Eakins, Thomas: Photography and Sculpture

From the 1880s on Eakins used photography in many ways. He employed it as an art in its own right, which he used to make powerful studies of family and friends, animals and rural scenes. He used it as an aid to accuracy in painting for himself and his classes, either as an inspiration for a related work or by copying directly (until about 1886 he sometimes secretly traced images onto canvas from projected photographs, a technique that was not confirmed until the early 21st cent.). He also made use of photography to study motion, devising for Eadweard Muybridge a camera which, by means of a revolving disk over the lens, could make several exposures on a single plate, and thereby aid in understanding movement in human beings and in animals, in everyday and athletic motion. He also adapted Muybridge's animal studies for use in a zoetrope, a precursor of the motion picture projector. Eakins's few works in sculpture include the horses on the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch, Brooklyn, N.Y.

Sections in this article:

• Introduction
• Notable Works
• Photography and Sculpture
• Approach and Influence
• Early Career
• Bibliography

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