The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (152 page)

(1844–1916).
American painter, active for most of his life in his native city of Philadelphia. Eakins is regarded by most critics as the outstanding American painter of the 19th cent. and by many as the greatest his country has yet produced. In 1866–70 he was in Europe. He studied in Paris with
Gérôme
, but learnt most from the Spanish painters
Velázquez
and
Ribera
, absorbing a precise and uncompromising sense for actuality which he applied to portraiture and
genre
pictures of the life of his native city (boating and bathing were favourite themes). He began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1876 and was attacked for his radical ideas, particularly his insistence on working from nude models. In 1886 he was forced to resign after allowing a mixed class to draw from a completely nude male model. Eakins's quest for realism led him to study anatomy and make full use of
Muybridge's
photographic researches, but the scientific bent in his work is of less importance than his honesty and depth of characterization. His portraits are often compared with Rembrandt's because of their dramatic play of sombre lighting and sense of inner truth. The most famous of his paintings is
The Gross Clinic
(Jefferson Medical Coll., Philadelphia, 1875), which aroused controversy because of its unsparing depiction of surgery, an experience that was repeated with
The Agnew Clinic
(Univ. of Pennsylvania, 1889). Because of financial support from his father, Eakins could continue on his chosen course despite public abuse, but much of his later career was spent working in bitter isolation. It was only near the end of his life that he achieved recognition as a great master, and in the first two decades of the 20th cent. his desire to ‘peer deeper into the heart of American life’ was reflected in the work of the
Ash-can School
and other realist painters. As well as being a painter and photographer, Eakins also made a few sculptures. His wife,
Susan Hannah Macdowell Eakins
(1851–1938), whom he married in 1884, was also a painter and photographer, as well as an accomplished pianist.

 
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(1921–63).
British painter, born in Sussex but considered Scottish (her mother was Scottish and she lived in Scotland from 1940). One of her teachers was James
Cowie
; he perhaps helped to shape her preference for subjects drawn from everyday experience, but her approach was more earthy and sensuous than his. She divided her time between Glasgow (where she painted
kitchen sink
subjects) and the fishing village of Catterline, about 20 miles south of Aberdeen on the north-east coast. Her favourite subjects in her later years were the village and the sea, especially in stormy weather (she is said to have set off from her Glasgow home as soon as she heard reports of gales). The freely painted, often bleak and desolate works that resulted are among the most powerful and individual landscapes in 20th-cent. British art. After her early death from breast cancer her ashes were scattered on the beach at Catterline. Her work is well represented in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh.

 
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(1751–1801).
American painter, active in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York, and Vermont, and also in England (1778–85), when his loyalty to the British put his life in danger in his homeland. He painted landscapes and battle scenes of the Revolution, but was primarily a portraitist. Although his style became softer and more sophisticated after studying with
West
in London, his work generally has a sincerity and freshness of vision that makes him one of the finest American artists of the 18th cent. His presentation of character is extremely forthright and his portraits convey the immense pride his New England sitters took in their possessions. Earl's personal life was a disaster. He was imprisoned for debt and died an alcoholic after deserting both of his wives in turn. Other members of his family were artists, notably his brother
James
(1761–96) and his son
Ralph E. W. Earl
(
c.
1785–1838), who is remembered mainly for his portraits of President Andrew Jackson , whose niece he had married.

 
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Early Christian art
.

Term generally applied to Christian art from the 3rd cent. AD until about 750, particularly in Italy and the Western Mediterranean. The art of the eastern Empire during this time is termed
Byzantine art
, but there is no hard-and-fast demarcation between the two traditions.

 
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Earthwork
.

See
LAND ART
.

 
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