Female Nude (Study)

Artist Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 - 1916)

Dateca. 1881

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 24 3/16 × 14 1/2 inches (61.44 × 36.83 cm)
Framed: 30 7/8 × 20 3/8 inches (78.42 × 51.75 cm)

Credit LineGift from the collection of Julia and Humbert Tinsman

Object numberF98-30/1

SignedSigned lower right: T. E

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionA nude woman is posed before a mossy brown background which lightens towards the bottom of the canvas. She is seen from the rear and turned so that her head is seen in profile and faces proper right. She wears her hair pulled up from her neck and her face is in shadow.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Exhibition of Sketches, Studies and Intimate Paintings by Thomas Eakins, Babcock Galleries, New York, October 31-November 25, 1939, no. 11 (as Female Nude).

Thomas Eakins Centennial Exhibition, 1844-1944, Philadelphia Museum of Art, April 8, 1944-October 26, 1945 (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, no. 37, and Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, no. 33, only (as Nude, Female (Study)).

Gallery Label

A thorough understanding of anatomy was at the core of Thomas Eakins' philosophy and practice as an artist and as a professor at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Using a warm-brown and tan palette in Female Nude, Eakins carefully described his model's form, conveying a convincing sense of weight and skeletal structure. His model was likely his wife and former student Susan Macdowell Eakins.

This study's purpose remains a mystery. Incised lines in this study suggest plans to translate it into a larger composition, but no related oil paintings by Eakins are known. It does closely resemble a watercolor. Intriguingly, the study relates most of all to a composition by one of Eakins' students.

Provenance

To Susan McDowell Eakins (wife of the artist), Philadelphia, 1916;

to estate of the artist, 1916;

(Babcock Galleries, New York, 1939);

to Julia and Humbert Tinsman, Shawnee Mission, Kans., after 1959;

to NAMA, 1998.

Published References

Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), 177, no. 204.

Exhibition of Sketches, Studies and Intimate Paintings by Thomas Eakins, exh. cat. (New York: Babcock Galleries, 1939), unpaginated (as Female Nude).

Roland Joseph McKinney, Thomas Eakins (New York: Crown Publishers, 1942), 104 (as Nude).

A Loan Exhibition of the Works of Thomas Eakins, 1844–1944, Commemorating the Centennial of His Birth, exh. cat. (New York: M. Knoedler, 1944), [8], 13 (as Nude, Female [Study]).

Thomas Eakins Centennial Exhibition, 1844–1944, exh. cat. (Pittsburgh: Carnegie Institute, 1945), unpaginated.

Fairfield Porter, Thomas Eakins (New York: George Braziller, 1959), 62 (as Nude Back).

Theodor Siegl, The Thomas Eakins Collection (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978), 102 (as Nude Woman).

Margaret C. Conrads, “American Art Treasures Loaned to Nelson-Atkins,” Calendar (Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art), December 1998, 2.

Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 240–244, 2: 105–107.

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