The Biglin Brothers Racing

Two professional oarsmen, the Biglin brothers of New York, drive their narrow red shell across the placid water of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, their oars sweeping in unison as a second boat runs close alongside, its prow cutting the bottom edge of the canvas. Thomas Eakins painted the picture in 1872, the year after his return from study in Paris, when he was beginning the series of rowing scenes that made his reputation as the most rigorous realist of American art. Every detail — the muscles of the rowers’ arms, the reflection of the sky in the dark water, the crowd massed on the distant steamboat — is observed with a scientist’s precision and rendered with the deep, sober color he admired in Velázquez. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.