Past Exhibition

Thomas Eakins

Two men with pale skin, wearing white sleeveless shirts and royal-blue caps, row in unison in a long, narrow boat on a placid blue river in this horizontal landscape painting. The low, honey-colored wooden boat extends off both sides of the canvas. Both men face our left as they row to our right. The man in front looks ahead of him, beyond the stern of the boat, and the man to our right, closer to the bow, tucks his chin down to look past his shoulder. Their bare, muscled arms are extended straight as the two oars sweep back. The tip of another boat runs close and parallel to the bottom edge of the composition, spanning the left three-quarters of the painting. The opposite riverbank is lined with a dense forest of pine-green trees. People crowd along the decks of a steamboat and a paddleboat near the riverbank to our left. Another narrow skuller, rowed by four people wearing ruby-red shirts, cuts through the water at the back center of the river. The riverbank beyond is lined with people, painted with strokes of black and white, and minuscule touches of red. The horizon comes halfway up the composition. Cream-white clouds float across a muted, topaz-blue sky above the trees.
Thomas Eakins, The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, 1953.7.1

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    East Building, Ground Floor, Northeast
Two men with pale skin, wearing white sleeveless shirts and royal-blue caps, row in unison in a long, narrow boat on a placid blue river in this horizontal landscape painting. The low, honey-colored wooden boat extends off both sides of the canvas. Both men face our left as they row to our right. The man in front looks ahead of him, beyond the stern of the boat, and the man to our right, closer to the bow, tucks his chin down to look past his shoulder. Their bare, muscled arms are extended straight as the two oars sweep back. The tip of another boat runs close and parallel to the bottom edge of the composition, spanning the left three-quarters of the painting. The opposite riverbank is lined with a dense forest of pine-green trees. People crowd along the decks of a steamboat and a paddleboat near the riverbank to our left. Another narrow skuller, rowed by four people wearing ruby-red shirts, cuts through the water at the back center of the river. The riverbank beyond is lined with people, painted with strokes of black and white, and minuscule touches of red. The horizon comes halfway up the composition. Cream-white clouds float across a muted, topaz-blue sky above the trees.
Thomas Eakins, The Biglin Brothers Racing, 1872, oil on canvas, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, 1953.7.1

Overview: All of Eakins' known works of rowing subjects were shown, including 9 paintings and 14 works on paper. They were brought together for the first time from public and private American collections. Several of the paintings were displayed with preliminary sketches. A scull was hung in the East Building atrium at the exhibition entrance.

Organization: The exhibition was organized by Yale University Art Gallery. Helen Cooper, curator of American paintings and sculpture at Yale University Art Gallery, and Nicolai Cikovsky Jr., curator of American and British paintings at the National Gallery, were curators of the exhibition.

Sponsor: The exhibition was made possible by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, Inc., with additional support provided by the National Endowment for the Arts and Jan and Frederick Mayer.

Attendance: 98,212

Catalog: Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures, by Helen A. Cooper et al. New Haven: Yale University Art Gallery, 1996.

Other Venues:

  • Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut, 10/11/1996–01/14/1997
  • Cleveland Museum of Art, 02/15/1997–05/15/1997

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