PHILADELPHIA — The scion of one of this country's most famous families has taken a scalpel to an American art icon. And his fellow scholars are not amused.
In "Eakins Revealed: The Secret Life of an American Artist," Henry Adams, a direct descendant of our second president, describes the acclaimed 19th century portraitist Thomas Eakins as an "exhibitionist-voyeur" who was hostile toward women, confused about gender and sexuality, inclined to incest and a likely victim of childhood sexual abuse. He was also, in Adams' view, a depressed fellow who tried to make people unfortunate enough to sit for a portrait "appear tired, worried, unhappy, distressed, worn down, or even mentally unbalanced."
Adams, 56, professor of American art at Case Western Reserve University and curator of American art at the Cleveland Museum of Art, is a well-respected art historian with degrees from Harvard and Yale and, according to his book blurb, "more than 200" publication credits. He bases his unorthodox conclusions on familiar evidence -- both Eakins' paintings and papers, and images from the Bregler Collection, made available to scholars in the mid-1980s.
Other art historians, notably Kathleen Foster, have mined this biographical trove, with its whiffs of scandal, provocative nude photographs and staunch letters of defense from Eakins' wife, Susan. But, says Foster, curator of American art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, "Henry just decided to press to one side -- to line evidence up for his dark reading to the exclusion of the other possibilities."
Squirreled away by an Eakins student, Charles Bregler, the collection reveals a man who enjoyed posing himself and others in the buff; who was accused of molesting his niece, who eventually shot herself; and whose family was rent by intense feuding.
The papers also suggest that Eakins' 1886 firing from his teaching post at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia was precipitated by a string of complaints -- not just a single incident in which Eakins removed a loincloth from a male model in front of female students.
Foster says that Eakins (1844-1916) "clearly was an exhibitionist" and "enjoyed provoking people." But in the case of the alleged molestation and other accusations, she says, "I just don't think we can tell who's really got the corner on truth."
