The Smithsonian Institution Ordering the Artist's Body: Thomas Eakins's Acts of Self‐Portrayal Author(s): Sarah Burns Source: American Art, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Spring 2005), pp. 82-107 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Smithsonian American Art Museum Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/429976 . Accessed: 12/01/2014 14:56 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press, Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Smithsonian Institution are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Art. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 199.79.254.152 on Sun, 12 Jan 2014 14:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions This content downloaded from 199.79.254.152 on Sun, 12 Jan 2014 14:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Ordering the Artist’s Body Thomas Eakins’s Acts of Self-Portrayal Sarah Burns Thomas Eakins’s obsession with the body surviving son of Benjamin and Caroline is well known and much studied. But Eakins. Of his early years we know little. what of the painter’s obsession with his Only a few childhood photographs own body? On several occasions early remain. One of these is a daguerreotype and late in his career, he inserted himself of six-year-old Thomas and his sister into his paintings of modern life. In Frances (frontispiece). The gender photography too he was ever-present, coding here is conventional. Frances appearing in scores of images—candid sits demurely, one hand gently tugging or posed, clothed or naked. So antitheti- at the off-the-shoulder neckline of her cal are some that we might want to ask full-skirted dress. Her hair is in ringlets which one represents the “real” Thomas and she wears a necklace. Thomas, his Eakins. Any search for the real Eakins is curls slicked back, stands tall in baggy doomed to futility, however. There are as trousers and tight roundabout jacket. His many Thomas Eakinses as there are biog- collar, a narrow frill of lace, adds a soft raphers, interpreters, and critics of his life touch (not unusual at that time) to the and art. I offer here an examination of otherwise almost military severity of his the artist’s acts of self-portrayal that is in- outfit. Yet the outsize bow and arrow he tended to amplify the Eakins others have clutches so proudly hint of the high value made. My account complements and the adult Eakins would place on being sometimes contradicts theirs. Rather than unquestionably and aggressively male. emphasizing such issues as the artist’s The photograph dates to about 1850, the class status, professional identity, sexual- year baby brother Benjamin came into ity, or sociocultural milieu, which have the world—only to leave it four months been fruitfully investigated elsewhere, I later. We might wonder if this death left explore Eakins’s body as the site where any mark on Thomas, and—even more we can catch glimpses of the anxieties so—how it affected his mother, Caroline, that haunted him from an early age and whose mental health was later to come that underlay the elaborate systems of disastrously undone. Unknown photographer, Thomas control by which he sought to achieve in After graduating from Central High and Frances Eakins, ca. 1851. art the order that persistently eluded him School in 1861, Eakins took classes at ⅜ ¼ Daguer reotype, 4 x 3 in. in life.1 the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine National Portrait Gallery, Smith- sonian Institution, Washington, Thomas Eakins was born in Phila- Arts and studied anatomy at Jefferson D.C. delphia in 1844, the first child and only Medical College. In 1866 he embarked 83 American Art Volume 19, Number 1 © 2005 Smithsonian Institution This content downloaded from 199.79.254.152 on Sun, 12 Jan 2014 14:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions recently bereaved sister], treating the dan- gerous young Adonis like a boy.” Shinn’s account suggests that for all his linguistic sophistication, Eakins lacked polite con- versational skills and at the age of twenty- two was immature, socially naïve, and in general rough around the edges.2 His sartorial manners were equally rough-hewn. Frances Eakins, who trav- eled to Europe with father Benjamin in 1868, wrote home that her brother was “the same old Tom . and just as careless looking. His best hat (I don’t know what his common one can be) is a great big grey felt steeple, looks like an ashman’s; his best coat is a brown sack, and his best pantaloons are light, with the biggest grease spot on them you ever saw.” Despite that, he was still “the finest looking fellow” Frances had seen since leaving Philadelphia.3 In an 1868 photograph (fig. 1), the handsome young Tom, with his “splendid eyes,” starched collar and neat bow tie, cuts quite a spiffy figure—at first glance. But on closer in- spection, we discover that the third button of his vest is missing or undone, and the button at the bottom broken or thrust only halfway through the buttonhole. These signs are subtle but significant: Eakins appears almost defiantly indifferent 1 Frederick Gutekunst, Thomas for France, where he studied for several to the details of his outfit. Clothes, in his Eakins at about Age Twenty-four, years under the academic painter Jean- book, clearly did not (and never could) ca. 1868. Gelatin silver print, 9 ¼ x 7 ⅝ in. Charles Bregler Léon Gérôme. As a young man in Paris, make the man. But what did? Archival Collection, Hirshhorn Eakins cultivated a boyishly Bohemian To probe this question, we need to Museum and Sculpture Garden, persona. His Philadelphia acquaintance consider the traumatic illness and demise Smithsonian Institution, Wash- ington, D.C. Earl Shinn, also studying art there, of his mother, Caroline Cowperthwait described an afternoon at the apartment Eakins (fig. 2), who died in 1872 of of the Moore family, whose deaf-mute “exhaustion from mania.” The bare bones son, Harry, was Eakins’s classmate at the of this story are known. About the time Ecole des Beaux-Arts. “They fool with of Eakins’s return home from Europe him [Eakins] and treat him like a little in 1870, Mrs. Eakins succumbed to a child,” reported Shinn, “thee- and thou- mental disease so severe that it compelled ing him in fun. He converses in Italian, the care and unceasing vigilance of French, and German with the manners the entire family (Benjamin, Thomas, of a boy. Restricts his conversation pretty and daughters Frances, Margaret, and much to stories of the Schuylkill boating Caroline) for two long years, during club. Is the son of the writing master, which time whatever passed for normal tall, athletic, black hair and splendid eyes. life in the household became impossible. Look out, young widow [Harry Moore’s What it was like there we can guess from 84 Spring 2005 This content downloaded from 199.79.254.152 on Sun, 12 Jan 2014 14:56:42 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions one telling glimpse in a letter written by a . that they are being murdered, that family friend: “Since early autumn [Tom] they wish to get out . or threaten their has never spent an evening from home as attendants with the vilest and most cruel it worried his Mother & since her return punishments.” So fierce were these parox- home [presumably from a mental hospi- ysms that—as in Mrs. Eakins’s case—they tal] they never leave her for a minute.”4 led almost inevitably to exhaustion and In nineteenth-century medical writing, death. Other contemporary writings “mania” presented a specific set of symp- on mania show remarkable consistency toms clearly distinguished from hysteria, with Spitzka’s. John Bassett Chapin, melancholia, and other mental conditions. for example, noted that acutely manic The hallmark of mania was intense and patients tended to be garrulous, out of often violent excitement accompanied control, filthy, obscene, and delusional; 2 Edward R. Morgan, Caroline by delusions or even hallucinations. In they would swing from “immoderate Cowperthwait Eakins, 1863–69. Albumen carte de visite, 3 ⅞ x extreme cases, as the alienist Edward laughing mingled with tears” to “exhilara- 2 ¼ in. Charles Bregler’s Thomas Charles Spitzka wrote, “these patients tion, anger, affection, lewdness, frenzy, Eakins Collection, Pennsyl vania rave, tearing and breaking everything and revenge.” If Caroline Eakins’s behav- Academy of the Fine Arts, Phila- within reach, besmear themselves with ior in any way resembled such period clin- delphia, Purchased with the partial support of the Pew Memorial their excrement or even devour it, and ical descriptions, then it is little wonder Trust shout at the top of their voices. They yell that the family could never leave her alone, even momentarily. She must have been a danger to herself, if not to others. Before her breakdown, Mrs. Eakins was a gentle and yielding character, “ruled” by her domineering son as well as her strong- willed husband. The transformation from mild-mannered wife to raving maniac must have been both painful and terrify- ing to those around her.5 The photograph titled Acute Mania (fig.