Ordering the Artist's Body

Abstract

Thomas Eakins’s obsession with the body is well known and much studied. But what of the painter’s obsession with his own body? Throughout his career, he inserted himself into his paintings of modern life. We see him rowing, bird hunting, swimming, observing surgical procedures, and even sculpting. In photography too he was ever‐present. While not technically self‐portraits, the many photographs of the painter, candid or posed, clothed or naked, further suggest an uncommon desire for both psychological and physical exposure. This article examines Eakins’s acts of exposure as manifestations of inner turmoil and fears of disintegration that haunted him from an early age and underlay the elaborate systems of control by which he sought to achieve in art the order that eluded him in life.