Eakins Rare Autograph Letter Signed on painting, Feb. 11, 1901

To the head of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, Leslie William Miller (1848-1031), Eakins proposes an exhibit. "Thinking it might be of interest to young composers to see all the working drawings for a composite picture, I send you those of my my compositions now on exhibition at the Philadelphia Academy of the Fine Arts, a portrait of Mrs. Frishmuth ['Antiquated Music' Portrait of Sarah Sagehorn Frishmuth shown seated with her collection of musical instruments 1900], who gave the University of Pennsylvania (Archeological Dep't) its superb collection of musical instruments. The first sketch and general perspective are for convenience made one sixth the size of the picture that is they are to be viewed at one sixth from the eye of the finished picture. To save time in calculating proportions, I have as some cases used a table of logarithms...." He signs, "Thomas Eakins." The letter presents Eakins as both a portrait painter and an art educator.

Condition: Creasing along mail folds. Archival tape attached to top and bottom of third page and remnants of mounting adhesive to fourth page. Date of receipt of the letter is stamped under the date on the first page.

Included is a photograph reproduction of the painting referenced in the letter, "Antiquated Music," with credit on verso. Eakins is widely acknowledged as one of America's most important artists. His work received little recognition during his lifetime, however, posthumously he has been celebrated by art historians as among the most important, if not the most significant, realist painter of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He focused on the human form in his painting, sculptor and photography. He is also recognized as a fine arts educator for his work at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Eakins built the program into the leading American art school in the late nineteenth-century, but was forced to resign after he allowed a fully nude male model to pose for his class of male and female students.
He struggled to work as a portrait painter following his dismissal because of his emphasis on realistic portrayals of his subjects. In the year following his death, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Pennsylvania Academy held exhibitions of Eakins' paintings, and by the 1930's, he was recognized as one of the nation's great painters. Autograph