What would you choose if someone were to ask you to pick an iconic work of art that spoke to you like no other? Apparently, when historian Gary Wills was asked to participate in the American Pictures Distinguished Lecture Series, he knew immediately that he'd speak about Thomas Eakins's painting, William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River. Wills took his listeners on a tour of Eakins's life and works, with a concentration on his homage to Rush, who is considered one of the first great American sculptors.
"I saw a Thomas Eakins exhibit in the 1970s and that started it," Wills said when I asked how he first became acquainted with this image, "This one seemed to be one of Eakins's most personal." There are more famous works by Eakins, notably his paintings of sculling on the Schuylkill River, or those depicting medical procedures. But it was this image that spoke to Wills who, as a historian, was perhaps attracted to the painting's narrative layers that he set out to uncover.
The story of Eakins and Rush is very much a Philadelphia story. They came from different backgrounds: Rush was the son of a craftsman who was apprenticed in his father's shop. Eakins came from a more privileged background and was supported by his father. Rush became one of the founders of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where Eakins would later study.
In the painting, Rush is sculpting the model in wood (it would then be painted white to suggest marble). Her chaperone sits to her right, apparently doing what chaperones do—which is to be present and not present at the same time. The model's clothing covers a Chippendale chair that belonged to Eakins, while Rush works in the background. Each character has a job to do; it's kind of a play without words.
Eakins created this image in 1876, when the country was celebrating its one-hundredth birthday. Inspired by centennial fervor, critics had elevated William Rush into the role of America's sculptor; there's even a hint of that patriotism in the model's red, white, and blue clothing. About ten years after painting this work, Eakins ran into some serious trouble with the board of the Academy of Fine Arts due in part to his use of nude models in his drawing classes, in part to his practice of photographing the models (as well as himself) in the nude. Eakins was fired. Defiant as ever, Eakins created a new version of Rush's workshop in 1908, this time with the nude model facing the viewer. He turned the model around, shocked his viewers, and brought his art into the twentieth century.
