those on the ranch… The time is more than half gone now. How happy I shall be to see you again.”
His rehabilitation lasted from July to October 1887 when he returned to Philadelphia. He and his wife had been staying in a small flat near the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts and now moved into his father’s house where he ultimately became the patriarch following Benjamin Eakins’ death. To accommodate his work, he added a fourth floor to the building in the form of a faux Mansard roof and there he remained for the rest of his life. On his return, he produced a portrait of Walt Whitman, which the elderly poet favoured above all the previous attempts. Eakins would make many trips to Whitman’s home over the next years. Their friendship lasted until Whitman’s death in 1892.
His one sortie into sculpture came in 1891 when he collaborated with his sculptor friend William Rudolf O’Donovan in the creation of bronze equestrian reliefs of Ulysses S. Grant and Abraham Lincoln for the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Arch in Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza. O’Donovan sculpted the two human figures while Eakins created the horses.[20]
His teaching continued at various venues including: the Art Students League in New York City, the National Academy of Design, the Women’s Art School at New York’s Cooper Union, and the Art Students’ Guild in Washington D. C. By 1898, he withdrew from teaching to concentrate on his portraiture.
As before, his portraiture, especially of women, while some writers call it “revealing”, is for the most part bleak and distracted. Even the men came off as cold and distant. Their clothing always seemed to need a good ironing. In fact, he often asked his sitters to pose in old clothes rather than their finery. This is a contemporary view, but considering the portrait standard of the time where the client was considered a patron as well as an object and treated with kindly flattery – whether deserved or not – Eakins’ images did not please many of his sitters.
Though he carried a disreputable taint, honours came his way: The Chicago Exposition of 1893 awarded him a gold medal. He received other medals from the Universal Exposition in St Louis, a bronze medal from the Exposition Universal in Paris, the Proctor Prize from the National Academy of Design, the Temple Gold Medal awarded by the Pennsylvania Academy, a gold medal from the American Art Society of Philadelphia and the Second Class Medal presented by the Carnegie Institute. But during this time he was also fired from the Drexel Institute for once again parading a nude male model in front of female students during a lecture. In 1896, he received his only one-man show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and in 1902 he was elected an Academician of the National Academy of Design.
By 1910 both his eyesight and health were on the decline. In his final years, he rarely left the house on Mount Vernon Street with its wearying collection of family tenants, assorted animals and hangers-on. With his good friend Samuel Murray – and not his wife, Susan, from whom he had become estranged – holding his hand, he died on 25 June 1916 from, it is surmised, the gradual accumulation of formaldehyde in his system. This preservative was used in milk to avoid spoilage in those days of erratic refrigeration and Eakins drank a quart of milk every day at dinner.
The love-hate relationship with the evolving art world continued after his death. In 1917 both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Art hung his work in memorial retrospectives. Still later a number of biographies surfaced that emphasised the quality of his work over his rather sordid lifestyle and its obsessions and homoerotic fixations. The value of his work was significantly elevated and his personal relationships idealised.
In 1984, a large collection of Eakins’ papers came to light. They had been hidden by one of his pupils, Charles Bregler, after the artist’s death in 1916 and they re-emerged in the possession of his widow Mary in 1958 following his death at the age of ninety-three. Since then, a more balanced look at Thomas Eakins’ life has been possible.[21] No one can take away the value of his work in the tradition of American Realism. Understanding his numerous frailties, however, adds a dimension to appreciating what survives on canvas and in photographic prints.
Thomas Eakins, Singing a Pathetic Song, 1881.
Oil on canvas, 114.3 × 82.5 cm.
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D. C., Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund.
William Michael Harnett (1848–1892)
William Michael Harnett, The Artist’s Letter Rack, 1879.
Oil on canvas, 76.2 × 63.5 cm.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, Morris K. Jessup Fund.
In 1886, United States Treasury agents accompanied by New York City police bustled into one of the saloons owned by Theodore Stewart and demanded a painting be removed by order of the Federal Court. The painting was titled Still-life – Five Dollar Bill and the officers peered closely at it shaking their heads. They declared the confiscated work to be a counterfeit and removed it from the premises. Shortly thereafter, Federal Secret Service agents rapped on the door of the artist, a wan, thin, moustachioed man named William Michael Harnett and informed him he was under arrest for counterfeiting U. S. currency. The agents also confiscated other money paintings in the cluttered cell of a studio. Eventually, Harnett faced a federal judge, who, after examining the paintings closely through his pince-nez, told the artist: “The development and exercise of a talent so capable of mischief