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Thomas Eakins

Baseball Players Practicing, 1875

Description

Maker

  • Thomas Eakins, 1844-1916, American

Title

Baseball Players Practicing

Year

1875

Medium

Watercolor over charcoal on paper

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • charcoal,
  • watercolor

Supports

  • Medium weight, hand made, wove paper

Dimensions

Plate: 27 x 20.2 cm (10 5/8 x 7 15/16 inches)

Signature / Inscription / Marks

Signed, at left of batter:EAKINS 75

Type

  • Works on Paper,
  • Drawings and Watercolors

Credit

Jesse Metcalf Fund and Walter H. Kimball Fund

Object Number

36.172

Projects & Publications

Publications

An Eakins Masterpiece Restored Seeing the Gross Clinic Anew

Sports and American Art

From Benjamin West to Andy Warhol

A Handbook of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Landscape and Leisure

March 13 - July 19, 2015

This detailed watercolor is Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins’s only major work devoted to the developing professional sport of baseball. Eakins was eager to find modern American subjects that could enlarge the tradition of historical figure painting, and sculling, sailing, swimming, and boxing offered him the opportunity to showcase superbly defined bodies. In a letter of 1875 to artist Everett Shinn, Eakins pointed out that the ballplayers were portraits of the Athletics, a Philadelphia club, at practice. They were “very fine in their build,” he told Shinn, and the scene would “admit of fine figure painting.”

Tradition and Innovation in American Watercolors

January 27 - April 11, 1999

This detailed illustration of Philadelphia Athletics players Wes Fisler and John Clapp was built up of tiny brushstrokes of wash applied in many thin layers. Eakins, who was very interested in photography, probably used a camera to capture this scene and then worked up the image in his studio.

Selection 1

December 30, 1971 - January 23, 1972

American Watercolors and Drawings from the 19th and 20th Centuries

May 20 - October 19, 1947

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Baseball Players Practicing with the accession number of 36.172. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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