Thomas Eakins and the Swimming Picture

This exhibition explores the making and meaning of Thomas Eakins' masterpiece Swimming, long known as The Swimming Hole. The painting embodies Eakins' belief in the beauty of the human body and its scientific study, as well as his commitment to the vitality of the classical tradition. It also reflects Eakins' ambitions as head of the country's most progressive art school, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, when he was at the height of his professional achievement.

However, when Swimming went on view in the academy's annual exhibition in 1885, disaster, not triumph, ensued. The picture may have been too graphic a rep­ resentation of Eakins' artistic values, particularly his insistence on study of the nude. It also depicted some of Eakins' own students in circumstances that challenged Victorian propriety. The patron who commissioned the work declined to accept it, requesting instead a more conventional painting, The Pathetic Song. Ironically, some of the attitudes and circumstances exposed in Swimming would soon bring Eakins' affiliation with the academy to an abrupt end. In early 1886, Eakins was asked to submit his resignation after he lifted the loincloth of a male model in a class for female students. Complaints against the instructor had been brewing for some time, and the response to Swimming could have heightened opposition to Eakins' teaching methods. To the end, Eakins defended his approach as a teacher and an artist, asserting: "I see no impropriety in looking at the most beautiful of Nature's works, the naked figure."

Once Swimming was returned to the artist, it was shown again only twice in his lifetime (in 1886 and 1887) and remained in Eakins' possession until his death in 1916. Nine years later, the artist's widow agreed to sell it to the farsighted Fort Worth Art Association, which paid seven hundred dollars raised through public subscription. In 1990 the Amon Carter Museum purchased Swimming from the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, once again through the generosity of local citizens.

This exhibition offers an opportunity to look closely at this major work, to consider it in the context of preparatory and related works by the artist, and to reaffirm its critical place in the career of one of America's most important painters.