Thomas Eakins, Portrait of Walt Whitman (1887)

As some of you know, I some years ago — a few — painted a picture of Mr. Whitman. I began in the usual way, but soon found that the ordinary methods wouldn't do — that technique, rules and traditions would have to be thrown aside; that before all else, he was to be treated as a man, whatever became of what are commonly called the principles of art.
--Thomas Eakins, 1891


It is likely to be only the unusual person who can enjoy such a picture—only here and there one who can weigh and measure it according to its own philosophy. Eakins would not be appreciated by ... professional elects: the people who like Eakins best are the people who have no art prejudices to interpose.
--Walt Whitman

But it is within four walls and on a one-to-one basis that Eakins the moralist is at his very best. It is relevant in that context that one of the few total failures in his career was the portrait of Walt Whitman that makes so unhappy an appearance in the Philadelphia show.

Everything was in favor of that painting. The No. 1 painter was faced with the No. 1 poet. What could go wrong? Even the photographs that Eakins took of the aged Whitman are unforgettable. But the painting just doesn't ring true. Whitman looks like a summer-stock Falstaff. That huge vacuous grin might reach to the rear mezzanine, but we don't for one moment believe that this is a great poet, let alone the man who took the whole of this country in his embrace in ways that are still valid.

We cannot doubt that Eakins was paralyzed by Whitman. He loved the work, he knew the man, but just for once he shuddered before the evidence of physical decline. As with the portraits of his father-inlaw, William H. Macdowell, he allowed a histrionic element to intervene. How much finer and more stringent are the other portraits in the show! 

--John Russell, "Is Eakins our Greatest Painter?" New York Times June 6 1982


In 1887, Thomas Eakins painted Walt Whitman's portrait. His Whitman is a moist-eyed old Falstaff. When I was young I used to see this picture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. All I saw was a twinkly-eyed, old poet. His florid color, wispy beard and eyebrows fooled me into seeing a Hals-like image of unvanquished jollity. Now I see the ruin in the man.

Eakins could never have painted the young Whitman.


--Michael Neff, "Thomas Eakins: Realism and the Workmanlike Path to Transcendence " Drexel Online Journal 2002