Thomas Eakins House
The famous painter Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) lived most of his life in this house, which his father Benjamin purchased in July 1857. Erected in about 1854, the house’s marble lintels and water table reflect the endurance of Greek Revival ideas among Philadelphia builders.
Benjamin Eakins (1881-99) was a successful calligrapher and teacher of penmanship, and he was also a wise investor. He supported and housed his son throughout his long and not very prosperous artistic career. Shortly after the family moved to Mt. Vernon Street, Thomas entered Central High School, and, after graduation, he continued his studies at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts while practicing his father’s trade as a writing instructor. He spent 1866-1870 at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a member of the atelier of the highly successful academic painter Jean-Léon Gérôme.
Returning to Philadelphia and this house in 1870, Eakins launched his career as a painter, focusing first on depictions of oarsmen on the Schuylkill River. In 1874, his father added a fourth floor to the house, topped by an up-to-date mansard roof, to accommodate his son’s studio. It was here in 1875 that he began to paint the enormous portrait of surgeon Dr. Samuel Gross, whose lectures Eakins had attended. The unflinchingly realistic Gross Clinic, which would be Eakins’ most famous work, was rejected for display in the art gallery at then Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876, but it found a place in an army field hospital exhibition.
After serving for several years as an instructor at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, in 1882 Eakins was named director of its school. Although he was forced to resign in 1886 over his use of nude models, his methods, including the study of anatomy and the use of photography, would define the school for the next half century.
In 1883 Eakins signed an agreement with his father allowing him unrestricted use of the top floor as studio, and in 1884 he married Susan Macdowell (1851-1938), who had been his student. At first the couple lived at 1330 Chestnut, which Eakins also used as a studio, but in 1886 they moved into the Mt. Vernon Street house. Here Eakins would live for the rest of his life, inheriting the house upon his father’s death in 1899. It was here that he created the passionate yet realistic portraits that defined his later work.
The Eakins House serves as the home of Mural Arts Philadelphia.
Address: 1729 Mt Vernon St, Philadelphia, PA 19130, United States