A tour of the places Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) lived, worked and wandered in search of subject

A tribute to Thomas Eakins by the Mural Arts Program.

matter brings art history to life and lends a new dimension to aspects of Philadelphia often overlooked, even by resident connoisseurs. Many of the artist’s favorite haunts remain surprisingly unchanged by the passage of time. Though he had a difficult relationship with many in the Philadelphia art community, Eakins loved the city and captured every facet. You can find his representations of the city’s vibrant culture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: sculling on the Schuylkill River (“The Pair-Oared Shell,” 1872), sailing on the Delaware (“Sailboats Racing on the Delaware River,” 1874), buggy rides in Fairmount Park (“A May Morning in the Park,” 1879–80), hunting and fishing in the surrounding marshes (“Mending the Net” and “Shad Fishing at Gloucester on the Delaware River,” both 1881), boxing matches (“Between Rounds,” 1898) and a cast of local characters from singers to surgeons.

Step outside the museum and you’ll find the Schuylkill River itself, where scullers still row their shells beneath arched stone bridges. At the base of the museum is the renovated Water Works, nearly two centuries old, where a restaurant recently opened looking out over the river and Boathouse Row. In May 1872, Eakins joined some 30,000 spectators here to watch the boat races. He was so caught up in the excitement of competitive rowing that he produced 19 rowing scenes between 1870 and 1874.

Before he became a painter, Eakins studied anatomy at Jefferson Medical College. For more than a century, viewing his most famous paintings required a pilgrimage to two different medical colleges. The Eakins Gallery at Jefferson had the artist’s surgical masterpiece, “The Gross Clinic” (1875) and two well-known portraits, while the medical school at the University of Pennsylvania had “The Agnew Clinic” (1889), another operating room drama. Both are enormous canvases depicting the heads of rival medical colleges demonstrating groundbreaking surgeries before students in their respective auditoriums. Unlike “Gross,” the portrait of Dr. Agnew was commissioned and includes individual portraits of students, including Eakins, watching as Agnew performs a mastectomy. Jefferson sold both portraits recently, so there is no Eakins left at the Eakins Gallery. But the PMA now has “Agnew” on renewable loan and is sharing “Gross” with the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, which Eakins attended and where he taught, a few blocks away.