Frances Eakins

Artist Thomas Eakins (American, 1844 - 1916)

Dateca. 1870

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 24 1/16 × 19 15/16 inches (61.12 × 50.64 cm)
Framed: 29 × 25 3/8 × 3 inches (73.66 × 64.45 × 7.62 cm)

Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust

Object number44-55/2

SignedNone.

InscribedNone.

On View

On view

Gallery Location

Collections

American Art

Terms

DescriptionThree-quarter length portrait of young girl in profile, seated at piano, hands on keys. She wears white dreww with scarlet ribbons at neck and waist. Golden bround background.Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Philadelphia, March 1930, no. 16 (as Portrait of Mrs. William J. Crowell).

Exhibition of American Painting, M. H. de Young Memorial Museum and California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 7–July 7, 1935, no. 103.

Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916: A Retrospective Exhibition of His Paintings, Baltimore Museum of Art, December 1, 1936–January 1, 1937, no. 3 (as Portrait of Frances Eakins).

Thomas Eakins Centennial Exhibition, 1844–1944, Philadelphia Museum of Art, April 8, 1944–October 26, 1945

(M. Knoedler & Co., New York, no. 2, and Delaware Art Center, Wilmington, no. 2, only).

Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York, January 16–February 16, 1958, no. 40.

Nineteenth Century American Painting, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., February 17–March 31, 1974, no cat.

Eakins at Avondale, Brandywine River Museum, Chadds Ford, Pa., March 15–May 18, 1980, no. 7.

Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art, May 29–November 28, 1982 (traveled), no. 9.

Gallery Label

This subdued but intense portrait by Thomas Eakins shows the painter's sister absorbed in the experience of playing the piano in the family's Philadelphia home. The composition's serious atmosphere is set by light streaming in from the left side, which dramatically activates Frances' red sash. Eakins' otherwise restricted palette and elimination of distracting details emphasize her concentrated performance and indirectly reflect the painter's own work ethic, rooted in thorough preparation and intellectual rigor. The gravitas of Frances Eakins might also be attributed to the unhappy circumstances that Eakins encountered upon returning home from study in Paris. During this period, the artist and his sister were consumed by their mother's mental illness.

Provenance

To Frances Eakins Crowell (the sitter and sister of the artist), Avon-dale, Pa.;

to Dr. James W. Crowell (her son), Claremont, Calif., by descent, by 1935;

to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York, by 1944);

to NAMA, 1944.

Published References

Alan Burroughs, “Catalogue of Work by Thomas Eakins,” Arts 5 (June 1924), 328; “An Exhibition of Thomas Eakins’ Work,” Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 25 (March 1930), 18 (as Portrait of Mrs. William J. Crowell).

Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, His Life and Work (New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), 162, no. 35.

Exhibition of American Painting, exh. cat. (San Francisco: Press of H. S. Crocker, 1935), unpaginated.

Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916: A Retrospective Exhibition of His Paintings, exh. cat. (Baltimore: Baltimore Museum of Art, 1936), unpaginated.

A Loan Exhibition of the Works of Thomas Eakins, 1844–1944, Commemorating the Centennial of His Birth, exh. cat. (New York: M. Knoedler, 1944), 11, 27.

“Masterpiece of the Month—Frances Eakins at the Piano,” Gallery News (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts), 12 (March 1946), 2–3.

“March Exhibitions throughout America,” Magazine of Art 39 (March 1946), 124.

Margaret McHenry, Thomas Eakins Who Painted (Oreland, Pa.: privately printed, 1946), 20, 96.

Thomas Eakins, 1844–1916: Exhibition of Paintings and Sculpture, exh. cat. (New York: American Academy of Arts and Letters, 1958), unpaginated.

Eliot Clark, “New York Commentary,” Studio 155 (June 1958), 184.

Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4^th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 255.

Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1967), 22, 24.

Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5^th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 251.

Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work of Thomas Eakins (New York: Grossman Publishers, 1974), 67, 330, pl. 8 (as Portrait of Frances Eakins).

Donald Hoffmann, “The ‘Truth’ in American Art,” Kansas City Star, February 24, 1974, 4E.

William Innes Homer, ed., Eakins at Avondale and Thomas Eakins, a Personal Collection, exh. cat. (Newark: University of Delaware, 1980), 36.

Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1037.

Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), 1:67, 69.

Darrel Sewell, Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982), 9, 12.

Elizabeth Johns, Thomas Eakins: The Heroism of Modern Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983), 116, 120.

Michael Fried, Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 22, 24, 45, 50, 53.

Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 72.

John Wilmerding, ed., Thomas Eakins, exh. cat. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993), 18, 86.

Kristie C. Wolferman, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: Culture Comes to Kansas City (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1993), 190.

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: 236–239, 2: 103–104.

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