Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

Figure 6. Winslow Homer, Undertow, 1886, oil on canvas, Clark Art Institute,Williamstown, MAscenes, simplifying his images to express the stark power of his somewhatdeterministic view of humanity’s dominance by forces of wild, impersonalnature.If Homer could be called an “objective realist,” Thomas Eakins wouldhave to be labeled a “subjective realist.” Passionately involved with the worldaround him, Eakins expressed both an American respect for material factand a vision tempered by his interest in science, mathematics, and artistictechnique. His genius expressed itself in two modes—a somber-coloredRembrandt-like style charged with emotional empathy that he used mostlyfor his sensitive, intimate portraits (including his famous The Gross Clinic) anda more original, rather luminist style used for his outdoor sporting pictures.Max Schmitt in a Single Scull of 1871 demonstrates a condition of stoppedmotion and measured containment of space due to Eakins’ carefully studiedcomposition and the use of photography for preliminary studies (Figure 7).The brutal realism of Eakins’ paintings of medical dissections, his graphicbut mechanical instruction on anatomy as a drawing teacher at the PennsylvaniaAcademy of Fine Arts, and his insistence on drawing from nakedmodels before mixed-sex classes shocked many of his contemporaries andeventually led to his dismissal as director of the Academy in 1886. His influenceas a teacher extended this painterly realism into the so-called AshcanSchool painters of the early twentieth century, who introduced banal andeveryday aspects of life as valid themes for art.109