Thomas Eakins

This detailed watercolor is Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins’s only major work devoted to the developing professional sport of baseball. Eakins was eager to find modern American subjects that could enlarge the tradition of historical figure painting, and sculling, sailing, swimming, and boxing offered him the opportunity to showcase superbly defined bodies. In a letter of 1875 to artist Everett Shinn, Eakins pointed out that the ballplayers were portraits of the Athletics, a Philadelphia club, at practice. They were “very fine in their build,” he told Shinn, and the scene would “admit of fine figure painting.”

This detailed illustration of Philadelphia Athletics players Wes Fisler and John Clapp was built up of tiny brushstrokes of wash applied in many thin layers. Eakins, who was very interested in photography, probably used a camera to capture this scene and then worked up the image in his studio.