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Essay thomas eakins

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Thomas Eakins      Thomas Eakins was born on July 25, 1844, in Philadelphia, and with the exception of four years of study in Paris and Spain, the city remained his home. Its school, public and private art collections, and community of artists, many of whom were recent emigrants from Europe trained in the academic tradition and familiar with new artistic styles, provided Eakins with an unusually wide-ranging art education for an American artist of his day.      When Eakins arrived in Paris in 1866 to continue his art studies, he was in the vanguard of young artists who would revolutionize American art over the next two decades, breaking away from the literalism of Hudson River School …show more content…

     In the 1880’s, Eakins purchased his first camera during the summer. He had used photographs from the other sources as aids for his painting in the 1870’s, but the acquisition of his own camera inspired a period of intensive investigation of photography as a tool for making art. Eakins made scores of photographs as studies for a group of major paintings, among them Mending the Net, Swimming, and Cowboys in the Bad Lands. He also told students in his academy to take pictures to help them.      Following Eakins’ dismissal, thirty-eight of his male students resigned from the Academy and formed the Art Students League of Philadelphia, providing him with a new forum for his life classes. He also taught at various art schools in New York, including the Art Students League, the Women’s Art School of the Cooper Union, and the National Academy of Design.      In 1890’s began a series of disappointments for Eakins. He submitted The Agnew Clinic to the Pennsylvania Academy’s annual exhibition of 1891, but the work was rejected on a technicality. The Society of American Artists in New York declined to exhibit all but one of Eakins submissions for three consecutive years, prompting him to resign in 1892. The Art Students League of Philadelphia, formed by Eakins students from the

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