11:20 a.m., Sept. 9, 2009----The Paris Letters of Thomas Eakins, edited by William Innes Homer, H. Rodney Sharp Professor Emeritus of Art History at the University of Delaware, casts new light on the life of the world-renowned American artist from Philadelphia.

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The book was issued by the Princeton University Press, and a special event celebrating its publication will be held Sunday, Sept. 20, at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The letters were written to Eakins's family and friends while he was a student of Jean-Léon Gérome and later of A.-A. Dumont and Léon Bonnat at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from 1866-70. Homer, who is the author of Thomas Eakins: His Life and His Art (1992), has edited the letters and put them into context in terms of the recipients and Eakins's experiences in Paris.

The young Eakins was “independent, self-motivated, stubborn, opinionated and ambitious,” Homer said, and these traits emerge in his letters.

Although the sources for this correspondence have been scattered, most came from Charles Bregler's Thomas Eakins Collection at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia.

When Eakins's widow, Susan Macdowell Eakins, died and the house was cleaned out, discarded papers and other items were left behind. Bregler, a student of Eakins, collected and preserved what remained, which included many of the letters. The academy acquired the collection from Bregler's widow in 1985, and Homer has been working on gathering and editing the remaining letters for the more than 30 years. He is currently preparing a second volume of Eakins's later letters.

The letters present a lively and personal account of the artist's years in Paris -- his trip across the Atlantic, his battles with bedbugs and fleas, encounters with French bureaucracy as he labored to be accepted as a student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, descriptions of his art classes and rowdy classmates, his studies and progress in painting, his activities and explorations of the city and its art treasures.

As he finished up his stay in Paris, a confident Eakins, in a letter to his father, wrote, “What I have come to Paris for is accomplished.... I am as strong as any of Gerome[']s pupils and I have nothing now to gain by remaining. What I have learned I could not have learned at home....”

He continued by writing, “My worst troubles are over, I know perfectly what I am doing ....What a relief to me when I saw every thing falling in its place....”

Eakins left Paris for Spain, as Homer wrote, not only for its warm climate but because Spain would act as a “catalyst for his growing belief in the honest portrayal of real things, persons and events.” Eakins identified with the works of the Spanish painters -- “so good, so strong, so reasonable, so free from any affectation,” he wrote to his father.

The book has received numerous accolades from other Eakins scholars. The Library Journal reviewer called the book “meticulously edited and annotated” and rated it as “highly recommended for scholars and art history students as well as general readers and young adults.”

John Wilmerding, professor emeritus of American art at Princeton, called the book “invaluable” and wrote, “Both the artist's own observations and the attendant commentary are likely to be indispensible for all future Eakins publications.”

A graduate of Princeton University with master's and doctoral degrees in art history from Harvard University, Homer joined the UD faculty in 1966 and became professor emeritus in 1999. In addition to Thomas Eakins: His Life and Art, he is the author of nine books, including Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession, 1902; Alfred Stieglitz and the American Avant-Garde; and, with Lloyd Goodrich, Albert Pinkham Ryder: Painter of Dreams.

To celebrate the book's publication, “An Afternoon with Thomas Eakins” is being held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art at 2 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 20, with a dramatic reading from the artist's letters by actor Christopher Johnson portraying the young Eakins, followed by a reception and a guided tour of the Eakins Gallery by Kathleen Foster, director of the museum's Center for American Art. The event costs $25, or $10 for museum members. For more information and tickets, call (215) 235-SHOW or visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art Web site.

Article by Sue Moncure
Photo by Elizabeth Hyer Rose