Thomas Eakins and the Sound of Painting

Thomas Eakins‟s paintings depicting musical subjects pervade his career and cross into

many of his genres of painting. His first painting relating to music, A Street Scene in Seville,

came from his time as a student in Europe in 1870 while his last, Music, he completed in 1904.

In all of these paintings, save Home Scene and Antiquated Music, there is at least one musician

actively playing his or her instrument or singing. Although his style remains consistent

throughout these musically themed paintings, as he progressed as an artist, Eakins gave his music

paintings an added dimension through subtle representational changes and additional visual cues.

By examining the musical interests of two of Eakins‟s contemporaries, the art critic Walter Pater

and the painter James McNeill Whistler, a different interpretation of Eakins‟s portrayal of music

begins to surface. This paper will characterize some of Eakins‟s major works involving music as

attempts to have the sound of the music penetrate the painted scene, due to his increased interest

in representing the precision of musical performance, his reaction to the Aesthetic Movement‟s

formalist approach to painting, and his response to an increase in psychological research of a

condition known as synesthesia.

Walter Pater was a nineteenth century English art critic whose writing played a large role

in the propagation of the Aesthetic Movement, which advocated the elevation of form over

matter in a visual work of art. In an 1873 essay, Pater details his opinions on the concept of form

and matter across artistic mediums as follows:

All art constantly aspires toward the condition of music. For while in all other kinds

of art it is possible to distinguish the matter from the form, and the understanding can

always make this distinction, yet it is the constant effort of art to obliterate it. The

mere matter of a picture . . . should be nothing without the form, [and] the spirit of the

handling . . . should become an end in itself, should penetrate every part of the matter.

This is what all art constantly strives after, and achieves in different degrees.1

1 Walter Pater, The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 86.

2

Pater believed that painting, by appealing first to sight, should allow the viewer to appreciate the

artist‟s mastery of color and arrangement rather than to think about what the artist is depicting

and what he or she is trying to communicate to the viewer. In his words, "Art, then, is always

striving to be independent of the mere intelligence, to become a matter of pure perception, to get

rid of its responsibilities to its subject or material."2 In stark contrast to the striking realism that

many nineteenth century artists employed in both Europe and America, the Aesthetic Movement

took a stance against Victorian ideals and, as a result, these artists, which including the Pre-

Raphaelites and Whistler, were often rejected from exhibitions.

Before joining the Aesthetic Movement, Whistler, who was ten years Eakins‟ senior,

displayed some realist stylistic qualities early in his career, as seen in his etching from 1859

called Black Lion Warf (Fig. 1). The precision and linearity seen in this etching is unparalleled

in his paintings – as if he perfected his draughtsmanship before straying from realistic forms.

His painting At the Piano (Fig. 2) displays his interest in music that was shared by many of his

contemporaries. The scene is visually decipherable but Whistler employs a loose painting style

to obscure some of the finer details as his style moves toward that endorsed by the Aesthetes.

The painting Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl3 from 1862 (Fig. 3) marked an important

step in Whistler‟s career as it was a reflection of his changing artistic theory. This theoretical

change is reflected in the title more than in any ostensible change in his painting style, as the title

clearly reflected his interest in color and the subjugation of the model‟s identity to the formal

aspects of the painting. That is, the work became less of a portrait or likeness of the woman and

more of an image of white paint arranged to look like a dress. Whistler continued using musical

2 Pater, The Renaissance, 88.

3 Originally called The White Girl, it was renamed probably sometime around 1867 when W. M. Rossetti mentions

the painting Symphony in White, No. 3 in his diary. Anderson and Koval say this “marked the beginning of

[Whistler‟s] use of the analogy of music to capture the color harmonies in his works.” See Ronald Anderson and

Anne Koval, James McNeill Whistler: Beyond the Myth (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1994), 166.

3

descriptions as titles for his paintings – arrangement, symphony and harmony – but it was not

until 1867 that he decided to change his style to match his new theoretical approach.4 His new

style focused on color as he frequently abstracted form to the point of near unrecognizability.

In 1878, Whistler wrote, “As music is the poetry of sound, so is painting the poetry of

sight, and the subject-matter has nothing to do with harmony of sound or of colour.”5 He

equated his arrangements in color to musical arrangements that are based on a note, and then use

variations from that central theme.6 Whistler applied the term nocturne to a collection of thirty-

two paintings that he did over a span of many years.7 Whistler said that by calling his paintings

nocturnes, “I wished to indicate an artistic interest alone, divesting the picture of any outside

anecdotal interest . . . [they are] an arrangement of line, form, and colour first.”8 By using

traditional musical terms as titles for his paintings, Whistler thrust the correlation between music

and painting into the public imagination even more than Pater had, and these works influenced

many painters and even musicians as a result.9

In looking at paintings such as An Orange Note, Nocturne in Blue and Gold: The Old

Battersea Bridge, and Nocturne in Blue and Silver-Chelsea, one can see Whistler‟s varying

degrees of abstraction and de-emphasis of specificity both visually and in title. Moving further

into abstraction, Whistler‟s painting Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket (Fig. 4),

successfully approaches the realm of the “new” aesthetic as described by Pater which “might be

characterized as a „formalist‟ one, in which art refers not to life but to other art.”10

4 Anderson and Koval, James McNeill Whistler, 170

5 James McNeill Whistler, Whistler on Art. ed. By Nigel Thorp (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,

1994), 52. 6 Ibid., 52.

7 Nocturnes are musical works that typically comprise a single movement and are associated with the night.

8 Anderson and Koval, James McNeill Whistler, 218.

9 The French composer Claude Debussy is one musician whom Whistler is said to have inspired.

10 Teukolsky, The Politics of Formalist Art Criticism, 164.

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Although Whistler aligned his painting with the medium of music, he rarely provides the

viewer with depictions of actual musicians nor renders visual cues to indicate the nature of the

music being portrayed. Also, Whistler‟s interpretation of the ideas expressed by Pater

emphasizes the arrangement of color with varying tonal harmonies to create a study of a color (or

colors) whose corresponding figural representation has little or no didactic meaning. Yet Pater‟s

notions can be interpreted in ways other than the manner that Whistler chose. For instance, in

his essay about Pater, poet and scholar Laurence Binyon considered another option when trying

to realize an ideal form of painting. He agreed with the attempted fusion of matter and form into

an inseparable whole, but he wrote, “As interpreted by other people . . . [Pater‟s statement that all

art constantly aspires to the condition of music] has been made to express the theory that

perfection lies not in the perfect melting of matter into form but in the emptying of matter from

form.”11

In his estimation, by removing matter from form, aesthetic artists were simplifying

their images rather than attempting to match the complexity of music.

Simply by looking at Eakins‟s paintings, one could reasonably conclude that he was not

an advocate of the pure formalism of the Aesthetic movement. An understanding of Eakins‟s

approach to painting, his intellectual interests, and his meticulous manner of working would

seem to push Whistler‟s abstraction of form further from Eakins‟s mind. Yet when one

considers his unorthodox methods of teaching, his deliberate avoidance of conformity, and his

seeming provocation (at times) of others, different possibilities begin to emerge from Eakins‟s

works. Suppose for a moment that Eakins did not reject all of the ideas expressed by Pater but

only rejected the idea of a purely aesthetic painting. If Eakins‟s music paintings are explored as

an attempt to assert both the form and the matter of the scene, they become challenges to

11

Binyon, “A Postscript to „The Renaissance,‟” From R.M Seiler, ed. Walter Pater: The Critical Heritage (Boston:

Routledge & Keegan Paul, Ltd., 1980, 413.

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aesthetic painting not only as a contradictory statement but also as a way to fuse form and matter

rather than to subjugate one to the other. Pater suggested that the object of portrayal also

affected the ideal beauty in art. While Whistler primarily chose subjects unrelated to music, his

titles created a relation to musical arrangement. Eakins, by choosing to depict musicians with

great precision and detail, attempted to have the sound of the music penetrate the painted scene.

Eakins had in fact previously responded to aesthetic or decorative painters. Specifically,

Henry Adams argues that in Portrait of the Artist’s Wife and His Setter Dog (Fig. 5), Eakins set

up a parallel between his work and Whistler‟s Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six

Marks (Fig. 6). He says that the pose and the settings are strikingly similar but there is a contrast

between the realistic portrayal of Eakins‟s wife and the ideal, anonymous model in a costume in

Whistler‟s depiction.12

Therefore, one could ask if Eakins‟s paintings of musicians are his interpretation of art‟s

aspiration to the condition of music and the reconciliation of form and matter. Through his

exacting replication of reality and his mathematical, organized process, Eakins connects his

intellectual and physical activities with those of the musician, for whom precision is of the

utmost importance. Without precision, music becomes disorganized and unpleasant and Eakins

seemingly feels the same is true with painting, as his own manner of working was also pushing

virtuosity to its limits in painting. For Eakins, “the exact appearance of musicians as they

performed was indissolubly tied to the music produced.”13

Many of Eakins‟s contemporaries also painted musicians or were inspired by music in

their creation of art. There are no explicit visual cues in these works to indicate the type of

music or the precise moment of performing. Eakins‟s approach to representing music, however,

12

Henry Adams, Eakins Revealed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 329-330. 13

Darrell Sewell, Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, exh. cat. (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art,

1982), 96.

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was “distinctly apart [from the approach of his contemporaries]: [Eakins‟s paintings] are

portraits, and they are at the same time investigations into certain qualities of music itself.”14

Looking at specific elements in Eakins‟s paintings reinforces many of these ideas. For example,

in Home Ranch (Fig. 7), Eakins is so meticulous in rendering detail that the viewer can make out

the type of guitar the cowboy is playing: with its squared, open headstock, black neck, narrow

body and apparently pyramid-shaped ends of the bridge, it is most likely a Martin Style 2,

designed in 1875.15

It also looks as though he is forming a G, dominant 11th

chord with his left

hand. The guitar would have had a distinct sound, the chord a distinct tone, and the viewer is

even invited to imagine what this rugged, bearded cowboy‟s voice might sound like based on the

characterizing elements Eakins placed in the scene.

In both The Pathetic Song (Fig. 8) and The Concert Singer (Fig. 9), Eakins is precise in

his shaping of the singer‟s mouth, allowing the viewer to imagine the words being sung at that

particular moment. Margaret Harrison, the singer in The Pathetic Song, is shown with a somber

expression, most likely singing rather quietly, as her mouth is only slightly parted. The title The

Pathetic Song specifies a particular type of song with a well-known arrangement and meaning as

it was a popular theme for songs in the 1860s and 1870s.16

Eakins places two other musicians in

the scene - a cellist named C.F. Stolte and Eakins‟s future wife, Susan Macdowell, at the piano.

The specificity of the individuals (amateur musicians) and the setting (the parlor of a home) add

additional ambiance to the overall composition. These details not only convey the unity of the

trio but also give the viewer a sense of the sound being produced at an exact moment, in an exact

place, during a specific type of song.

14

Sewell, Thomas Eakins, 116. 15

Richard Chapman, The Complete Guitarist (New York: Dorling Kindersley, 1993), 17. 16

Johns, Thomas Eakins, 135.

7

In discussing The Concert Singer, Darrell Sewell gives details of the singer Weda Cook‟s

modeling sessions: “At the beginning of each session, Eakins asked her to sing the same lines

from Mendelssohn‟s oratorio Elijah in order to watch the action of her mouth and throat. From

these observations he apparently decided to paint the singer as she sang a particular phrase, the

opening bars of „O Rest in the Lord.‟"17

Of this painting, Eakins wrote, “I once painted a concert

singer and on the chestnut frame I carved the opening bars of Mendelssohn‟s Rest in the Lord.

[The carving] was ornamental, unobtrusive and to musicians I think it emphasized the expression

of the face and pose of the figure.”18

In this painting, Eakins places only the elements required to

give the scene a definitive setting. The conductor‟s hand, the roses, Cook‟s dress, and the palm

at the left are all used to convey a formal performance rather than a rehearsal.19

In his painting abruptly titled Music (Fig. 10), Eakins similarly depicts a musician at

work. Eakins again eliminates unnecessary details, allowing only the hands, head and violin to

be fully discernable along with the head and hand of the pianist. Interestingly, Eakins places

Whistler‟s painting of Pablo de Sarasate titled Arrangement in Black in the background of this

work. It is the only concrete image in the scene other than the two musicians, and Eakins draws

further attention to it with the positioning of the violinist‟s bow, which directs the viewer‟s eye

to the corner image. In an exhibition catalog on Whistler, there is an anecdote about Eakins:

Whistler‟s work was frequently exhibited at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine

Arts…[and] one day, the secretary of the Academy noticed Eakins carefully studying

a Whistler painting, possibly Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, which

was on view there in 1900. When asked his opinion, Eakins replied, “I think it is a

very cowardly way to paint.” A friend of [Eakins] later explained, “He was wont to

term „cowardly‟ those paintings that left much to the imagination.”20

17

Sewell, Thomas Eakins, 98. 18

Ibid., 97. 19

Ibid., 98. 20

Linda Merrill, et al., After Whistler: The Artist and His Influence on American Painting, exh. cat. (New Haven:

Yale University Press, 2003), 180.

8

By incorporating Whistler‟s painting, Eakins sets up a comparison between the two - perhaps

boldly pointing out the error of Whistler‟s artistic direction. In 1914, Eakins wrote, “‟Whistler

was unquestionably a great painter, but there are many of his works for which I do not care.‟”21

One can surmise that Eakins favored Whistler‟s less abstract works, such as that of Sarasate.

Another possible component to Eakins increased detailing of his musicians could have

been the study of a psychological condition known as synesthesia, which was just picking up

momentum around the 1870s. Synesthesia is defined as “the stimulation of one sensory modality

that automatically triggers a perception in a second modality in the absence of any direct

stimulation to this second modality. For example a sound automatically and instantly might

trigger the perception of a vivid color, or vice versa.”22

The word synesthesia was not coined

until 1892, but the same condition, previously called “color hearing,” became widely known in

1881 after a report on the phenomenon in the London Medical Journal was reprinted in America

and in other parts of Europe.23

This rare condition is not completely understood today and the

reasons for its occurrence and its overall prevalence would have been even less understood

during Eakins‟ life, despite extensive investigation in the late nineteenth century.24

Synesthesia fascinated fin de siècle European artists such as the French Romantic poet

Charles Baudelaire whose 1857 poem called Correspondances described synesthetic

experience.25

Due to this poem and other writers‟ interest in the subject, synesthesia became

well known to many painters at that time, particularly in Europe. This association of colors to

21

Merrill, After Whistler, 180. 22

Simon Baron-Cohen and John Harrison, “Synesthesia: A Challenge for Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience,”

In Neurodevelopmental Disorders, ed. Helen Tager-Flusberg, 491-503 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999), 491. 23

Kevin T. Dann. Bright Colors Falsely Seen: Synesthesia and the Search for Transcendental Knowledge (New

Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 21. 24

Baron-Cohen & Harrison, “Synesthesia,” 492. 25

Ibid., 17-18.

9

words, music and other visual stimuli is something of which Eakins certainly could have been

aware and which might have interested both his intellectual and artistic temperaments.

In their essay on synesthesia, Baron-Cohen and Harrison outline different forms of

synesthesia – among them are those occurring naturally (developmental) and those that are non-

neurological (metaphorical). The “key differences are that in metaphorical pseudosynesthesia,

no percept necessarily is triggered; the subject often will acknowledge that the description is

only of an analogy, and it is voluntary.”26

This could indeed be the type of experience Eakins

was trying to elicit in viewers of his works. For example, upon seeing Eakins‟s The Cello

Player, a viewer could allow it to elicit the sound of a cello concerto that they are familiar with.

By contrast, using the concept of synesthesia, Whistler seems to be representing colors and

shapes that would be the response to a musical stimulant rather than the inducer of the

experience like Eakins.

As stated earlier, Pater wrote, “The mere matter of a picture…should be nothing without

the form, the spirit of the handling.”27

What better “spirit of handling” than to provide the

viewer with an accurate, exact, scientific study of figure and instrument, intellect and sound, in

order to evoke the actual tonality of music? Eakins wanted the viewers to experience the music

through their vision. By rendering the musician so clearly, even identifying the exact

composition being performed, he allows the viewer to imagine the reverberations of the

instrument or the voice. Pater attempted to define what he thought of as the limitations of

painting by comparing painting to music and poetry: “In its primary aspect, a great picture has no

more definite message for us than an accidental play of sunlight and shadow for a few moments

26

Baron-Cohen & Harrison, “Synesthesia," 494. 27

Pater, The Renaissance, 86.

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on the wall or floor.”28

Eakins, in sharp contrast, asserts the ability of painting, particularly when

compared to music, to communicate a definite message that goes beyond the visual by utilizing

both its form and content.

No matter how methodical in manner, the end result of Eakins work is something artistic.

Thus, the representation of musicians – of music itself to a degree – moves beyond pure intellect

and provides an opportunity for the viewer to enjoy the beauty not separated from but contained

within the pictorial representation. Eakins's portrayal of professional musicians, presumably at

moments of transcendence of technique, is a direct parallel to Eakins‟s attempted transcendence

– one that would move the viewer past the exact likeness of the musician and the instrument to a

sense of the spirit of the music. Sewell describes Eakins intentions in his painting The Concert

Singer by saying “he sought to convey the beauty that he himself saw . . . as though the intensity

of his vision would reveal the secret of her voice.”29

Considering Eakins‟s love of music, his interest in musicians for their intellectual

abilities, and his desire to paint scenes of contemporary, American life, one cannot characterize

these works solely as a response to Whistler, Pater, and the Aesthetic Movement. It is, however,

clear that the intellectually active Eakins had many of these factors in mind when composing

these scenes. His assertion of the importance of form and content can be seen in his powerful

stylistic realism and, more subtly in his paintings depicting musical themes, by the precision with

which he depicts the music maker, interacting both physically and mentally with his or her craft.

Perhaps Eakins‟s greatest achievement with these works is his ability to draw from the viewer‟s

mind the sound of the instrument pictured and the sensory experience associated with music,

thereby actively engaging the viewer both intellectually and emotionally.

28

Pater, The Renaissance, 86. 29

Sewell, Thomas Eakins: Artist of Philadelphia, 99.

11

Figures

Image 1 (left). James McNeill Whistler, Black Lion Wharf, 1858-59.

Image 2 (right). James McNeill Whistler, At the Piano, 1859.

Image 3 (left). James McNeill Whistler, Symphony in White, No. 1: The White Girl, 1862.

Image 4 (right). James McNeill Whistler, Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket, 1875.

Image 5 (left). Thomas Eakins, Portrait of the Artist’s Wife and His Setter Dog, 1884-89.

Image 6 (right). James McNeill Whistler, Purple and Rose: The Lange Leizen of the Six Marks, 1864.

12

Image 7 (left). Thomas Eakins, Home Ranch, 1892.

Image 8 (right). Thomas Eakins, The Pathetic Song, 1881.

Image 9 (left). Thomas Eakins, The Concert Singer, 1892.

Image 10 (right). Thomas Eakins, Music, 1904.

13

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