Past Exhibition

Thomas Eakins: A Retrospective Exhibition

On the brick pavement of a sunny veranda, a young toddler leans heavily on her right arm, to our left, as she reaches for a wooden block in this horizontal painting. Much of her face is cast in deep shadow from the bright light overhead, but light brushes the tops of her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She grips a wooden block with her left hand, closer to us. Her left leg stretches to our right in a stocking striped with vivid red and white. Light glints off the shiny material of her black, round-toed slipper. She has short, golden-brown hair, and her white smock is richly embroidered in a pattern of white-one-white with alternating linked loops. Scattered before her, at arms-length, are seven other alphabet blocks lettered in gray with red and tan faces, several wooden building blocks, and a ball of red yarn. A doll in a black dress lies with limbs akimbo, face-down by a potted plant at the right edge of the canvas. A red wagon drawn by white toy horse sits near the left edge. The scene is enclosed with a deep, emerald-green hedge stretching across the background. The artist signed and dated this work as if he had inscribed two of the bricks on the patio with red paint in cursive script, in the lower right corner: “Eakins 76.”
Thomas Eakins, Baby at Play, 1876, oil on canvas, John Hay Whitney Collection, 1982.76.5

Details

  • Dates

    -

  • Locations

    Ground Floor, Central Gallery, Galleries G-7 through G-13
On the brick pavement of a sunny veranda, a young toddler leans heavily on her right arm, to our left, as she reaches for a wooden block in this horizontal painting. Much of her face is cast in deep shadow from the bright light overhead, but light brushes the tops of her cheeks and the tip of her nose. She grips a wooden block with her left hand, closer to us. Her left leg stretches to our right in a stocking striped with vivid red and white. Light glints off the shiny material of her black, round-toed slipper. She has short, golden-brown hair, and her white smock is richly embroidered in a pattern of white-one-white with alternating linked loops. Scattered before her, at arms-length, are seven other alphabet blocks lettered in gray with red and tan faces, several wooden building blocks, and a ball of red yarn. A doll in a black dress lies with limbs akimbo, face-down by a potted plant at the right edge of the canvas. A red wagon drawn by white toy horse sits near the left edge. The scene is enclosed with a deep, emerald-green hedge stretching across the background. The artist signed and dated this work as if he had inscribed two of the bricks on the patio with red paint in cursive script, in the lower right corner: “Eakins 76.”
Thomas Eakins, Baby at Play, 1876, oil on canvas, John Hay Whitney Collection, 1982.76.5

Overview: The show included 103 paintings, watercolors, drawings, sculptures, and photographs of motion, lent by 31 institutions and 26 collectors. This was the third in a series of solo exhibitions of the work of an American artist. Featured were the paintings The Gross Clinic and The Agnew Clinic, and the portrait of Walt Whitman. William P. Campbell, assistant chief curator, was in charge of the exhibition and wrote the notes for the catalogue. In return for the reluctant loan of The Gross Clinic, which had never left the walls of the Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, the Gallery paid for its extensive restoration.

Attendance: 42,238

Catalog: Thomas Eakins: A Retrospective Exhibition, by Lloyd Goodrich. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1961.

Other Venues:

  • Art Institute of Chicago, 12/01/1961–01/07/1962
  • Philadelphia Museum of Art, 02/01/1962–03/18/1962

You may also like

Exhibition:  Photography and the Black Arts Movement, 1955–1985

Several white lines swirling around on a black background.

Exhibition:  The Stars We Do Not See: Australian Indigenous Art