DescriptionThe great American painter and photographer Eakins was devoted to the scientific study of the human form and committed to its truthful representation. While he and his students at the Pennsylvania Academy were surrounded by casts of classical sculpture, Eakins declared that he did not like "a long study of casts…At best they are only imitations, and an imitation of imitations cannot have so much life as an imitation of life itself." Photography provided the obvious solution, and Eakins made at least two excursions with his students in order to make a series of nudes out of doors. This photograph was probably made during the summer of 1883 at Manasqua Inlet at Point Pleasant, New Jersey. Affecting the elegant contrapposto stances of classical sculpture, Eakins poses with his student J. Laurie Wallace. Eakins valued his photographs not only as studies for paintings but also for their own sake, and he carefully printed the best images on platinum paper. In this case, he went to the additional trouble of enlarging the original, horizontally-formatted image and cropping it to a vertical in order to contain better the perfectly balanced figures.

ProvenanceCharles Bregler, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania