The Pair-Oared Scull

Thomas Eakins made paintings that people found difficult, and he seems to have accepted that as the cost of doing them properly. The Gross Clinic, with its surgeon holding a bloodied scalpel, was rejected from the main art display at the 1876 Centennial and hung in a medical section instead. He studied anatomy alongside medical students, used photography to analyse motion, and taught his own students from the nude model, which eventually cost him his position at the Pennsylvania Academy. The rowing pictures, painted on the Schuylkill in the 1870s, combine that scientific bent with real affection for the sport. His portraits are unsparing. Sitters look tired, ageing, caught mid-thought, and many disliked the results enough to refuse them. He painted friends and colleagues rather than clients for much of his later career, which is partly why the work feels so private.