Eakins has iron-bound limits in execution, but very remarkable originality. He has boldly seized on subjects never attempted before by artists of his training and parts, such as a water-colour of the national pastime called "Baseball," an oil-painting of an expert sculler seated in his outrigger, a sportsman "Whistling for Plover," and a view of the Delaware river covered with such uncouth sailing craft as factory operatives can obtain when they wish to take a sail. The picture here produced is not his best, but it is far from his worst; perhaps "Chessplayers" and one other, "Listening to Music," surpass it. The people's note is struck again. Here is the stage robbed of all glamour, the actor and musician in shirt-sleeves, ding and devil-may-care, who tinkle on the zither in preparation for the evening's work. It is peculiarly characteristic for just that reason, since Mr. Eakins is always inclined to put things as badly as possible, as if he had a perfect hatred of neat and showy outsides.
==Charles de Kay, "Movements in American Painting: The Charles Clarke Collection in New York," The Magazine of Art, 1887
==Charles de Kay, "Movements in American Painting: The Charles Clarke Collection in New York," The Magazine of Art, 1887
...all amateurs, playing for friends and family in middle class parlors. How heroic! How far from the musicians Degas was painting, contemporaneously, in the bustling opera theaters of Paris. How far away from anything like stardom or fame.
Musicians holding and cradling their instruments are the only embraces we see in Eakins, but the sacredness with which his circle must have held their music--their only connection with the Lyre of Orpheus in the otherwise mundane world of a manufacturing city.
One can only imagine the wheezes, squeaks, and missed notes: the combination of pluck and embarrassment, not only of the performer, but of the audience, which knows that what it has come out to hear is not first rate or virtuoso. In a way, it can all be so depressing. Yet it is also brave. It's how artists live who don't live in New York. Nowadays, we're almost all audience. Eakins' people make their own music.
Musicians holding and cradling their instruments are the only embraces we see in Eakins, but the sacredness with which his circle must have held their music--their only connection with the Lyre of Orpheus in the otherwise mundane world of a manufacturing city.
One can only imagine the wheezes, squeaks, and missed notes: the combination of pluck and embarrassment, not only of the performer, but of the audience, which knows that what it has come out to hear is not first rate or virtuoso. In a way, it can all be so depressing. Yet it is also brave. It's how artists live who don't live in New York. Nowadays, we're almost all audience. Eakins' people make their own music.
--Michael Neff, "Thomas Eakins: Realism and the Workmanlike Path to Transcendence," The Drexel Online Journal 2002
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