Max Schmitt in a Single Scull

Thomas Eakins’s first great painting shows his friend Max Schmitt resting on his oars in a single scull on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, with the railway bridge and boathouses of the city behind him. Painted with the precision of a man who studied anatomy and perspective obsessively, the work captures the particular clarity of an autumn afternoon. It is regarded as the founding masterpiece of American realism, and it reveals Eakins’s lifelong love of sport and science.