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165-430: 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 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

330-425: A "reality effect" to maintain its authenticity . Aesthetic realism, which was first called for by French filmmakers in the 1930s and promoted by Andre Bazin in the 1950s, acknowledges that a "film cannot be fixed to mean what it shows", as there are multiple realisms; as such, these filmmakers use location shooting, natural light and non-professional actors to ensure the viewer can make up her/his own choice based on

495-513: 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

660-409: 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 the brilliant vestments of

825-635: A catch-all term for art that was outside Impressionism and later movements of Modernism and also was not academic art . The later periods of the French Barbizon School and the Düsseldorf School of painting , with its students from many countries, and 20th-century American Regionalism are movements that are often also described as "naturalist", although the term is rarely used in British painting. Some recent art historians claimed either Courbet or

990-488: A command to come to the court from Gaspar de Guzmán, Count-Duke of Olivares , the powerful minister of Philip   IV. He was offered 50 ducats (175 g of gold) to defray his expenses, and he was accompanied by his father-in-law. Fonseca lodged the young painter in his home and sat for a portrait, which, when completed, was conveyed to the royal palace. A portrait of the king was commissioned, and on 30 August 1623, Philip   IV sat for Velázquez. The portrait pleased

1155-497: 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 the Catholic clergy, which included paintings of

1320-513: 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

1485-556: A crowd of men and women being led away by soldiers, while the female personification of Spain sits in calm repose. Velázquez was appointed gentleman usher as reward. Later he also received a daily allowance of 12 réis , the same amount allotted to the court barbers, and 90 ducats a year for dress. In September 1628, Peter Paul Rubens was positioned in Madrid as an emissary from the Infanta Isabella, and Velázquez accompanied him to view

1650-411: A debate, which was to last several centuries, as to the correct balance between drawing art from the observation of nature and from idealized forms, typically those found in classical models, or the work of other artists generally. Some admitted the importance of the natural, but many believed it should be idealized to various degrees to include only the beautiful. Leonardo da Vinci was one who championed

1815-524: A deception, and the mythological scene depicting the revelation of a deception. As he had done in The Triumph of Bacchus , Velázquez presented his characters as contemporary people whose gestures and facial expressions were those of everyday life. Following the example of Bolognese painters such as Guido Reni , Velázquez painted Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan on canvas prepared with a light gray ground rather than

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1980-415: A depiction of Ovid's Fable of Arachne . The tapestry in the background is based on Titian 's The Rape of Europa , or, more probably, the copy that Rubens painted in Madrid. It is full of light, air and movement, featuring vibrant colors and careful handling. Anton Raphael Mengs said this work seemed to have been painted not by the hand but by the pure force of will. It displays a concentration of all

2145-418: A few railway scenes, in painting until the later 19th century, when works began to be commissioned, typically by industrialists or for institutions in industrial cities, often on a large scale, and sometimes given a quasi-heroic treatment. American realism , a movement of the early 20th century, is one of many modern movements to use realism in this sense. The Realist movement began in the mid-19th century as

2310-665: 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 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

2475-548: A formula used by Pacheco, but replaces the idealized facial type and smoothly finished surfaces of his teacher with the face of a local girl and varied brushwork. His other religious works include The Adoration of the Magi (1619) and Saint John the Evangelist on the Island of Patmos (1618–19), both of which begin to express his more pointed and careful realism. Also from this period are

2640-523: 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

2805-503: A general attempt to depict subjects as they are considered to exist in third-person objective reality without embellishment or interpretation and "in accordance with secular, empirical rules." As such, the approach inherently implies a belief that such reality is ontologically independent of humankind's conceptual schemes, linguistic practices and beliefs and thus can be known to the artist, who can in turn represent this 'reality' faithfully. As Ian Watt states, modern realism "begins from

2970-519: 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

3135-602: 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

3300-440: A mass of dark tangled hair conceals part of the face, visually reinforcing the idea of death. The figure is presented alone before a dark background. Velázquez's son-in-law Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo had succeeded him as usher in 1634, and Mazo himself had received a steady promotion in the royal household. Mazo received a pension of 500 ducats in 1640, increased to 700 in 1648, for portraits painted and to be painted, and

3465-412: 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

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3630-533: A model for 19th century realist and impressionist painters. In the 20th century, artists such as Pablo Picasso , Salvador Dalí , and Francis Bacon paid tribute to Velázquez by re-interpreting some of his most iconic images. Most of his work entered the Spanish royal collection , and by far the best collection is in the Museo del Prado in Madrid, although some portraits were sent abroad as diplomatic gifts, especially to

3795-552: 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;

3960-446: A painting of a group of men in contemporary dress paying homage to a half-naked ivy-crowned young man seated on a wine barrel. Velázquez's first mythological painting, it has been interpreted variously as a depiction of a theatrical performance, as a parody, or as a symbolic representation of peasants asking the god of wine to give them relief from their sorrows. The style shows the naturalism of Velázquez's early works slightly touched by

4125-426: 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

4290-509: A period of economic crisis. The Prince of Wales (afterwards Charles I ) arrived at the court of Spain in 1623. Records indicate that he sat for Velázquez, but the picture is now lost. In 1627, Philip set a competition for the best painters of Spain with the subject to be the expulsion of the Moors . Velázquez won, with a painting (destroyed in a fire at the palace in 1734) which records say depicted Philip III pointing with his baton to

4455-528: 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

4620-785: A prelude for the popularity of scenes of work in genre painting in the 17th century, which appeared all over Europe, with Dutch Golden Age painting sprouting several different subgenres of such scenes, the Bamboccianti (though mostly from the Low Countries ) in Italy, and in Spain the genre of bodegones , and the introduction of unidealized peasants into history paintings by Jusepe de Ribera and Velázquez . The Le Nain brothers in France and many Flemish artists including Adriaen Brouwer and David Teniers

4785-498: A quasi-scientific basis, playing on the sense of "naturalist" as a student of natural history , as the biological sciences were then generally known. There have been various movements invoking realism in the other arts, such as the opera style of verismo , literary realism , theatrical realism and Italian neorealist cinema . When used as an adjective, "realistic" (usually related to visual appearance) distinguishes itself from "realist" art that concerns subject matter. Similarly,

4950-656: 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

5115-571: A range of weather conditions and degrees of natural light. After being another development of Early Netherlandish painting, 1600 European portraiture subjects were often idealized by smoothing features or giving them an artificial pose. Still life paintings and still life elements in other works played a considerable role in developing illusionistic painting, though in the Netherlandish tradition of flower painting they long lacked "realism", in that flowers from all seasons were typically used, either from

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5280-461: A rather limited palette, but he mixed the available paints with great skill to achieve varying hues. His pigments were not significantly different from those of his contemporaries and he mainly employed azurite , smalt , vermilion , red lake , lead-tin-yellow and ochres . His early works were painted on canvases prepared with a red-brown ground. He adopted the use of light-gray grounds during his first trip to Italy, and continued using them for

5445-541: A reaction to Romanticism and History painting . In favor of depictions of 'real' life, the Realist painters used common laborers, and ordinary people in ordinary surroundings engaged in real activities as subjects for their works. Its chief exponents were Gustave Courbet , Jean-François Millet , Honoré Daumier and Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot . According to Ross Finocchio, formerly of the Department of European Paintings at

5610-404: 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

5775-454: 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),

5940-429: 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

6105-452: 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

6270-451: A short time under Francisco de Herrera before beginning his apprenticeship under Pacheco, but this is undocumented. A contract signed on 17 September 1611, formalized a six-year apprenticeship with Pacheco, backdated to December 1610, and it has been suggested that Herrera may have substituted for a traveling Pacheco between December 1610 and September 1611. Although considered a dull and undistinguished painter, Pacheco sometimes expressed

6435-442: A simple, direct realism , though his work remained essentially Mannerist . As a teacher, he was highly learned and encouraged his students' intellectual development. In Pacheco's school, Velázquez studied the classics , was trained in proportion and perspective, and witnessed the trends in the literary and artistic circles of Seville. On 23 April 1618, Velázquez married Juana Pacheco (1 June 1602 – 10 August 1660),

6600-461: A style depicting the unidealized version of the subject, can be used in depicting any type of subject without commitment to treating the typical or every day. Despite the general idealism of classical art, this too had classical precedents, which came in useful when defending such treatments in the Renaissance and Baroque . Demetrius of Alopece was a 4th-century BCE sculptor whose work (all now lost)

6765-412: 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

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6930-547: A suitable distance to get the impression of complete, three-dimensional spatiality. His only surviving portrait of the delicate and sickly Prince Felipe Prospero is remarkable for its combination of the sweet features of the child prince and his dog with a subtle sense of gloom. The hope that was placed at that time in the sole heir to the Spanish crown is reflected in the depiction: fresh red and white stand in contrast to late autumnal, morbid colors. A small dog with wide eyes looks at

7095-469: A taint of heresy in their lineage—that is, a trace of Jewish or Moorish blood or contamination by trade or commerce in either side of the family for many generations. The records of this commission have been found among the archives of the Order of Santiago. Velázquez was awarded the honor in 1659. His occupation as plebeian and tradesman was justified because, as painter to the king, he was evidently not involved in

7260-563: 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 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

7425-475: A wise and well-educated man. Pablo de Valladolid (1635), a buffoon evidently acting a part, and The Buffoon of Coria (1639) belong to this middle period. As court painter, Velázquez had fewer commissions for religious works than any of his contemporaries. Christ Crucified (1632), painted for the Convent of San Plácido in Madrid, depicts Christ immediately after death. The Savior's head hangs on his breast and

7590-407: Is a faintly comic incongruity. The equivocal image has been interpreted in various ways: Javier Portús describes it as a "reflection on reality, representation, and the artistic vision", while Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez says it "has also been seen as a melancholy meditation on the arms of Spain in decline". Had it not been for his royal appointment, which enabled Velázquez to escape the censorship of

7755-509: Is a mystery: are the royal pair standing in the viewer's space, or does the mirror reflect the painting on which Velázquez is working? Dale Brown says Velázquez may have conceived the faded image of the king and queen on the back wall as a foreshadowing of the fall of the Spanish Empire that was to gain momentum following Philip's death. In the 1966 book Les Mots et Les Choses ( The Order of Things ), philosopher Michel Foucault devotes

7920-677: Is also attributed to William Dean Howells and Henry James who served as the spokesmen for realism as well as articulator of its aesthetic principles. The realistic approach to theater collapsed into nihilism and the absurd after World War II. Italian Neorealism was a cinematic movement incorporating elements of realism that developed in post-WWII Italy. Notable Neorealists included Vittorio De Sica , Luchino Visconti , and Roberto Rossellini . Realist films generally focus on social issues. There are two types of realism in film: seamless realism and aesthetic realism. Seamless realism tries to use narrative structures and film techniques to create

8085-428: Is also commonly derogatorily referred as "traditional bourgeois realism". Some writers of Victorian literature produced works of realism. The rigidities, conventions, and other limitations of "bourgeois realism" prompted in their turn the revolt later labeled as modernism ; starting around 1900, the driving motive of modernist literature was the criticism of the 19th-century bourgeois social order and world view, which

8250-483: Is based on " objective reality ." It focuses on showing everyday activities and life, primarily among the middle- or lower-class society, without romantic idealization or dramatization. According to Kornelije Kvas, "the realistic figuration and re-figuration of reality form logical constructs that are similar to our usual notion of reality, without violating the principle of three types of laws – those of natural sciences, psychological and social ones". It may be regarded as

8415-527: 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),

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8580-455: Is commonly recognized as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. No original works on panels or walls by the great Greek painters survive, but from literary accounts and the surviving corpus of derivative works (mostly Graeco-Roman works in mosaic ), illusionism seems to be highly valued in painting. Pliny the Elder 's famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in

8745-474: Is considered a realistic representation of the nobility although it included fantastical elements. Diego Vel%C3%A1zquez Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez , (baptized 6 June 1599 – 6 August 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age . He was an individualistic artist of

8910-749: Is far older as demonstrated by the principles of dramatic forms such as the presentation of the physical world that closely matches reality. The achievement of realism in the theatre was to direct attention to the social and psychological problems of ordinary life. In its dramas, people emerge as victims of forces larger than themselves, as individuals confronted with a rapidly accelerating world. These pioneering playwrights present their characters as ordinary, impotent, and unable to arrive at answers to their predicaments. This type of art represents what we see with our human eyes. Anton Chekov , for instance, used camera works to reproduce an uninflected slice of life . Scholars such as Thomas Postlewait noted that throughout

9075-430: Is full-length, stately and dignified, in which he wears the green cross of the order of Alcantara and holds a wand, the badge of his office as master of the horse; in the other, The Count-Duke of Olivares on Horseback ( c.  1635 ), he is flatteringly represented as a field marshal during action. In these portraits, Velázquez well repaid the debt of gratitude that he owed to the patron who had first brought him to

9240-423: 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

9405-555: 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 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

9570-463: Is to reproduce nature by carrying it to its maximum power and intensity: it is truth balanced with science". Émile Zola adopted the term with a similar scientific emphasis for his aims in the novel. Many Naturalist paintings covered a similar range of subject matter as that of Impressionism , but using tighter, more traditional brushwork styles. The term "continued to be used indiscriminately for various kinds of realism" for several decades, often as

9735-402: Is typical in such scenes, in which a general on horseback looks down on his vanquished, kneeling opponent. Instead, Velázquez shows the Spanish general standing before his Dutch counterpart as an equal, and extending to him a hand of consolation. The impassive, saturnine face of the influential minister Olivares is familiar to us from the many portraits painted by Velázquez. Two are notable: one

9900-593: The Austrian Habsburgs . Velázquez was born in Seville , Spain, the first child of Juan Rodríguez de Silva, a notary , and Jerónima Velázquez. He was baptized at the church of St. Peter in Seville on Sunday, 6 June 1599. The baptism most probably occurred a few days or weeks after his birth. His paternal grandparents, Diego da Silva and María Rodríguez, were Portuguese and had moved to Seville decades earlier. When Velázquez

10065-465: The Baroque period ( c.  1600–1750 ). He began to paint in a precise tenebrist style, later developing a freer manner characterized by bold brushwork. In addition to numerous renditions of scenes of historical and cultural significance, he painted scores of portraits of the Spanish royal family and commoners, culminating in his masterpiece Las Meninas (1656). Velázquez's paintings became

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10230-465: The Inquisition , he would not have been able to release his La Venus del espejo ( c.  1644–1648 , English: Venus at her Mirror ) also known as The Rokeby Venus . It is the first known female nude painted by a Spanish artist, and the only surviving female nude by Velázquez. Besides the many portraits of Philip by Velázquez—thirty-four by one count —he painted portraits of other members of

10395-579: The Labours of the Months in late medieval art, of which many examples survive from books of hours , concentrate on peasants laboring on different tasks through the seasons, often in a rich landscape background, and were significant both in developing landscape art and the depiction of everyday working-class people. In the 16th century, there was a fashion for the depiction in large paintings of scenes of people working, especially in food markets and kitchens; in many,

10560-577: The Late Middle Ages , where some painted wooden sculptures in particular strayed into the grotesque in portraying Christ covered in wounds and blood, with the intention of stimulating the viewer to meditate on the suffering that Christ had undergone on their behalf. These were especially found in Germany and Central Europe. After abating in the Renaissance, similar works re-appeared in the Baroque , especially in Spanish sculpture. Renaissance theorists opened

10725-590: The Metropolitan Museum of Art , Realists used unprettified detail depicting the existence of ordinary contemporary life, coinciding with the contemporaneous naturalist literature of Émile Zola , Honoré de Balzac and Gustave Flaubert . The French Realist movement had equivalents in all other Western countries, developing somewhat later. In particular the Peredvizhniki or Wanderers group in Russia who formed in

10890-917: The Room of Mirrors at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid , Velázquez commissioned Matteo Bonuccelli to cast twelve bronze copies of the Medici lions . The copies are now in the Royal Palace of Madrid and the Museo del Prado . During his time in Rome, Velázquez fathered a natural son, Antonio, whom he is not known ever to have seen. From February 1650, Philip repeatedly sought Velázquez's return to Spain. Accordingly, after visiting Naples —where he saw his old friend Jose Ribera—and Venice, Velázquez returned to Spain via Barcelona in 1651, taking with him many pictures and 300 pieces of statuary, which afterwards were arranged and catalogued for

11055-574: The Titians at the Escorial . Rubens, who demonstrated his brilliance as painter and courtier during the seven months of the diplomatic mission, had a high opinion of Velázquez but had no significant influence on his painting. He did, however, galvanize Velázquez's desire to see Italy and the works of the great Italian masters. In 1629, Velázquez received 100 ducats for the picture of Bacchus ( The Triumph of Bacchus ), also called Los Borrachos (The Drunks),

11220-462: The "theology of painting", and in 1827 the president of the Royal Academy of Arts Sir Thomas Lawrence described it in a letter as "the true philosophy of the art". However, it is unclear as to who or what is the true subject of the picture. Is it the royal daughter, or perhaps the painter himself? The king and queen are seen reflected in a mirror on the back wall, but the source of the reflection

11385-468: The 15th century. In the 19th century, Realism art movement painters such as Gustave Courbet were not especially noted for fully precise and careful depiction of visual appearances; in Courbet's time that was more often a characteristic of academic painting , which very often depicted with great skill and care scenes that were contrived and artificial, or imagined historical scenes. Realism, or naturalism as

11550-400: The 1860s and organized exhibitions from 1871 included many realists such as Ilya Repin , Vasily Perov and Ivan Shishkin , and had a great influence on Russian art. In Britain, artists such as Hubert von Herkomer and Luke Fildes had great success with realist paintings dealing with social issues. Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality", Realism as a literary movement

11715-622: The 1960s and used them to create a politically oriented cinema. French filmmakers made some politically oriented realist films in the 1960s, such as the cinéma vérité and documentary films of Jean Rouch while in the 1950s and 1960s, British, French and German new waves of filmmaking produced "slice-of-life" films (e.g., kitchen sink dramas in the UK). Verismo was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni , Ruggero Leoncavallo , Umberto Giordano , Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini . They sought to bring

11880-520: The 5th century BC may well be a legend. As well as accuracy in shape, light, and color, Roman paintings show an unscientific but effective knowledge of representing distant objects smaller than closer ones and representing regular geometric forms such as the roof and walls of a room with perspective. This progress in illusionistic effects in no way meant a rejection of idealism; statues of Greek gods and heroes attempt to represent with accuracy idealized and beautiful forms, though other works, such as heads of

12045-621: 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

12210-450: The Elder and Younger painted peasants, but rarely townsfolk. In the 18th century, small paintings of working people remained popular, mostly drawing on the Dutch tradition and featuring women. Much art depicting ordinary people, especially in the form of prints , was comic and moralistic, but the mere poverty of the subjects seems relatively rarely to have been part of the moral message. From

12375-529: The House of Martha (1618) and Kitchen Scene with Christ at Emmaus ( c.  1618 ), feature religious scenes in the background, painted in a way that creates ambiguity as to whether the religious scene is a painting on the wall, a representation of the thoughts of the kitchen maid in the foreground, or an actual incident seen through a window. The Virgin of the Immaculate Conception (1618–19) follows

12540-659: The Impressionists for the label. The development of increasingly accurate representations of the visual appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the accurate depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, the perspective and effects of distance, and the detailed effects of light and color. The art of the Upper Paleolithic in Europe achieved remarkably lifelike depictions of animals. Ancient Egyptian art developed conventions involving both stylization and idealization. Ancient Greek art

12705-527: The Island of Pheasants, a small swampy island in the Bidassoa . Velázquez was charged with the decoration of the Spanish pavilion and with the entire scenic display. He attracted much attention from the nobility of his bearing and the splendor of his costume. On 26 June he returned to Madrid, and on 31 July he was stricken with fever. Feeling his end approaching, he signed his will, appointing as his sole executors his wife and his firm friend named Fuensalida, keeper of

12870-518: The King. Velázquez was not allowed to paint the new king, Philip IV , but portrayed the poet Luis de Góngora at the request of Pacheco. The portrait showed Góngora crowned with a laurel wreath, which Velázquez later painted over. He returned to Seville in January 1623 and remained there until August. In December 1622, Rodrigo de Villandrando , the king's favorite court painter, died. Velázquez received

13035-539: 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

13200-575: The Modena sale of 1746. Those works presage the advent of the painter's third and latest manner, a noble example of which is the great portrait of Pope Innocent X in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery in Rome, where Velázquez now proceeded. There he was received with marked favor by the Pope, who presented him with a medal and golden chain. Velázquez took a copy of the portrait—which Sir Joshua Reynolds thought

13365-643: The Pope. It captures in great detail Pareja's countenance and his somewhat worn and patched clothing with an economic use of brushwork. In November 1650, Juan de Pareja was freed from slavery by Velázquez. To this period also belong two small landscape paintings both titled View of the Garden of the Villa Medici . As landscapes apparently painted directly from nature, they were exceptional for their time, and reveal Velázquez's close study of light at different times of day. As part of his mission to procure decorations for

13530-571: The Pope; in fact Innocent was pleased with the work, and hung it in his official visitor's waiting room. In 1650 in Rome Velázquez also painted a portrait of Juan de Pareja , now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, US. This portrait procured his election into the Accademia di San Luca . Purportedly Velázquez created this portrait as a warm-up of his skills before his portrait of

13695-416: The Renaissance, such images continued in book illustrations and prints, with the exception of marine painting which largely disappeared in fine art until the early Industrial Revolution , scenes from which were painted by a few painters such as Joseph Wright of Derby and Philip James de Loutherbourg . Such subjects probably failed to sell very well, and there is a noticeable absence of industry, other than

13860-435: 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

14025-561: The art-knowledge Velázquez had gathered during his long artistic career of more than forty years. The scheme is simple—a confluence of varied and blended red, bluish-green, gray and black. Velázquez's final portraits of the royal children are among his finest works and in the Infanta Margarita Teresa in a Blue Dress the painter's personal style reached its high-point: shimmering spots of color on wide painting surfaces produce an almost impressionistic effect—the viewer must stand at

14190-423: 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

14355-476: 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 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]

14520-406: The canvas. However, Velázquez did not receive this honor of knighthood until three years after execution of this painting. Even the King of Spain could not make his favorite court painter a belted knight without the consent of the commission established to inquire into the purity of his lineage . The aim of these inquiries would be to prevent the appointment to positions of anyone found to have even

14685-547: 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

14850-474: 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

15015-520: The contrast between the relative "classical-idealism" of the Carracci and the "naturalist" style of the Caravaggisti , or followers of Caravaggio , who painted religious scenes as though set in the back streets of contemporary Italian cities and used "naturalist" as a self-description. Bellori , writing some decades after Caravaggio's early death and no supporter of his style, refers to "Those who glory in

15180-504: The dark reddish ground of all his earlier works. The change resulted in a greater luminosity than he had previously achieved, and he made the use of light-gray grounds his regular practice. Velázquez returned to Madrid in January 1631. That year he completed the first of his many portraits of the young prince, beginning with Prince Balthasar Charles with a Dwarf (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts). ln portraits such as Equestrian portrait of prince Balthasar Charles (1635), Velázquez depicts

15345-457: The daughter of his teacher. They had two daughters. The elder, Francisca de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco (1619–1658), married painter Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo at the Church of Santiago in Madrid on 21 August 1633. The younger, Ignacia de Silva Velázquez y Pacheco, born in 1621, died in infancy. Velázquez's earliest works are bodegones (kitchen scenes with prominent still-life ). He was one of

15510-492: The death of King Philip, that they were finally settled. It is canonical to divide Velázquez's career by his two visits to Italy. He rarely signed his pictures, and the royal archives give the dates of only his most important works. Internal evidence and history pertaining to his portraits supply the rest to a certain extent. Although acquainted with all the Italian schools and a friend of the foremost painters of his day, Velázquez

15675-565: The early 15th century and gradually spread across Europe, with accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm. The accurate depiction of landscape in painting had also been developing in Early Netherlandish/Early Northern Renaissance and Italian Renaissance painting and was then brought to a very high level in 17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting , with very subtle techniques for depicting

15840-491: 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 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,

16005-634: The elite. In the West, classical standards of illusionism did not begin to be reached again until the Late medieval and Early Renaissance periods and were helped first in the Netherlands in the early 15th century, and around the 1470s in Italy by the development of new techniques of oil painting which allowed very subtle and precise effects of light to be painted using several layers of paint and glaze. Scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy in

16170-400: 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

16335-401: The famously ugly Socrates , were allowed to fall below these ideal standards of beauty. Roman portraiture , when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects, called verism . The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, a change already well underway by the time Christianity began to affect the art of

16500-521: 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

16665-444: The film, rather than being manipulated into a "preferred reading". Siegfried Kracauer is also notable for arguing that realism is the most important function of cinema. Aesthetically realist filmmakers use long shots , deep focus and eye-level 90-degree shots to reduce manipulation of what the viewer sees. Italian neorealism filmmakers from after WWII took the existing realist film approaches from France and Italy that emerged in

16830-469: The first Spanish artists to paint such scenes, and his Old Woman Frying Eggs (1618) demonstrates the young artist's unusual skill in realistic depiction. The realism and dramatic lighting of this work may have been influenced by Caravaggio 's work—which Velázquez could have seen second-hand, in copies—and by the polychrome sculpture in Sevillian churches. Two of his bodegones, Kitchen Scene with Christ in

16995-423: The food is given as much prominence as the workers. Artists included Pieter Aertsen and his nephew Joachim Beuckelaer in the Netherlands, working in an essentially Mannerist style, and in Italy the young Annibale Carracci in the 1580s, using an unpolished style, with Bartolomeo Passerotti somewhere between the two. Pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life. Such scenes acted as

17160-470: 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

17325-413: The habit of assembling compositions from individual drawings or as a deliberate convention; the large displays of bouquets in vases were atypical of 17th-century habits; the flowers were displayed one at a time. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a long history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions or shown at a smaller scale. This was partly because art

17490-402: The highest examples of his style. One of the infantas , Margaret Theresa , the eldest daughter of the new queen, appears to be the subject of Las Meninas (1656, English: The Maids of Honour ), Velázquez's magnum opus . Created four years before his death, it serves as an outstanding example of European baroque art. Luca Giordano , a contemporary Italian painter, referred to it as

17655-403: 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,

17820-573: The influence of Titian and Rubens. In 1629, Velázquez was given permission to spend a year and a half in Italy. Although this first visit is recognized as a crucial chapter in the development of his style—and in the history of Spanish Royal Patronage, since Philip   IV sponsored his trip—few details and specifics are known of what the painter saw, whom he met, how he was perceived and what innovations he hoped to introduce into his painting. He traveled to Venice , Ferrara , Cento , Loreto , Bologna , and Rome . In 1630, he visited Naples to paint

17985-463: The king is represented in profile in an image of imperturbable majesty, demonstrating expert horsemanship by executing an effortless levade . The large The Surrender of Breda (1634–35), also painted for the Palacio, is Velázquez's only extant painting depicting contemporary history. Its symbolic treatment of a Spanish military victory over the Dutch eschews the rhetoric of conquest and superiority that

18150-508: The king's attention. The sculptor Juan Martínez Montañés modeled a statue on one of Velázquez's equestrian portraits of the king (painted in 1636; now lost) which was cast in bronze by the Florentine sculptor Pietro Tacca and now stands in the Plaza de Oriente in Madrid. Velázquez was in close attendance to Philip, and accompanied him to Aragon in 1644, where the artist painted a portrait of

18315-403: The king, and Olivares commanded Velázquez to move to Madrid, promising that no other painter would ever paint Philip's portrait and all other portraits of the king would be withdrawn from circulation. In the following year, 1624, he received 300 ducats from the king to pay the cost of moving his family to Madrid, which became his home for the remainder of his life. Velázquez secured admission to

18480-495: The king. Elisabeth of France had died in 1644, and the king had married Mariana of Austria , whom Velázquez now painted in many attitudes. In 1652 he was specially chosen by the king to fill the high office of aposentador mayor , which imposed on him the duty of looking after the quarters occupied by the court—a responsible function which was no sinecure and one which interfered with the exercise of his art. Yet far from indicating any decline, his works of this period are amongst

18645-547: 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: Realism (visual arts) In 19th-century Europe, "Naturalism" or the "Naturalist school" was somewhat artificially erected as a term representing a breakaway sub-movement of realism, that attempted (not wholly successfully) to distinguish itself from its parent by its avoidance of politics and social issues, and liked to proclaim

18810-446: The mid-19th century onwards, the difficulties of life for the poor were emphasized. Despite this trend coinciding with large-scale migration from the countryside to cities in most of Europe, painters still tended to paint poor rural people. Crowded city street scenes were popular with the Impressionists and related painters, especially ones showing Paris. Medieval manuscript illuminators were often asked to illustrate technology, but after

18975-505: The monarch in the costume as he reviewed his troops in Fraga . Velázquez's paintings of Aesop and Menippus (both c.  1636–1638 ) portray ancient writers in the guise of portraits of beggars. Mars Resting ( c.  1638 ) is both a depiction of a mythological figure and a portrait of a weary-looking, middle-aged man posing as Mars. The model is painted with attention to his individuality, while his unkempt, oversized mustache

19140-410: 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

19305-448: The name of naturalists" ( naturalisti ). During the 19th century, naturalism developed as a broadly defined movement in European art, though it lacked the political underpinnings that motivated realist artists. The originator of the term was the French art critic Jules-Antoine Castagnary , who in 1863 announced that: "The naturalist school declares that art is the expression of life under all phases and on all levels, and that its sole aim

19470-415: The naturalism of influential late 19th-century writers such as Émile Zola , Gustave Flaubert and Henrik Ibsen into opera. This new style presented true-to-life drama that featured gritty and flawed lower-class protagonists while some described it as a heightened portrayal of a realistic event. Although an account considered Giuseppe Verdi 's Luisa Miller and La traviata as the first stirrings of

19635-492: The nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there were numerous joining of melodramatic and realistic forms and functions, which could be demonstrated in the way melodramatic elements existed in realistic forms and vice versa. In the United States, realism in drama preceded fictional realism by about two decades as theater historians identified the first impetus toward realism during the late 1870s and early 1880s. Its development

19800-450: 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

19965-474: The opening chapter to a detailed analysis of Las Meninas . He describes the ways in which the painting problematizes issues of representation through its use of mirrors, screens, and the subsequent oscillations that occur between the image's interior, surface, and exterior. It is said the king painted the honorary Cross of Saint James of the Order of Santiago on the breast of the painter as it appears today on

20130-685: The painting of portraits as low down the social scale as the prosperous merchants of Flanders , and some of these, notably the Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck (1434) and more often in religious scenes such as the Merode Altarpiece by Robert Campin and his workshop (circa 1427), include very detailed depictions of middle-class interiors full of lovingly depicted objects. However, these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance and symbolism that undercut any commitment to realism for its own sake. Cycles of

20295-405: 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 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

20460-469: 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

20625-480: 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

20790-523: The portrait of Maria Anna of Spain , and there he probably met Ribera . The major works from his first Italian period are Joseph's Bloody Coat brought to Jacob (1629–30) and Apollo in the Forge of Vulcan (1630), both of which reveal his ambition to rival the Italians as a history painter in the grand manner. The two compositions of several nearly life-sized figures have similar dimensions, and may have been conceived as pendants—the biblical scene depicting

20955-561: The portrait of Sor Jerónima de la Fuente (1620)—Velázquez's first full-length portrait —and the genre The Water Seller of Seville (1618–1622). The Water Seller of Seville has been termed "the peak of Velázquez's bodegones " and is admired for its virtuoso rendering of volumes and textures as well as for its enigmatic gravitas. Velázquez had established his reputation in Seville by the early 1620s. He traveled to Madrid in April 1622, with letters of introduction to Don Juan de Fonseca, chaplain to

21120-454: 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 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 ,

21285-536: The position that truth can be discovered by the individual through the senses" and as such, "it has its origins in Descartes and Locke , and received its first full formulation by Thomas Reid in the middle of the eighteenth century." While the preceding Romantic era was also a reaction against the values of the Industrial Revolution , realism was in its turn a reaction to Romanticism, and for this reason it

21450-469: The practice of "selling" pictures. There were essentially only two patrons of art in Spain—the church and the art-loving king and court. Bartolomé Esteban Murillo , who toiled for a rich and powerful church, left little means to pay for his burial, while Velázquez lived and died in the enjoyment of a good salary and pension. One of his final works was Las hilanderas ( The Spinners ) , painted circa 1657,

21615-455: 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 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

21780-499: The prince looking dignified and lordly, or in the dress of a field marshal on his prancing steed. In one version, the scene is in the riding school of the palace, the king and queen looking on from a balcony, while Olivares attends as master of the horse to the prince. To decorate the king's new palace, the Palacio del Buen Retiro , Velázquez painted equestrian portraits of the royal family. In Philip   IV on Horseback (1634–35),

21945-663: 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

22110-452: 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

22275-414: The pure study of nature and wished to depict the whole range of individual varieties of forms in the human figure and other things. Leon Battista Alberti was an early idealizer, stressing the typical, with others such as Michelangelo supporting the selection of the most beautiful – he refused to make portraits for that reason. In the 17th century, the debate continued. In Italy, it usually centered on

22440-407: 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

22605-693: The royal family: Philip's first wife, Elisabeth of Bourbon , and her children, especially her eldest son, Don Baltasar Carlos , whom Velázquez first depicted at about two years of age. Cavaliers, soldiers, churchmen, and the poet Francisco de Quevedo (now at Apsley House ), sat for Velázquez. Velázquez also painted several buffoons and dwarfs in Philip's court, whom he depicted sympathetically and with respect for their individuality, as in The Jester Don Diego de Acedo (1644), whose intelligent face and huge folio with ink-bottle and pen by his side show him to be

22770-472: The royal records. He died on 6 August 1660. He was buried in the Fuensalida vault of the church of San Juan Bautista , and within eight days his wife Juana was buried beside him. This church was destroyed by the French around 1809, so his place of interment is now unknown. There was much difficulty in adjusting the tangled accounts outstanding between Velázquez and the treasury, and it was not until 1666, after

22935-414: The royal service with a salary of 20 ducats per month, lodgings and payment for the pictures he might paint. His portrait of Philip was exhibited on the steps of San Felipe and received with enthusiasm. It is now lost (as is the portrait of Fonseca). The Museo del Prado , however, has two of Velázquez's portraits of the king (nos. 1070 and 1071) in which the severity of the Seville period has disappeared and

23100-455: 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

23265-455: 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

23430-597: 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

23595-407: 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

23760-425: 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

23925-519: 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

24090-609: 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

24255-428: 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

24420-496: The term "illusionistic" might be used when referring to the accurate rendering of visual appearances in a composition. In painting, naturalism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes and objects. It is also called mimesis or illusionism and became especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Robert Campin , Jan van Eyck and other artists in

24585-436: The tones are more delicate. The modeling is firm, recalling that of Antonio Mor , the Dutch portrait painter of Philip II , who exercised a considerable influence on the Spanish school. Velázquez depicts Philip wearing the golilla ( es ), a stiff linen collar projecting at right angles from the neck. The golilla replaced the earlier court fashion of elaborate ruffed collars as part of Philip's dress reform laws during

24750-527: The verismo, some claimed that it began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni 's Cavalleria rusticana , peaked in the early 1900s. It was followed by Leoncavallo's Pagliacci, which dealt with the themes of infidelity, revenge, and violence. Verismo also reached Britain where pioneers included the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900). Specifically, their play Iolanthe

24915-425: 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

25080-403: The viewer as if questioningly, and the largely pale background hints at a gloomy fate: the little prince was barely four years old when he died. As in all of the artist's late paintings, the handling of the colors is extraordinarily fluid and vibrant. In 1660, a peace treaty between France and Spain was consummated by the marriage of Maria Theresa with Louis XIV , and the ceremony took place on

25245-412: 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

25410-480: Was a slave and who had been trained in painting by Velázquez. Velázquez sailed from Málaga , landed at Genoa , and proceeded from Milan to Venice, buying paintings of Titian , Tintoretto and Veronese as he went. At Modena he was received with much favor by the duke, and here he painted the portrait of the duke at the Modena gallery and two portraits that now adorn the Dresden gallery, for these paintings came from

25575-402: Was appointed inspector of works in the palace in 1647. Philip now entrusted Velázquez with the mission of procuring paintings and sculpture for the royal collection. Rich in pictures, Spain was weak in statuary, and Velázquez was commissioned once again to proceed to Italy to make purchases. When he set out in 1649, he was accompanied by his assistant Juan de Pareja who at this point in time

25740-557: 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, 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

25905-405: Was countered with an anti-rationalist, anti-realist and anti-bourgeois program. Theatrical realism is said to have first emerged in European drama in the 19th century as an offshoot of the Industrial Revolution and the age of science. Some also specifically cited the invention of photography as the basis of the realist theater while others view that the association between realism and drama

26070-542: Was expensive and usually commissioned for specific religious, political or personal reasons, which allowed only a relatively small amount of space or effort to be devoted to such scenes. Drolleries in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts sometimes contain small scenes of everyday life, and the development of perspective created large background areas in many scenes set outdoors. Medieval and Early Renaissance art usually showed non-sacred figures in contemporary dress by convention. Early Netherlandish painting brought

26235-460: 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

26400-589: Was more expansive, and the letters home to Philadelphia reveal 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

26565-521: Was offered knighthood in 1658, he claimed descent from the lesser nobility in order to qualify, however, his grandparents may have been tradespeople. Some authors have suggested that his grandparents were Jewish conversos . Rafael Cómez proposes Velázquez may have had Morisco lineage. Raised in modest circumstances, he showed an early gift for art, and was apprenticed to Francisco Pacheco , an artist and teacher in Seville. An early-18th century biographer, Antonio Palomino, said Velázquez studied for

26730-657: Was said to prefer realism over ideal beauty, and during the Ancient Roman Republic , politicians preferred a truthful depiction in portraits, though the early emperors favored Greek idealism. Goya 's portraits of the Spanish royal family represent a sort of honest, unflattering portrayal of important people. A recurring trend in Christian art was "realism" that emphasized the humanity of religious figures, above all Christ and his physical sufferings in his Passion . Following trends in devotional literature , this developed in

26895-472: 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

27060-408: Was strong enough to withstand external influences and work out for himself the development of his own nature and his own principles of art. He rejected the pomp that characterized the portraiture of other European courts, and instead brought an even greater reserve to the understated formula for Habsburg portraiture established by Titian, Antonio Mor , and Alonso Sánchez Coello . He is known for using

27225-601: Was the finest picture in Rome—with him to Spain. Several copies of it exist in different galleries, some of them possibly studies for the original or replicas painted for Philip. Velázquez, in this work, had now reached the manera abreviada , a term coined by contemporary Spaniards for this bolder, sharper style. The portrait shows such ruthlessness in Innocent's expression that some in the Vatican feared that it would be seen unfavorably by

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