| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.2

You have not been recognized as a subscriber to the Pennsylvania Magazine of History online. About 233 words from this article are provided below; about 539 words remain.

If you are an individual member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, you may:: • login here if you have already registered for online access.; • Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.
• Set up your online account for the first time.
If you are not a member of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, you can:: • join here.
• Purchase a research pass to gain two hour access to the entire History Cooperative web site. You will have full access to current issues of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History.
Instititutions can:: • Join the Society or subscribe to the journal and receive print and electronic issues.
• Activate your existing subscription so that we recognize your IP number ranges.

| Book Reviews | The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 131.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Reviews

Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist. By Henry Adams. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. xv, 583 pp. Illustrations, biographical key, notes, bibliography, index. $40.)

The Revenge of Thomas Eakins. By Sidney D. Kirkpatrick. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. ix, 565 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $39.95.)

In recent years, the life and work of Thomas Eakins has gained renewed critical and scholarly attention. In 1984 a cache of documents emerged that had been collected from Eakins's studio by Charles Bregler. The following year the collection was purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. As a result of this new source material, Eakins scholars have begun to interrogate not only the meticulous technique of the artist's paintings but the peculiarities of his life. Henry Adams takes this mode of investigation to an extreme in Eakins Revealed, performing a Freudian analysis of the artist's psyche as a method of explaining the tensions in his paintings. Sidney Kirkpatrick, on the other hand, in The Revenge of Thomas Eakins, presents a biography that hearkens back to the days after Eakins's death but before the Bregler papers, when Eakins was simply hailed as one of America's greatest realist painters. These two books on the life and art of Thomas Eakins present startlingly different impressions of the artist and his work.

. . .

There are about 539 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.