William Packer
Portrait of a Realist
The Revenge of Thomas Eakins
By Sidney D Kirkpatrick
Yale University Press 566pp £25 order from our bookshop
This sad and at times heroic story hardly tells of a revenge – unless a posthumous, too-long-delayed and entirely deserved critical rehabilitation counts as such. There is certainly no doubting the importance of its hero, Thomas Eakins, as an artist, nor of the circumstantial interest of his life. If even now he is not that well known outside the United States (though a substantial exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in 1993 did at least do something to put the record straight here), within the context of the American School of the late nineteenth century he is indeed a major figure.
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
'Unlike much that was extracted from India, these paintings were not plunder, and those who created them were properly remunerated and often received due credit.'
@PParkerWriting on 'Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company'.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/artists-for-hire
‘"I feel", Lowell told Hardwick ... "as if I were pulled apart and thinning into mist, or rather being torn apart and still preferring that state to making a decision."'
Richard Davenport-Hines on the letters of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Hardwick.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/yours-unfaithfully-2
'To me, Elmore Leonard is as comforting in extremity as Pym, and as safe, in the last resort, as Wodehouse. The guys with the best lines are going to come out the other side; the dumb fucks are going to get it in the head or chest.'
https://literaryreview.co.uk/a-spoonful-of-elmore