William S. McFeely

Portrait

The Life of Thomas Eakins

“Provocative. ... McFeely sensitively chronicles the maturation of this enigmatic Philadelphian.”—Matthew Price, New York Times Book Review

Thomas Eakins painted two worlds in nineteenth-century America: one sure of its values—statesmen, scientists, and philosophers—and one that offered an uncertain vision of the changing times. From the shadow of his mother’s depression to his fraught identity as a married man with homosexual inclinations, to his failure to sell his work in his day, Eakins was a man marked equally by passion and melancholy.

In this enlightening examination of Eakins’s defining artistic moments and key relationships—with wife Susan MacDowell, with subject and friend Walt Whitman, and with several leading scientists of his time—William S. McFeely sheds light on the motivations and desires of a founder of American realism.

“A balanced account of the enigmatic artist’s life, art and demons.”—Daily News

“Insightful and fresh.”—Kevin Nance, Booklist

“A sensitive new look at the painter, his influence, his legacy.”—Art Times

“Keenly observed.”—The New Yorker

William S. McFeely, the Abraham Baldwin Professor of the Humanities, Emeritus, at the University of Georgia, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning biography Grant. He lives in Wellfleet and Cambridge, Massachusetts.