Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

insightful and compelling:

This short book brilliantly explores the relationship between Eakins' work and American notions of manliness in the period. The historical grounding and the jargon-free language of the book make it especially useful for non-art historians.

A minor correction:

Of course, Eakins is not a "minor American master of the late 19th century," but rather one of the finest, and most copiously studied, of American painters. Furthermore, his art is not primarily a study of white manhood; indeed, he painted more images of black men than any of his contemporaries. Finally, his male nudes embody more than merely homosocial attitudes, as the Australian (and relatively conservative) critic Robert Hughes has noted: "The beautiful figure of the standing youth [in _Swimming_, the... more info

A Painter's Insight into White, Middle-Class Manhood:

I have no training in art history or criticism, but I have long been fascinated by the paintings of Thomas Eakins, a minor American master of the late-19th century. This book by Martin Berger, who teaches Art History and English at the State University of New York, Buffalo, seeks to place Eakins's work within the cultural context of the "Gilded Age," an era which many social historians believe to have been characterized by a "crisis in manhood," so I approached this book with great anticipation. The text,... more info

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