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From Church to Dove: One Hundred Years of American Painting from the Heckscher Museum of Art |
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Study for The Cello Player
1896 Oil on canvas mounted on board 17 1/2 x 24 inches Heckscher Museum of Art, Museum Purchase, Heckscher Trust Fund, Stebbins Family, Priscilla de Forest Williams, George Wilhelm and Acquisition Fund |
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Thomas Eakins' portrait of Rudolph Henning, The Cello Player, was painted at a disheartening and relatively unproductive period of the artist's career. Ten years earlier the artist had been forced to resign from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for removing the loincloth from a male model during an anatomy demonstration. Eakins' reputation was waning and his work was less widely exhibited, and during this time he grew even closer to friends such as Henning. Henning (1854-1904) was the leading cellist for the Theodore Thomas Orchestra of Philadelphia, a forerunner of the Philadelphia Orchestra. This work is an oil study for the finished work of the same title in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fines Arts, and it depicts Henning in a solo performance. The highly finished sketch, which is carefully gridded for enlargement, was transferred by the artist to the larger canvas virtually unaltered. This affectionate portrait of a sensitive friend is less strident than most of Eakins' work and more romantic in expression. | ||