The Revenge of Thomas Eakins (English Edition)

Thomas Eakins was misunderstood in life, his brilliant work earned little acclaim, and hidden demons tortured and drove him. Yet the portraits he painted more than a century ago captivate us today, and he is now widely acknowledged as the finest portrait painter our nation has ever produced. This well illustrated and definitive biography, written by acclaimed New York Times best-selling author Sidney D. Kirkpatrick, recounts the artist’s life in fascinating new detail, drawing on a treasure trove of recently discovered Eakins family correspondence and papers. Never before has Thomas Eakins’s story been told with such drama, clarity, and accuracy. Kirkpatrick sets the painter’s life and art in the wider context of the changing world he devoted himself to portraying, and he also addresses the artist’s private life—the contradictory impulses, obsessions, and possible psychological illness that fired his work. Kirkpatrick underscores Eakins’s unflinching integrity as an artist and discloses how his profound appreciation of the beauty of the human form was both the source of his greatness and ultimately of his undoing. Nevertheless, the author observes, Eakins has had his “revenge,” inspiring a new generation of realist painters and gaining the recognition that eluded him in life.

“This is a splendid warts-and-all re-creation of a life, acutely balanced in its appraisal and, most important, lucidly written,” the Philadelphia Inquirer
“Well-researched and fluently written” New York Review of Books
“Kirkpatrick knows how to make a narrative zip along,” New York Times
“Cinematic clarity...convincing depth... brilliant and subtle” Publishers Weekly (starred review)