Eakins' Max Schmitt in a Single Scull

Thomas Eakins painted Max Schmitt in a Single Scull in 1871. The painting is oil on canvas and measures 32 1/4" by 46 1/4". It is currently owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The painting shows Schmitt seated in a long, narrow rowing shell, or scull. The scull sits in the middle of a river, and is located at the center of the lower half of the painting. Schmitt looks back over his shoulder toward the viewer. Beyond Schmitt the river bank appears on either side of the painting, and is covered with trees that either have fall colors or have lost their leaves. Some houses are also visible on the bank. At the horizon an iron bridge crosses the river. On the river another rower is shown beyond Schmitt, pulling on the outspread oars of his scull. Closer to the bridge there is also a long, low, red boat with a few people seated in it. Under the bridge and beyond it is a steamboat with a small smokestack emitting a cloud of steam. The sky above the scene is empty except for a long, narrow white cloud that stretches across most of the left half of the painting. At the far left there is another, more compact, white cloud.

Thomas Eakins was an American painter who was born in Philadelphia on July 25, 1844 and died on June 25, 1916. His early training took place in Philadelphia but he went to Paris in 1866. In Paris he became a student of Jean Leon GTr(me at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1870, after he finished studying with GTr(me, Eakins made a visit

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on so that there is a tension between the downward pressure of these arches and the upward trend of the lower part of the painting. In the sky the long cloud gently reflects the arches from the center of the painting, but then flips up and gently fans out, trending upward like the lowest third of the picture. But the two banks also create a general X shape for the composition. The darker masses of the banks are long triangles, placed on their sides, that enter the picture from either side and meet in the center--where the bridge extends each of them. The lower triangle is the focus of the painting. Thus the upper, inverted, triangle of the X (the sky) is much more gently formed than the lower triangle. The stronger diagonals of the lower triangle--the scull and the lines in the water (one of which is the wake of the other boat) are triangulated with the line of the right-hand shore. The right side of the triangle is reinforced by the much finer lines of Schmitt's right oar and the other rower's left oar, which catches the sunlight. But, in order to keep the composition from becoming static, the point of this triangle is blunted by the broadest span of the bridge. Thus the composition can be looked at in two ways--as thr

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