Thomas Eakins is generally considered by critics as America’s foremost realist painter. Eakins (1844-1916) was a lifelong native of Philadelphia, growing up in close proximity to the Schuylkill River in Pennsylvania, the largest tributary of the Delaware River. Philadelphia was famous among amateur and professional athletes for its Boat House Row, representing a hotbed for enthusiastic oarsmen. Eakins himself was an enthusiastic amateur oarsman, but in his later years his corpulent physique limited his athletic activities. His upbringing coincided with changing social views on athletics, with middle-class men being informed of the importance of combining physical exertion with mental exertion. Eakins’ works were also heavily influenced by photography and a growing realism in painting. He often painted from photographs to better capture the human body in motion, while some of his works were painted by projecting the photograph directly onto the canvas. Such techniques enabled Eakins to paint pictures of athletes engaged in physical competition with utmost realism.
Eakins painted a number of what became known as his “rowing pictures”, pictures of sailboats and oarsmen in various states of athletic exertion. One of the most famous among these is Sailboats Racing on the Delaware. In Sailboats Racing, Eakins’ detailed realism is immediately apparent to the viewer. In the work the foreground figures are characteristic of Eakins’ use of meticulous detail and his tendency to concentrate on the focal point of his compositions. When looking directly at the center of Sailboats Racing, we see that three sailors lean out of the boat to counterbalance the tilt of the sailboat in the strong breeze. The boat’s features are quite realistic, crisp, and characteristic of a photograph. Such works demonstrate Eakins’ ability for capturing objects in constant motion with amazing precision, like the boats shown
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