The Boxing Paintings of Thomas Eakins

Abstract

Late in the 1890s, accompanied by several of his friends, Thomas Eakins attended a number of prizefights at the Arena on the corner of Broad and Cherry Streets in Philadelphia, diagonally across from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and a few blocks from his Chestnut Street studio. Eakins was sufficiently intrigued by the matches he saw to befriend several of the participants and to ask them to pose for him. The results were three major canvases—Taking the Count (1898—Yale University Art Gallery, Whitney Collections of Sporting Art, New Haven, Conn.), Salutat (1898—Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass.), and Between Rounds (1899—Philadelphia Museum of Art)—and about ten related sketches, studies, and portraits. Although since ancient times painters and sculptors have celebrated their periods' equivalent of the pugilist, Eakins' boxing paintings are completely original in their conception. Indeed, one can think of few works by a serious artist of Eakins' era as far removed from the lofty propriety that dominated nineteenthcentury American art as are these treatments of nearly nude boxers. The boxing paintings reflect Eakins' special fondness for sport and vigorous activity in his life and art, as well as his sometimes controversial belief in portraying the unidealized human figure; but they go beyond these interests insofar as they are complicated compositions by a mature master who is using his craft to examine his life and career.