113-601: The Swimming Hole (also known as Swimming and The Old Swimming Hole ) is an 1884–85 painting by the American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), Goodrich catalog #190 , in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas . Executed in oil on canvas , it depicts six men swimming naked in a lake, and is considered a masterpiece of American painting. According to art historian Doreen Bolger it
226-576: A Philadelphia businessman who chaired the Committee on Instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins taught. Coates intended to pay Eakins $ 800 ($ 27,000 in 2023 dollars), which at the time was the largest commission Eakins had been offered. Coates intended the painting for an exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and it was shown at the academy's exhibition in
339-410: A Single Scull , here the artist's presence is more ambiguous—he may be seen as companion, teacher, or voyeur. The ripple in the water next to Eakins, and the bubbles around the diver, are the only indications of movement in a painting where motion is otherwise arrested; the water next to the red-headed figure in the lake is still enough to offer a clear reflection. This contrast underscores the tension in
452-513: A camera in 1880, several paintings, such as Mending the Net (1881; image link ) and Arcadia (1883; image link ), are known to have been derived at least in part from his photographs. Some figures appear to be detailed transcriptions and tracings from the photographs by some device like a magic lantern , which Eakins then took pains to cover up with oil paint. Eakins' methods appear to be meticulously applied, and rather than shortcuts, were likely used in
565-578: A careful design, all skills he later applied to his art. Eakins was an athletic child who enjoyed rowing, ice skating, swimming, wrestling, sailing, and gymnastics; he later used these as subjects in his painting and encouraged them in his students. Eakins attended Central High School in Philadelphia, the premier public school for applied science and arts in the city, where he excelled in mechanical drawing. Thomas met fellow artist and lifelong friend Charles Lewis Fussell in high school, and they reunited at
678-400: A complex personality, and has been called "the finest of all American portraits". Even Susan Macdowell Eakins , a strong painter and former student who married Eakins in 1884, was not sentimentalized: despite its richness of color, The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog (c. 1884–1889) is a penetratingly candid portrait. Some of his most vivid portraits resulted from a late series done for
791-517: A couch and posed as Venus. Both Saidiya Hartman and Fred Moten write, respectively, about the photograph, and the child that it arrests. According to one reviewer in 1876: "This portrait of Dr. Gross is a great work—we know of nothing greater that has ever been executed in America". I will never have to give up painting, for even now I could paint heads good enough to make a living anywhere in America. For Eakins, portraiture held little interest as
904-408: A final oil sketch in 1884, which became the basis for the finished painting. The basic composition remained unchanged, as all six men and the dog appeared in the sketch; however, Eakins, who usually adhered closely to his sketches when developing a final work, made several uncharacteristic alterations to the specific movements and positions of the figures. A friend and student, Charles Bregler, described
1017-472: A founder of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , where Eakins started teaching. Despite his sincerely depicted reverence for Rush, Eakins' treatment of the human body once again drew criticism. This time it was the nude model and her heaped-up clothes depicted front and center, with Rush relegated to the deep shadows in the left background, that stirred dissatisfaction. Nonetheless, Eakins found
1130-469: A great nineteenth-century medical history painting, featuring one of the most superb portraits in American art". In 1876, Eakins completed a portrait of Dr. John Brinton, surgeon of the Philadelphia Hospital, and famed for his Civil War service. Done in a more informal setting than The Gross Clinic , it was a personal favorite of Eakins, and The Art Journal proclaimed "it is in every respect
1243-547: A historical subject, even though there is no evidence that the model who posed for Rush did so in the nude. The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 helped foster a revival in interest in Colonial America and Eakins participated with an ambitious project employing oil studies, wax and wood models, and finally the portrait in 1877. William Rush was a celebrated Colonial sculptor and ship carver, a revered example of an artist-citizen who figured prominently in Philadelphia civic life, and
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#17328452681961356-443: A major restoration of the painting. According to Barry, "The restoration revealed relatively little significant damage or deterioration not previously visible. Several layers of discolored varnish and overpaint were removed, exposing a rich and varied surface with brushwork ranging from the controlled, almost miniaturistic strokes forming the figures to the freer treatment of the landscape elements." Much effort went into distinguishing
1469-413: A means of fashionable idealization or even simple verisimilitude. Instead, it provided the opportunity to reveal the character of an individual through the modeling of solid anatomical form. This meant that, notwithstanding his youthful optimism, Eakins would never be a commercially successful portrait painter, as few paid commissions came his way. But his total output of some two hundred and fifty portraits
1582-497: A modern interpretation; the subject was contemporary, but the poses of some of the figures recall those of classical sculpture. One possible influence by a contemporary source was Scène d'été , painted in 1869 by Frédéric Bazille (1841–70). It is not unlikely that Eakins saw the painting at the Salon while studying in Paris, and would have been sympathetic to its depiction of male bathers in
1695-501: A modern setting. In Eakins' oeuvre, The Swimming Hole was immediately preceded by a number of similar works on the Arcadian theme. These correspond to lectures he gave on Ancient Greek sculpture and were inspired by the Pennsylvania Academy's casts of Phidias ' Pan-Athenaic procession from the Parthenon marbles . A series of photographs, relief sculptures, and oil sketches culminated in
1808-554: A more favorable example of this artist's abilities than his much-talked-of composition representing a dissecting room." Other outstanding examples of his portraits include The Agnew Clinic (1889), Eakins' most important commission and largest painting, which depicted another eminent American surgeon, Dr. David Hayes Agnew , performing a mastectomy; The Dean's Roll Call (1899; image link ), featuring Dr. James W. Holland, and Professor Leslie W. Miller (1901; image link ), portraits of educators standing as if addressing an audience;
1921-453: A newly emerging European tradition"—that of the male bather. Eakins' picture, although not as stylistically progressive as the works of his French contemporaries, parallels the novel thematic direction taken by Bazille in Summer Scene , Georges Seurat (1859–91) ( Bathers at Asnières , 1884) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) in his numerous explorations of the subject. Eakins' work influenced
2034-428: A painting of a prizefight, was his second largest canvas, but not his most successful composition. The same may be said of Wrestlers (1899). More successful was Between Rounds (1899), for which boxer Billy Smith posed seated in his corner at Philadelphia's Arena; in fact, all the principal figures were posed by models re-enacting what had been an actual fight. Salutat (1898), a frieze-like composition in which
2147-577: A passion for realism that included, but was not limited to, the study of the figure. A trip to Spain for six months confirmed his admiration for the realism of artists such as Diego Velázquez and Jusepe de Ribera . In Seville in 1869, he painted Carmelita Requeña ( image link ), a portrait of a seven-year-old Romani dancer more freely and colorfully painted than his Paris studies. That same year he attempted his first large oil painting, A Street Scene in Seville ( image link ), wherein he first dealt with
2260-410: A picture of a naked figure or at a statue? English ladies of the last generation thought so and avoided the statue galleries, but do so no longer. Or is it a question of sex? Should men make only the statues of men to be looked at by men, while the statues of women should be made by women to be looked at by women only? Should the he-painters draw the horses and bulls, and the she-painters like Rosa Bonheur
2373-532: A portrait of Frank Hamilton Cushing (c. 1895), in which the prominent ethnologist is seen performing an incantation at the Zuñi pueblo; Professor Henry A. Rowland (1897; image link ), a brilliant scientist whose study of spectroscopy revolutionized his field; Antiquated Music (1900), in which Mrs. William D. Frishmuth is shown seated amidst her collection of musical instruments; and The Concert Singer (1890–1892), for which Eakins asked Weda Cook to sing "O rest in
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#17328452681962486-482: A professor and his students together in the nude would have been a sensitive subject for the academy's directors, who had forbidden Eakins from using Academy students as models, as modeling was considered indecent. Coates chose to exchange The Swimming Hole for the "less controversial genre scene" of Eakins' The Pathetic Song —today housed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art —and paid Eakins the $ 800 he had offered for
2599-659: A quest for accuracy and realism. An excellent example of Eakins' use of this new technology is his painting A May Morning in the Park , which relied heavily on photographic motion studies to depict the true gait of the four horses pulling the coach of patron Rogers. But in typical fashion, Eakins also employed wax figures and oil sketches to get the final effect he desired. The so-called "Naked Series", which began in 1883, were nude photos of students and professional models which were taken to show real human anatomy from several specific angles, and were often hung and displayed for study at
2712-604: A reference to homosexuality. "But for their marital status, however, virtually nothing concrete is known of the private realms or sexual propensities of any of the men depicted (in The Swimming Hole ), with the exception of Eakins." Although the painting has been viewed as a platonic vision of the male nude seen unselfconsciously in a natural setting, by the 1970s some American writers were beginning to see Eakins' work, and specifically The Swimming Hole , as having homoerotic implications. Critics have paid particular attention to
2825-404: A renowned Philadelphia surgeon, Dr. Samuel D. Gross , is seen presiding over an operation to remove part of a diseased bone from a patient's thigh. Gross lectures in an amphitheater crowded with students at Jefferson Medical College . Eakins spent nearly a year on the painting, again choosing a novel subject, the discipline of modern surgery, in which Philadelphia was in the forefront. He initiated
2938-402: A rural setting. In a sentiment that reflected Eakins' philosophy, Bellows later explained his motivation for painting Forty-two Kids : "Prizefighters and swimmers are the only types whose muscular action can be painted in the nude legitimately." Eakins' widow's retitling of the picture after his death reinforced the popular association with the nostalgic sentiment of Riley's poem. More recently,
3051-456: A self-portrait. Although there are photographs by Eakins which relate to the painting, the picture's powerful pyramidal composition and sculptural conception of the individual bodies are completely distinctive pictorial resolutions. The work was painted on commission, but was refused. In the late 1890s Eakins returned to the male figure, this time in a more urban setting. Taking the Count (1896),
3164-431: A series of cameras triggered to produce a sequence of individual photographs, Eakins preferred to use a single camera to produce a series of exposures superimposed on one negative. Eakins was more interested in precision measurements on a single image to aid in translating a motion into a painting, while Muybridge preferred separate images that could also be displayed by his primitive movie projector. After Eakins obtained
3277-453: A series of domestic Victorian interiors, often with his father, his sisters or friends as the subjects. Home Scene (1871; image link ), Elizabeth at the Piano (1875; image link ), The Chess Players (1876), and Elizabeth Crowell and her Dog (1874; image link ), each dark in tonality, focus on the unsentimental characterization of individuals adopting natural attitudes in their homes. It
3390-413: A subject that referenced his native city and an earlier Philadelphia artist, and allowed for an assay on the female nude seen from behind. When he returned to the subject many years later, the narrative became more personal: In William Rush and His Model (1908), gone are the chaperon and detailed interior of the earlier work. The professional distance between sculptor and model has been eliminated, and
3503-597: A surgeon. Eakins then studied art in Europe from 1866 to 1870, including with Jean-Léon Gérôme in Paris ; he was only the second American pupil of the French realist painter, who was known as a master of Orientalism . Eakins also attended the atelier of Léon Bonnat , a realist painter who emphasized anatomical preciseness, a method adapted by Eakins. While studying at the École des Beaux-Arts , he seems to have taken scant interest in
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3616-469: A writing master and calligraphy teacher of Scottish and Irish ancestry. His father grew up on a farm in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania , the son of a weaver. He was successful in his chosen profession, and moved to Philadelphia in the early 1840s, to raise his family. Thomas Eakins observed his father at work and by twelve demonstrated skill in precise line drawing, perspective, and the use of a grid to lay out
3729-480: Is "perhaps Eakins' most accomplished rendition of the nude figure", and has been called "the most finely designed of all his outdoor pictures". Since the Renaissance , the human body has been considered both the basis of artists' training and the most challenging subject to depict in art, and the nude was the centerpiece of Eakins' teaching program at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts . For Eakins, this picture
3842-430: Is a special focus: Diverging (negative) lenses and convex mirrors do not focus a collimated beam to a point. Instead, the focus is the point from which the light appears to be emanating, after it travels through the lens or reflects from the mirror. A convex parabolic mirror will reflect a beam of collimated light to make it appear as if it were radiating from the focal point, or conversely, reflect rays directed toward
3955-529: Is characterized by "an uncompromising search for the unique human being". Often this search for individuality required that the subject be painted in his own daily working environment. Eakins' Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand (1874) was a prelude to what many consider his most important work. Stunningly illuminated, Dr. Gross is the embodiment of heroic rationalism, a symbol of American intellectual achievement. – William Innes Homer, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art In The Gross Clinic (1875),
4068-485: Is conceptually a point, physically the focus has a spatial extent, called the blur circle . This non-ideal focusing may be caused by aberrations of the imaging optics. Even in the absence of aberrations, the smallest possible blur circle is the Airy disc caused by diffraction from the optical system's aperture ; diffraction is the ultimate limit to the light focusing ability of any optical system. Aberrations tend to worsen as
4181-424: Is one of the artist's largest works, and considered by some to be his greatest. Eakins' high expectations at the start of the project were recorded in a letter, "What elates me more is that I have just got a new picture blocked in and it is very far better than anything I have ever done. As I spoil things less and less in finishing I have the greatest hopes of this one" But if Eakins hoped to impress his home town with
4294-592: The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1917. A photograph from that time reveals cracks in the glazes and a drip mark, possibly caused by the splash of a caustic liquid. After the painting was acquired by the Fort Worth Art Association, it was often lent out for exhibitions and was damaged as a result. In 1937 it was relined by a private gallery in New York City and the drip was painted out. In 1944 it
4407-415: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where Thomas enrolled in 1861. At Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Eakins enrolled in courses in anatomy and dissection at Jefferson Medical College from 1864 to 1865. For a while, he followed his father's profession and was listed in city directories as a writing teacher. His scientific interest in the human body led him to consider becoming
4520-402: The focus as a collimated beam. A convex elliptical mirror will reflect light directed towards one focus as if it were radiating from the other focus, both of which are behind the mirror. A convex hyperbolic mirror will reflect rays emanating from the focal point in front of the mirror as if they were emanating from the focal point behind the mirror. Conversely, it can focus rays directed at
4633-487: The 1882 poem The Old Swimmin'-Hole ; by James Whitcomb Riley . The Amon Carter Museum has since returned to Eakins' original title, Swimming . The painting shows Eakins and five friends or students bathing at Dove Lake , an artificial lake in Mill Creek outside Philadelphia. Each of the men is looking at the water, in the words of Martin A. Berger, "apparently lost in a contemplative moment". Eakins' precise rendering of
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4746-418: The 1883 Arcadia , a painting that also featured nude figures—posed for by a student, a nephew, and the artist's fiancée—in a pastoral landscape. Eakins made several on-site oil sketches and photographic studies before painting The Swimming Hole . It is unknown whether the photographs were taken before the oil sketches were produced or vice versa (or, indeed, whether they were created on the same day). By
4859-623: The Art Students' Guild in Washington DC. Dismissed in March 1895 by the Drexel Institute in Philadelphia for again using a fully nude male model, he gradually withdrew from teaching by 1898. Eakins has been credited with having "introduced the camera to the American art studio". During his study abroad, he was exposed to the use of photography by the French realists, though the use of photography
4972-482: The Catholic clergy, which included paintings of a cardinal, archbishops, bishops, and monsignors. As usual, most of the sitters were engaged at Eakins' request, and were given the portraits when Eakins had completed them. In portraits of His Eminence Sebastiano Cardinal Martinelli (1902; image link ), Archbishop William Henry Elder (1903), and Monsignor James P. Turner (c. 1906; image link ), Eakins took advantage of
5085-541: The Lord", so that he could study the muscles of her throat and mouth. To replicate the proper deployment of a baton , Eakins enlisted an orchestral conductor to pose for the hand seen in the lower left-hand corner of the painting. Of Eakins' later portraits, many took as their subjects women who were friends or students. Unlike most portrayals of women at the time, they are devoid of glamor and idealization. For Portrait of Letitia Wilson Jordan (1888; image link ), Eakins painted
5198-438: The academy. In all, about eight hundred photographs are now attributed to Eakins and his circle, most of which are figure studies, both clothed and nude, and portraits. No other American artist of his time matched Eakins' interest in photography, nor produced a comparable body of photographic works. Eakins used photography for his own private ends as well. Aside from nude men, and women, he also photographed nude children. While
5311-446: The aperture diameter increases, while the Airy circle is smallest for large apertures. An image, or image point or region, is in focus if light from object points is converged almost as much as possible in the image, and out of focus if light is not well converged. The border between these is sometimes defined using a " circle of confusion " criterion. A principal focus or focal point
5424-460: The apex of the compositional pyramid. The diving figure at right leads to the swimming form of Eakins, who painted himself into the scene and whose leftward movement directs attention back into the painting. Eakins enforces this pyramidal structure by manipulating the focus of the painting: the center area containing the swimmers is extremely precise, while the outer areas are diffuse, with "virtually no moderating zones in between". The lighting within
5537-439: The artist and his students. Eakins himself appears in the water at bottom right—in signature position, so to speak." Eakins referred to the painting as Swimming in 1885, and as The Swimmers in 1886. The title The Swimming Hole dates from 1917 (the year after Eakins died), when the work was so described by the artist's widow, Susan Macdowell Eakins . Four years later, she titled the work The Old Swimming Hole , in reference to
5650-438: The artist's original inscription of 1885 was painted in a fugitive red-lake pigment that had faded, and was mistakenly repainted by a conservator to the earlier date. The Swimming Hole represented the full range of Eakins' techniques and academic principles. He used life study, photography, wax studies, and landscape sketches to produce a work that manifested his interest in the human form. Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) believed
5763-425: The artist, who had struggled with his first outdoor composition less than a year before. His first known sale was the watercolor The Sculler (1874). Most critics judged the rowing pictures successful and auspicious, but after the initial flourish, Eakins never revisited the subject of rowing and went on to other sports themes. At the same time that he made these initial ventures into outdoor themes, Eakins produced
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#17328452681965876-430: The bare walls, alongside of the smiling smirking goddesses of waxy complexion amidst the delicious arsenic green trees and gentle wax flowers & purling streams running melodious up & down the hills especially up. I hate affectation. Already at age 24, "nudity and verity were linked with an unusual closeness in his mind." Yet his desire for truthfulness was more expansive, and the letters home to Philadelphia reveal
5989-477: The brilliant vestments of the offices to animate the compositions in a way not possible in his other male portraits. Deeply affected by his dismissal from the academy, Eakins focused his later career on portraiture, such as his 1905 Portrait of Professor William S. Forbes . His steadfast insistence on his own vision of realism, in addition to his notoriety from his school scandals, combined to hurt his income in later years. Even as he approached these portraits with
6102-501: The city". Eakins placed himself in the painting, in a scull behind Schmitt, his name inscribed on the boat. Typically, the work entailed critical observation of the painting's subject, and preparatory drawings of the figure and perspective plans of the scull in the water. Its preparation and composition indicates the importance of Eakins' academic training in Paris. It was a completely original conception, true to Eakins' firsthand experience, and an almost startlingly successful image for
6215-475: The complications of a scene observed outside the studio. Although he failed to matriculate in a formal degree program and had shown no works in the European salons, Eakins succeeded in absorbing the techniques and methods of French and Spanish masters, and he began to formulate his artistic vision which he demonstrated in his first major painting upon his return to America. "I shall seek to achieve my broad effect from
6328-409: The compositional prominence of the standing figure's buttocks, which has been interpreted as suggestive of "homoerotic interests". According to Jonathan Weinberg, The Swimming Hole marked the beginning of homoerotic imagery in American art. Eakins left a record simultaneously provocative and ambiguous on matters of sex. On the basis of the same visual evidence, that of the photographs, oil sketches, and
6441-513: The early 1880s, Eakins was using photography to explore sequential movement and as a reference for painting. Some time in 1883 or 1884, he photographed his students engaged in outdoor activities. Four photographs of his students swimming naked in Dove Lake have survived, and bear a clear relationship to The Swimming Hole . The swimmers are seen in the same spot and from the same vantage point, although their positions are entirely different from those in
6554-403: The explanation as I could not have done by words only". Such incidents, coupled with the ambitions of his younger associates to oust him and take over the school themselves, created tensions between him and the academy's board of directors. He was ultimately forced to resign in 1886, for removing the loincloth of a male model in a class where female students were present. The forced resignation
6667-536: The fall of 1885. However, Coates rejected it as unrepresentative of Eakins' oeuvre. In a November 27, 1885 letter to Eakins, Coates reasoned: as you will recall one of my chief ideas was to have from you a picture which might some day become part of the Academy collection. The present canvas is to me admirable in many ways but I am inclined to believe that some of the pictures you have are even more representative, and it has been suggested would be perhaps more acceptable for
6780-522: The figure, nude or nearly so, took several thematic forms. The rowing paintings of the early 1870s constitute the first series of figure studies. In Eakins' largest picture on the subject, The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake (1873; image link ), the muscular dynamism of the body is given its fullest treatment. In the 1877 painting William Rush and His Model , he painted the female nude as integral to
6893-446: The figures has enabled scholars to identify all those depicted in the work. They are (from left to right): Talcott Williams (1849–1928), Benjamin Fox (c. 1865 – c. 1900), J. Laurie Wallace (1864–1953), Jesse Godley (1862–1889), Harry the dog (Eakins' Irish Setter , c. 1880–90), George Reynolds (c. 1839–89), and Eakins himself. The rocky promontory on which several of
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#17328452681967006-409: The finished painting of swimmers, art historians have drawn markedly varying conclusions as to the artist's intent. Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins ( / ˈ eɪ k ɪ n z / ; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For
7119-473: The greater the master, mostly the less he can say." He believed that women should "assume professional privileges" as would men. Life classes and dissection were segregated but women had access to male models (who were nude but wore loincloths). The line between impartiality and questionable behavior was a fine one. When a female student, Amelia Van Buren , asked about the movement of the pelvis, Eakins invited her to his studio, where he undressed and "gave her
7232-404: The human and animal body, and surgical dissection ; there were also rigorous courses in the fundamentals of form, and studies in perspective which involved mathematics. As an aid to the study of anatomy, plaster casts were made from dissections, duplicates of which were furnished to students. A similar study was made of the anatomy of horses; acknowledging Eakins' expertise, in 1891 his friend,
7345-554: The human form; in some cases it is uncertain as to whether the forms portrayed are male or female. Such themes had earlier been examined in his The Gross Clinic (1875) and William Rush (1877), and would continue to be explored in his paintings of boxers ( Taking the Count , Salutat , and Between Rounds ) and wrestlers ( Wrestlers ). Although the theme of male bathers was familiar in Western art , having been explored by artists from Michelangelo to Daumier , Eakins' treatment
7458-427: The intellectual life of contemporary Philadelphia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition, Eakins produced a number of large paintings that brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices, streets, parks, rivers, arenas, and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject that most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. In
7571-411: The length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some 40 years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia . He painted several hundred portraits , usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken en masse , the portraits offer an overview of
7684-401: The main figure is isolated, "is one of Eakins' finest achievements in figure-painting." Although Eakins was agnostic, he painted The Crucifixion in 1880. ( image link ) Art historian Akela Reason says: Focus (optics) In geometrical optics , a focus , also called an image point , is a point where light rays originating from a point on the object converge . Although the focus
7797-466: The mares and cows? Must the poor old male body in the dissecting room be mutilated before Miss Prudery can dabble in his guts? ... Such indignities anger me. Can not anyone see into what contemptible inconsistencies such follies all lead? And how dangerous they are? My conscience is clear, and my suffering is past. Following its rejection by Coates, the painting remained in Eakins' possession until his death. It
7910-482: The men rest is the foundation of the Mill Creek mill, which was razed in 1873. It is the only sign of civilization in the work—no shoes, clothes, or bath houses are visible. The foliage in the background provides a dark background against which the swimmers' skin tones contrast. The composition is pyramidal. The figure reclining at left leads the viewer's eye to the seated figure, whose gesture in turn points to Godley at
8023-411: The more one praises it, the more one must condemn its admission to a gallery where men and women of weak nerves must be compelled to look at it. For not to look it is impossible...No purpose is gained by this morbid exhibition, no lesson taught—the painter shows his skill and the spectators' gorge rises at it—that is all." The college now describes it thus: "Today the once maligned picture is celebrated as
8136-665: The museum announced it intended to sell the painting to build an endowment for the purchase of contemporary art. A public outcry ensued, prompting the museum to search for a local buyer. Eventually, after tumultuous negotiations, the Amon Carter Museum of American Art agreed to purchase The Swimming Hole for $ 10 million ($ 23 million in 2023 dollars). Before its purchase by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Swimming Hole appears to have undergone seven different conservatory treatments . It may have been restored prior to its inclusion in Eakins' memorial exhibition at
8249-462: The new Impressionist movement, nor was he impressed by what he perceived as the classical pretensions of the French Academy . A letter home to his father in 1868 made his aesthetic clear: She [the female nude] is the most beautiful thing there is in the world except a naked man, but I never yet saw a study of one exhibited... It would be a godsend to see a fine man model painted in the studio with
8362-408: The nudity in the painting would have surprised or shocked him. Rather, it seems certain that Coates would have recognized the majority of men in the painting, as all but one were students of Eakins at the academy. He was undoubtedly familiar with the site depicted in the painting too, as it was only a half a mile (800 m) from Haverford College , where Coates studied as an undergraduate. The depiction of
8475-443: The original commission. On February 9, 1886, Eakins was forced to resign from the academy because of his removal of a loincloth from a male model in a class where female students were present. In a letter to Coates on February 15 in which Eakins explained his reasons for resigning, he addressed the issue of nudity in his artwork: My figures at least are not a bunch of clothes with a head and hands sticking out but more nearly resemble
8588-416: The original glazes from those added during subsequent restorations. Previous retouches were removed and a natural resin varnish was applied. The painting's original frame, long missing, was located in 1992. It too was cleaned, restored, and reinstalled to the painting. During the restoration, it was discovered that a long-standing ascription of the painting's date to 1883 was the result of a misinterpretation:
8701-492: The painting was exhibited in Philadelphia and New York at memorial exhibitions in 1917. In 1925, The Swimming Hole was purchased from the artist's widow by the community of Fort Worth, Texas for $ 750 ($ 13,000 in 2023 dollars). Thereafter it was in the collection of the Fort Worth Art Association, the institutional predecessor of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth , and was displayed in the city's public library. In 1990,
8814-464: The painting was unsuccessful in reconciling antique and naturalistic ideals. For him, "it is as though these nudes had been abruptly transplanted from the studio into nature". Before the mid-19th century, the subject of the nude male figure in Western art had long been reserved for classical subject matter. In the 19th century, it was not unusual for boys and men to swim without clothing in public, but there
8927-562: The painting's subject has been compared to the poem " Song of Myself " by Walt Whitman (1819–92), particularly section 11, " Twenty-eight young men bathe by the shore ", given the shared interest in the imagery of men bathing in the nude. Whitman may have provided inspiration: the celebration of nudity, which in Whitman's case was an open expression of his homosexuality, informs the art of both men. In 1895, one of Eakins' male students reminisced about "us Whitman fellows", which has been interpreted as
9040-422: The painting. None of the photographs closely matches the poses depicted in the painting; this was unusual for Eakins, who typically adhered closely to his photographic studies. "The divergence between these sets of images may hint at lost or destroyed pictures, or it may tell us that the photographs came first, before Eakins' mental image had crystallized, and before the execution of his first oil sketch. The poses in
9153-444: The photographs are more spontaneous, while those of the painting are deliberately composed with a classical "severity". Although no photographic studies have survived that would suggest a more direct connection between the photographs and the painting, recent scholarship has proposed that marks incised onto the canvas and later covered by paint indicate that Eakins made use of light-projected photographs. Eakins combined his studies into
9266-407: The photographs of the nude adults are more artistically composed, the younger children and infants are posed less formally. These photographs, that are "charged with sexual overtones", as Susan Danly and Cheryl Leibold write, are of unidentified children. In the catalog of Eakins' collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, photograph number 308 is of an African American child reclining on
9379-477: The picture between classical prototypes and scientific naturalism. The positioning of the bodies and their musculature refers to classical ideals of physical beauty and masculine camaraderie evocative of Greek art . The reclining figure is a paraphrase of the Dying Gaul , and is juxtaposed with the far less formal self-depiction by the artist. It is possible that Eakins was seeking to reconcile an ancient theme with
9492-413: The picture is unnatural—too bright in some places, and too dark in others—although the effect, which tends to accentuate the body lines of the swimmers, is generally subtle. The composition is notable for both its adherence to academic tradition (the mastery of the figure as an end in itself), and its uniqueness in transposing the male nude to an outdoor setting. The depiction of someone diving into water
9605-480: The picture, he was to be disappointed; public reaction to the painting of a realistic surgical incision and the resultant blood was ambivalent at best, and it was finally purchased by the college for the unimpressive sum of $ 200. Eakins borrowed it for subsequent exhibitions, where it drew strong reactions, such as that of the New York Daily Tribune , which both acknowledged and damned its powerful image, "but
9718-594: The process, he could model the forms of the body in full sunlight, and create images of deep space utilizing his studies in perspective. Eakins took keen interest in new motion photography , a field in which he is now seen as an innovator. Eakins was also an educator, and his instruction was a highly influential presence in American art . The difficulties he encountered as an artist were seeking to paint portraits and figures realistically as behavioral and sexual scandals truncated his success and challenged his reputation. Eakins
9831-464: The process: ... For a picture ... like the Swimming Hole , a small sketch was made 8 x 10 inches [20 x 25 cm], then separate studies of the landscape and figures, to get the true tone and color, etc. The diving figure being the most difficult to paint, was first modelled in wax. This gave him a thorough knowledge of every form. The painting was commissioned in 1884 by Edward Hornor Coates ,
9944-665: The project and may have had the goal of a grand work befitting a showing at the Centennial Exposition of 1876. Though rejected for the Art Gallery, the painting was shown on the centennial grounds at an exhibit of a U.S. Army Post Hospital. In sharp contrast, another Eakins submission, The Chess Players , was accepted by the committee and was much admired at the Centennial Exhibition, and critically praised. At 96 by 78 inches (240 × 200 cm), The Gross Clinic
10057-456: The publisher J. B. Lippincott recruited Muybridge to work at Penn under their sponsorship. In 1884, Eakins worked briefly alongside Muybridge in the latter's photographic studio at the northeast corner of 36th and Pine streets in Philadelphia. Eakins soon performed his own independent motion studies, also usually involving the nude figure, and even developed his own technique for capturing movement on film. Whereas Muybridge's system relied on
10170-438: The purpose which I have always had in view. You must not suppose from this that I depreciate the present work—such is not the case. It is not known precisely why Coates failed to purchase the painting; however, it seems likely that Coates felt the work was too controversial to acquire. Coates, as Head of Instruction at Eakins' academy, would have been familiar with the subject matter of Eakins' works, and thus it seems unlikely that
10283-409: The relationship has become intimate. In one version of the painting from that year, the nude is seen from the front, being helped down from the model stand by an artist who bears a strong resemblance to Eakins. The Swimming Hole (1884–85) features Eakins' finest studies of the nude, in his most successfully constructed outdoor picture. The figures are those of his friends and students, and include
10396-455: The school's new Frank Furness designed building. He became a salaried professor in 1878, and rose to director in 1882. His teaching methods were controversial: there was no drawing from antique casts, and students received only a short study in charcoal, followed quickly by their introduction to painting, in order to grasp subjects in true color as soon as practical. He encouraged students to use photography as an aid to understanding anatomy and
10509-455: The school. Later, less regimented poses were taken indoors and out, of men, women, and children, including his wife. The most provocative, and the only ones combining males and females, were nude photos of Eakins and a female model (see below). Although witnesses and chaperones were usually on site, and the poses were mostly traditional in nature, the sheer quantity of the photos and Eakins' overt display of them may have undermined his standing at
10622-599: The sculptor William Rudolf O'Donovan , asked him to collaborate on the commission to create bronze equestrian reliefs of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant , for the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch in Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn . Owing to Eakins' devotion to working from life, the academy's course of study was by the early 1880s the most "liberal and advanced in the world". Eakins believed in teaching by example and letting
10735-408: The sitter wearing the same evening dress in which he had seen her at a party. She is a substantial presence, a vision quite different from the era's fashionable portraiture. So, too, his Portrait of Maud Cook (1895), where the obvious beauty of the subject is noted with "a stark objectivity". The portrait of Miss Amelia Van Buren (c. 1890), a friend and former pupil, suggests the melancholy of
10848-427: The skill of a highly trained anatomist , what is most noteworthy is the intense psychological presence of his sitters. However, it was precisely for this reason that his portraits were often rejected by the sitters or their families. As a result, Eakins came to rely on his friends and family members to model for portraits. His portrait of Walt Whitman (1887–1888) was the poet's favorite. Eakins' lifelong interest in
10961-463: The strong living bodies that most pictures show. And in the latter end of a life so spent in study, you at least can imagine that painting is with me a very serious study. That I have but little patience with the false modesty which is the greatest enemy to all figure painting. I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure. If there is impropriety, then just where does such impropriety begin? Is it wrong to look at
11074-520: The students find their own way with only terse guidance. His students included painters, cartoonists, and illustrators such as Henry Ossawa Tanner , Thomas Pollock Anshutz , Edward Willis Redfield , Colin Campbell Cooper , Alice Barber Stephens , Frederick Judd Waugh , T. S. Sullivant and A. B. Frost . He stated his teaching philosophy bluntly, "A teacher can do very little for a pupil & should only be thankful if he don't hinder him ... and
11187-609: The students was such that a number of them broke with the academy and formed the Art Students' League of Philadelphia (1886–1893), where Eakins subsequently instructed. It was there that he met the student Samuel Murray , who would become his protege and lifelong friend. He also lectured and taught at a number of other schools, including the Art Students League of New York , the National Academy of Design , Cooper Union , and
11300-430: The study of motion, and disallowed prize competitions. Although there was no specialized vocational instruction, students with aspirations for using their school training for applied arts, such as illustration, lithography, and decoration, were as welcome as students interested in becoming portrait artists. Most notable was his interest in the instruction of all aspects of the human figure , including anatomical study of
11413-455: The subsequent generation of American realists , particularly the artists of the Ashcan School . George Bellows ' (1882–1925) Forty-two Kids , painted in 1907, bears obvious similarity to The Swimming Hole , although Bellows' painting has been interpreted as a parody of the Eakins, and the many naked children of the title are playing in the urban Hudson River of New York City rather than in
11526-426: The very beginning", he declared. Eakins' first works upon his return from Europe included a large group of rowing scenes, eleven oils and watercolors in all, of which the first and most famous is Max Schmitt in a Single Scull (1871; also known as The Champion Single Sculling ). Both his subject and his technique drew attention. His selection of a contemporary sport was "a shock to the artistic conventionalities of
11639-439: The work was "Eakins' most masterful use of the nude", with the solidly conceived figures perfectly integrated into the landscape, an image of subtle tonal construction and one of the artist's "richest pieces of painting". Another biographer, William Innes Homer (1929-2012), was more reserved and described the poses of the figures as rigidly academic. Homer found inconsistencies in paint quality and atmospheric effect, and wrote that
11752-488: Was a controversial figure whose work received little recognition during his lifetime. Since his death, he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest, most profound realist in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American art". Eakins was born and lived most of his life in Philadelphia . He was the first child of Caroline Cowperthwait Eakins, a woman of English and Dutch descent, and Benjamin Eakins,
11865-415: Was a major setback for Eakins. His family was split, with his in-laws siding against him in public dispute. He struggled to protect his name against rumors and false charges, had bouts of ill health, and suffered a humiliation which he felt for the rest of his life. A drawing manual he had written and prepared illustrations for remained unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. Eakins' popularity among
11978-527: Was an opportunity to display his mastery of the human form. In this work, Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish Victorian attitude to nudity : swimming naked was widely accepted, and for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces. Eakins was the first American artist to portray one of the few occasions in 19th-century life when nudity was on display . The Swimming Hole develops themes raised in his earlier work, in particular his treatment of buttocks and his ambiguous treatment of
12091-473: Was exhibited just twice more during Eakins' lifetime: at the 1886 Southern Exposition in Louisville, Kentucky , and in 1887 at Chicago's Inter-State Industrial Exposition, and ignored by critics on both occasions. The painting then disappears from the historical record —there is no further reference to the painting in any records from Eakins or his circle of friends during Eakins' lifetime. Following Eakins' death,
12204-461: Was in this vein that in 1872 he painted his first large scale portrait, Kathrin ( image link ), in which the subject, Kathrin Crowell, is seen in dim light, playing with a kitten. In 1874, Eakins and Crowell became engaged; they were still engaged five years later, when Crowell died of meningitis in 1879. Eakins returned to the Pennsylvania Academy to teach in 1876 as a volunteer after the opening of
12317-436: Was no precedent for this subject in American painting. Although there was an informal convention for multiple-figure compositions featuring female nudes, in America such paintings were exhibited in saloons rather than galleries; Eakins altered the gender and presented the subject as fine art. Viewed in a broader context, The Swimming Hole has been cited as one of the few 19th-century American paintings that "engages directly with
12430-404: Was novel in American art at the time. The Swimming Hole has been "widely cited as a prime example of homoeroticism in American art". In 2008, the art critic Tom Lubbock described Eakins' work as: a classic of American painting. It shows a scene of healthy, manly, outdoor activity: a group of young fellows having stripped off for a dip. It is based on the swimming excursions that were enjoyed by
12543-589: Was relined and restored and in 1947 it was restored again, both times by a private New York dealer. The Brooklyn Museum performed two minor restorations in 1954 and 1957. Although it continued to travel frequently, The Swimming Hole received no comprehensive treatment until 1993. Following its purchase by the Amon Carter, in June 1993, Claire M. Barry and staff from the Amon Carter and the Kimbell Art Museums began
12656-475: Was still frowned upon as a shortcut by traditionalists. In the late 1870s, Eakins was introduced to the photographic motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge , particularly the equine studies , and became interested in using the camera to study sequential movement. In 1883, Muybridge gave a lecture at the academy, arranged by Eakins and University of Pennsylvania (Penn) trustee Fairman Rogers . A group of Philadelphians, including Penn Provost William Pepper and
12769-519: Was very rare in the history of Western art. The other figures are artfully arranged to imply a continuous narrative of movement, the poses progressing "from reclining to sitting to standing to diving"; at the same time, each figure is carefully positioned so that no genitalia are visible. As in his previous works, Eakins chose to include a self-portrait , here as the swimmer at bottom-right. Unlike his appearances in The Gross Clinic or Max Schmitt in
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