Lot Essay
The shad surge up the Delaware River from the Atlantic each spring, some of them into the nets of hopeful fishermen. Like many nineteenth-century Philadelphians, Thomas Eakins looked forward to the seasonal running of the shad, when the entire "tribe of Eakins" would ferry across the river to New Jersey to dine on shad "cooked on a plank and eked out with waffles." (see L. Goodrich, Thomas Eakins, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1982, pp. 206-7) Before or after feasting, tourists could watch teams of local fishermen set their nets along the shore below Gloucester, or haul them, teeming with fish, back up on to the beach.
In April and May 1881, Eakins made this trip several times with his own nets set for artistic prey. Carrying a box for his oil paints and sketchboards, a brand-new camera and some glass negatives, he captured the activity of the fisheries and then returned home to make paintings. The results, produced in 1881 and 1882 (after a second campaign of sketching and photographing the following spring) included four oils, three watercolors, a series of bright outdoor oil sketches, and dozens of photographic studies of the fishermen, the beach, and the landscape between Gloucester and the Timber Creek estuary. (see Goodrich, 1982, pp. 206-212; also S. Danley and C. Leibold, Thomas Eakins and the Photograph; Works by Thomas Eakins and His Circle in the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Washington, DC, 1994; see also K.A. Foster, Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, forthcoming 1997)
Eakins' pictorial concept was, like many of his ideas, a disarmingly fresh recasting from contemporary categories of picturesque subject matter. The art galleries of Europe and the United States at this time were full of images of peasants and fishermen from France or Holland, England or Italy, but no professional "fine" artist was painting the Delaware fisheries--and few were interested in American fishermen anywhere; the subject was, in the opinion of Eakins' critics, "commonplace," "awkward," and "of no value." (see the Philadelphia Press, December 2, 1881; "Art in Philadelphia," New York Daily Tribune, November 25, 1881) In Philadelphia only lithographer James Queen had shown any interest in shad fishing on the Delaware. As with his rowing and hunting subjects, Eakins was the first "fine" artist to press into subjects from the popular illustrated press.
But Eakins saw that these fishermen were as picturesque and heroic as their European counterparts--and more valuable, because they were distinctively American. Describing Eakins as an "artist who has theories," the Philadelphia Telegraph somewhat dubiously noted that "one of his theories is that an American artist cannot do better than to treat American subjects, for the reason that no better subjects than American subjects exist. Another of his theories is that the best subjects are very apt to be those very near at hand to the artist, wherever the artist may happen to be." Following Eakins' reasoning, "accurate transcripts of the commonplaces of fishermen's lives" necessarily had artistic merit. ("The Fine Arts," Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 17, 1881) Contemporary and naturalistic, this approach puzzled, annoyed, and delighted viewers in turn.
Eakins' pictorial strategy was just as modern as his theory of local subject matter, for it allied rigorous academic methods with the newest technology: photography. With characteristic efficiency, Eakins used his oil paints only to capture the broad colors of sky and landscape, sunlight and shadow, and then turned to his camera to seize the characteristic postures and gestures of the fishermen, their occupational costumes and accessories. Such detail was hard to grasp quickly "by hand," and it was both unreasonable and counter-productive to ask the men to stop and pose--even for the camera--when maximum naturalness of motion was desired. Seeking this uncontrived record, Eakins had to stand back and surrender to opportunity; he could never get his camera very close to the action and, given the relative slowness of his lens, he had to frame his subject carefully, take many exposures, and hope that the moving figures were coherently captured. Perhaps his photographs, with their sharply focused figures and blurred distances, inspired him to experiment with such contrasting effects in his paintings. (on Eakins's use of photographic effects, see K.A. Foster, Thomas Eakins Rediscovered)
Back at home in his dark room, Eakins found many useful images, for all of the finished paintings and watercolors from this series seem to have relied on photographic studies. His major oil painting from the Gloucester series, Mending the Net (figure a), drew upon six figure and landscape studies from a surviving group of thirty-two related images. Selecting and combining figures from different negatives, he added color notes from memory and from his oil sketches. Eakins' art emerged in the rhythm of the figures, strung across the horizon in a garland of poses linked by nets, in the delicate realism of each figure, and in the "masterly manner in which sunlight effects are produced" to give a sense of the warm envelope of spring air. ("The Fine Arts," Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 17, 1881) "Every fisherman is a statuette, most realistic, most varied in movement, finished like ivory carving, yet bathes in the misty river-side air," wrote Earl Shinn, who found a "positive revelation" in the way the stains and folds of a fisherman's pants could "explain a toilsome life." ("The Second Philadelphia Exhibition," Art Amateur, vol. 6, December 1881, p. 6) A combination of oil and camera studies lent this authenticity to the figures and also contributed to their sense of detachment, which poetically evokes a mood of peaceful, unselfconscious, everyday activity.
Eakins sent his first Gloucester oil, Shad Fishing at Gloucester on the Delaware River (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) to exhibitions in Cincinnati and Brooklyn in the fall of 1881, while preparing the larger oil painting Mending the Net for a more prestigious debut at the Pennsylvania Academy's "Special Exhibition of Paintings by American Artists at Home and in Europe" in November and December of 1881. The national critical establishment gathered to inspect this important show, where Eakins' paintings hung alongside those of his American contemporaries working in Europe.
United in their praise of Eakins' accomplishment as a figure painter, the reviewers of Mending the Net divided over the "theory" that would lavish such skill on such a "commonplace" topic. While some found the picture dull and inartistic, those looking for modern, local subject matter were rhapsodic. The progressive critic Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer noted that "one of the best and most valuable things in the room is Mr. Eakins' Mending the Net; good as painter's work and valuable as a fresh rendering of a distinctly local and unhackneyed theme. There is no one who is doing more than Mr. Eakins to show how our native material, unglossed and unpoeticized, may be made available in artistic work. No more necessary lesson can be taught our students than this." ("Picture Exhibitions in Philadelphia--II," American Architect and Building News, vol. 10, December 31, 1881, pp. 311-12) The critic of the New York World likewise complimented the "fresh departure" in Eakins' work, noting the "originality of conception and marvelously clever treatment of the figure." Each one was "exquisitely drawn, perfectly modelled, full of life and action and individuality, and painted, moreover, in the most broad and decided and delightful way." ("Art in Philadelphia," November 21, 1881) Less admiring remarks came from the reviewer in the Art Journal (June 1882, pp. 190-91) who did not find that the figures satisfied "the requirements of a picture" and the New York Times--rarely a friendly viewer of Eakins' work--where his style was characterized as "severe, unpoetical, uncompromising," "dry and unimaginative" ("Academy of Design," March 30, 1882). Harper's Weekly reproduced a line cut of the painting and called it "undoubtedly the most pleasing work that this able but eccentric artist has thus far executed." ("The Philadelphia Art Exhibition," Harper's Weekly, vol. 25, December 10, 1881, pp. 827-828)
Encouraged by this response, Eakins must have been eager to capitalize on his success at the next exhibition opportunity, early in 1882; the annual display of the American Watercolor Society in New York. His watercolors had been welcomed at their shows since 1874, warmly reviewed by the art press, and purchased by collectors. (see K.A. Foster, Makers of the American Watercolor Movement, Ph. D. diss., Yale University, 1982, chapter 4; and Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, chapter 9) Hoping for renewed favor, he sent his first Gloucester watercolor, Shad Fishing on the Delaware, at Gloucester of 1881, and another, Mending the Net, dated 1882 and probably finished just in time for the entry deadline in January. Slightly larger than his first watercolor, but with fewer figures, Mending the Net was listed at a lower price in the catalogue--$150--but consciously evoked the subject and mood of his highly-praised oil.
The watercolor Mending the Net, like the oil, must have been based on photographic studies, although no exactly parallel images have been found among Eakins' extant camera work. However, the figures share the same delicacy and intensity of observation seen in the larger oil, and two negatives and an oil sketch show the same stretch of beach, strewn with nets and floaters. Another image showing the same white-shirted man in a similar pose (figure b) hints at a lost negative that carried the exact pose. This white-shirted man is the protagonist of the picture, not only because he demonstrates the activity in Eakins' title, but because he stands exactly along the central axis of the picture, directly on the painter's (and viewer's) sight line.
The man asymmetrically seated at the left is literally a more off-beat figure, not seen in any of Eakins' photographs and clearly not a fisherman by dress or posture. He adds visual interest (while directing attention back to the net-mender) and injects a note of friendly companionship to the scene. At the same time, this watching figure enhances our feeling of detachment, for both men are too far away for us to properly recognize them or understand their relationship, and both figures draw into themselves, in poses of self-enclosure and isolation. By placing the figures deep in space, under a noonday sun that shrinks their shadows into pools at their feet, and setting the viewer position very low, at the knees of the net mender, Eakins made sure that the figures seem far away from us and distinct from one another. The sense of separation is increased by the abstractness of the beach, strewn with ambiguous suggestions of grass, drying nets, and bobblers, only understood clearly in the photos and oil sketch of this same spot.
Opinions of the Gloucester watercolors divided in a familiar pattern. Leslie W. Miller, who saw these same two pictures in Philadelphia later that spring, found them "depressingly commonplace." "These hard, photographic little figures will have to be accepted as 'conscientious,' I suppose, since all of the kindly critics will have it so, but in their labored feebleness of execution, as well as their singularly inartistic conception, one wonders what relation they can possibly bear to art." ("Water-Color Exhibition at Philadelphia," The American Architect and Building News, vol. 11, April 22, 1882, p. 185) The kindlier critic of the Art Journal indeed seems to have seen two different pictures, each "distinguished by the figure-drawing, and breadth which finds no sheet of paper too small to admit of the extent of horizon." ("Art Notes," Art Journal, 1882, p. 94) This disparity of taste was embraced by a single reviewer who "reckoned" that Eakins "was among the first of Philadelphia artists," and among the first to be criticized. "He is at the head of an important art school, but he is the slave of certain theories and his works are characterized by a dreary mannerism. We have had many of Mr. Eakins' pictures exhibited in New York, and they have been very generally and rather roughly criticised by connoisseurs. It is a pleasant variation to be able to speak pleasantly, even warmly of Mr. Eakins' work in the Water-color Exhibition." With evident relief, the reviewer admired Eakins' "vigorous and well-drawn" figures that "tell their story at a glance, and still leave something to be found out on further study. This artist is always a clever draughtsman and his failings as a colorist are less conspicuous in these water-color pictures than in any of his pictures we have seen." ("Fine Arts: The American Water-Color Society," The Independent, February 16, 1882, p. 8)
If this reviewer was somewhat back-handed in complimenting Eakins, Mariana van Rensselaer was consistently supportive. She had found the "commonplace citizens" in Eakins' shad fishing oils "genuine, fresh and clever," ("Picture Exhibitions in Philadelphia.--II," pp. 311-12) so it was no surprise that she described his watercolors as "two of the most capable things in the rooms, two small pictures of Delaware fishermen, complete in their bold yet accurate modeling on so small a scale, and in their strong local flavor." In her opinion, Eakins took "first honors" in the department of "valuable" landscapes dealing with "local material of a so-called prosaic sort. If our artists are to develop a truly national school it is with such materials that they will most often have to cope." To van Rensselaer, artistic treatment of such themes was much more valuable than equally competent work on faraway and conventional topics, and she linked Eakins to Weir, Twachtman, Bunker and Tryon, who all showed "locally characteristic work." ("Water-Colors in New York," The American Architect and Building News, vol. 11, April 8, 1882, pp. 160-61)
Such generally favorable remarks inspired Eakins to exhibit the watercolor Mending the Net in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Washington in 1882, and then in Boston in the fall of 1883. He continued to send other Gloucester oils and watercolors to various exhibitions through 1886, although he generally ceased producing and exhibiting watercolors after 1885. Only the oil version of Mending the Net, evidently one of his personal favorites, would be exhibited again (five times) in his lifetime.
When the watercolor version of Mending the Net emerged again in the Eakins memorial exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1917, it was still in the collection of its first owner, Dr. Horatio C. Wood. One of Eakins' first patrons, Wood bought The Courtship of circa 1878 (The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California) not long after it was painted, and he sent his son James to study with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy. In the miserable spring of 1886, after Eakins was fired by the directors of the Academy, Wood paid Eakins $150 to paint his portrait--a small sum, especially for a fine, full-length image, but an important gesture of faith. In November of the same year, Wood purchased Mending the Net for $75.00--half Eakins' original asking price. Such moral and financial support was backed up by the concerned attention of a physician. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in nervous diseases, pharmacology and therapeutics, Wood may have advised Eakins during the stressful aftermath of his departure from the Academy. Part owner in the B-T Ranch in Dakota Territory, Wood made it possible for Eakins to enjoy a much-needed "camp cure" there in 1887. (on Eakins' trauma and recovery during this period, see K.A. Foster and C. Leibold, Writing About Eakins, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1989, pp. 69-95)
Another pioneer in the therapy of nervous diseases was Wood's colleague, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who likewise may have counseled Eakins in his moments of depression in 1886-87. Mitchell received a gift from Eakins much earlier, about 1877: Whistling for Plover of 1874 (Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York). Mitchell's gift was one of Eakins' first watercolors; Mending the Net, which was one of his last, made a remarkable pendant piece for his colleague, Wood. The two doctors may have recognized the similarities shared by their pictures: nearly identical in size, with the horizon at the same place in each image, both watercolors feature small figures set in midday sunlight in an alluvial landscape cut only by a sliver of water entering from the right. Wooden bobbers--or plover--scatter into the distance of each. Eakins' delicate touch grew slightly broader in Mending the Net, reinforcing a more important change in the treatment of the figures: both groups are equally absorbed, but the hunter in Whistling for Plover if pulled close and turned to face us, his activity and expression easily understood, the sound of his whistling easily read; he is outer-directed, an accessible but ultimately extroverted facade. By contrast, the Gloucester men are pushed back and turned away, their actions and identities masked, their interaction ambiguous. The tone is cooler and quieter, the ambience almost noiseless, matching the mood of introspection seen in much of Eakins' work after 1876. The bright, physical presence of the sportsmen has been replaced by dreamier, more introverted figures who--even from a distance--express the activity of the mind. Remarking on the detachment of the net menders in 1882, one critic identified the strength in this new work by describing Eakins as "our best master" at the art of portraying "mere thinking." (C. Cook, "The Art Gallery: The Water-Color Society's Exhibition," Art Amateur, vol. 6, March 1882, p. 74) Ultimately a picture about work, rest, peace, sanity, and existential isolation, Mending the Net made a good object of contemplation for doctor or patient.
Christie's is grateful to Kathleen A. Foster for contributing this catalogue essay.
In April and May 1881, Eakins made this trip several times with his own nets set for artistic prey. Carrying a box for his oil paints and sketchboards, a brand-new camera and some glass negatives, he captured the activity of the fisheries and then returned home to make paintings. The results, produced in 1881 and 1882 (after a second campaign of sketching and photographing the following spring) included four oils, three watercolors, a series of bright outdoor oil sketches, and dozens of photographic studies of the fishermen, the beach, and the landscape between Gloucester and the Timber Creek estuary. (see Goodrich, 1982, pp. 206-212; also S. Danley and C. Leibold, Thomas Eakins and the Photograph; Works by Thomas Eakins and His Circle in the Collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Washington, DC, 1994; see also K.A. Foster, Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, forthcoming 1997)
Eakins' pictorial concept was, like many of his ideas, a disarmingly fresh recasting from contemporary categories of picturesque subject matter. The art galleries of Europe and the United States at this time were full of images of peasants and fishermen from France or Holland, England or Italy, but no professional "fine" artist was painting the Delaware fisheries--and few were interested in American fishermen anywhere; the subject was, in the opinion of Eakins' critics, "commonplace," "awkward," and "of no value." (see the Philadelphia Press, December 2, 1881; "Art in Philadelphia," New York Daily Tribune, November 25, 1881) In Philadelphia only lithographer James Queen had shown any interest in shad fishing on the Delaware. As with his rowing and hunting subjects, Eakins was the first "fine" artist to press into subjects from the popular illustrated press.
But Eakins saw that these fishermen were as picturesque and heroic as their European counterparts--and more valuable, because they were distinctively American. Describing Eakins as an "artist who has theories," the Philadelphia Telegraph somewhat dubiously noted that "one of his theories is that an American artist cannot do better than to treat American subjects, for the reason that no better subjects than American subjects exist. Another of his theories is that the best subjects are very apt to be those very near at hand to the artist, wherever the artist may happen to be." Following Eakins' reasoning, "accurate transcripts of the commonplaces of fishermen's lives" necessarily had artistic merit. ("The Fine Arts," Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 17, 1881) Contemporary and naturalistic, this approach puzzled, annoyed, and delighted viewers in turn.
Eakins' pictorial strategy was just as modern as his theory of local subject matter, for it allied rigorous academic methods with the newest technology: photography. With characteristic efficiency, Eakins used his oil paints only to capture the broad colors of sky and landscape, sunlight and shadow, and then turned to his camera to seize the characteristic postures and gestures of the fishermen, their occupational costumes and accessories. Such detail was hard to grasp quickly "by hand," and it was both unreasonable and counter-productive to ask the men to stop and pose--even for the camera--when maximum naturalness of motion was desired. Seeking this uncontrived record, Eakins had to stand back and surrender to opportunity; he could never get his camera very close to the action and, given the relative slowness of his lens, he had to frame his subject carefully, take many exposures, and hope that the moving figures were coherently captured. Perhaps his photographs, with their sharply focused figures and blurred distances, inspired him to experiment with such contrasting effects in his paintings. (on Eakins's use of photographic effects, see K.A. Foster, Thomas Eakins Rediscovered)
Back at home in his dark room, Eakins found many useful images, for all of the finished paintings and watercolors from this series seem to have relied on photographic studies. His major oil painting from the Gloucester series, Mending the Net (figure a), drew upon six figure and landscape studies from a surviving group of thirty-two related images. Selecting and combining figures from different negatives, he added color notes from memory and from his oil sketches. Eakins' art emerged in the rhythm of the figures, strung across the horizon in a garland of poses linked by nets, in the delicate realism of each figure, and in the "masterly manner in which sunlight effects are produced" to give a sense of the warm envelope of spring air. ("The Fine Arts," Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, October 17, 1881) "Every fisherman is a statuette, most realistic, most varied in movement, finished like ivory carving, yet bathes in the misty river-side air," wrote Earl Shinn, who found a "positive revelation" in the way the stains and folds of a fisherman's pants could "explain a toilsome life." ("The Second Philadelphia Exhibition," Art Amateur, vol. 6, December 1881, p. 6) A combination of oil and camera studies lent this authenticity to the figures and also contributed to their sense of detachment, which poetically evokes a mood of peaceful, unselfconscious, everyday activity.
Eakins sent his first Gloucester oil, Shad Fishing at Gloucester on the Delaware River (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) to exhibitions in Cincinnati and Brooklyn in the fall of 1881, while preparing the larger oil painting Mending the Net for a more prestigious debut at the Pennsylvania Academy's "Special Exhibition of Paintings by American Artists at Home and in Europe" in November and December of 1881. The national critical establishment gathered to inspect this important show, where Eakins' paintings hung alongside those of his American contemporaries working in Europe.
United in their praise of Eakins' accomplishment as a figure painter, the reviewers of Mending the Net divided over the "theory" that would lavish such skill on such a "commonplace" topic. While some found the picture dull and inartistic, those looking for modern, local subject matter were rhapsodic. The progressive critic Mariana Griswold van Rensselaer noted that "one of the best and most valuable things in the room is Mr. Eakins' Mending the Net; good as painter's work and valuable as a fresh rendering of a distinctly local and unhackneyed theme. There is no one who is doing more than Mr. Eakins to show how our native material, unglossed and unpoeticized, may be made available in artistic work. No more necessary lesson can be taught our students than this." ("Picture Exhibitions in Philadelphia--II," American Architect and Building News, vol. 10, December 31, 1881, pp. 311-12) The critic of the New York World likewise complimented the "fresh departure" in Eakins' work, noting the "originality of conception and marvelously clever treatment of the figure." Each one was "exquisitely drawn, perfectly modelled, full of life and action and individuality, and painted, moreover, in the most broad and decided and delightful way." ("Art in Philadelphia," November 21, 1881) Less admiring remarks came from the reviewer in the Art Journal (June 1882, pp. 190-91) who did not find that the figures satisfied "the requirements of a picture" and the New York Times--rarely a friendly viewer of Eakins' work--where his style was characterized as "severe, unpoetical, uncompromising," "dry and unimaginative" ("Academy of Design," March 30, 1882). Harper's Weekly reproduced a line cut of the painting and called it "undoubtedly the most pleasing work that this able but eccentric artist has thus far executed." ("The Philadelphia Art Exhibition," Harper's Weekly, vol. 25, December 10, 1881, pp. 827-828)
Encouraged by this response, Eakins must have been eager to capitalize on his success at the next exhibition opportunity, early in 1882; the annual display of the American Watercolor Society in New York. His watercolors had been welcomed at their shows since 1874, warmly reviewed by the art press, and purchased by collectors. (see K.A. Foster, Makers of the American Watercolor Movement, Ph. D. diss., Yale University, 1982, chapter 4; and Thomas Eakins Rediscovered, chapter 9) Hoping for renewed favor, he sent his first Gloucester watercolor, Shad Fishing on the Delaware, at Gloucester of 1881, and another, Mending the Net, dated 1882 and probably finished just in time for the entry deadline in January. Slightly larger than his first watercolor, but with fewer figures, Mending the Net was listed at a lower price in the catalogue--$150--but consciously evoked the subject and mood of his highly-praised oil.
The watercolor Mending the Net, like the oil, must have been based on photographic studies, although no exactly parallel images have been found among Eakins' extant camera work. However, the figures share the same delicacy and intensity of observation seen in the larger oil, and two negatives and an oil sketch show the same stretch of beach, strewn with nets and floaters. Another image showing the same white-shirted man in a similar pose (figure b) hints at a lost negative that carried the exact pose. This white-shirted man is the protagonist of the picture, not only because he demonstrates the activity in Eakins' title, but because he stands exactly along the central axis of the picture, directly on the painter's (and viewer's) sight line.
The man asymmetrically seated at the left is literally a more off-beat figure, not seen in any of Eakins' photographs and clearly not a fisherman by dress or posture. He adds visual interest (while directing attention back to the net-mender) and injects a note of friendly companionship to the scene. At the same time, this watching figure enhances our feeling of detachment, for both men are too far away for us to properly recognize them or understand their relationship, and both figures draw into themselves, in poses of self-enclosure and isolation. By placing the figures deep in space, under a noonday sun that shrinks their shadows into pools at their feet, and setting the viewer position very low, at the knees of the net mender, Eakins made sure that the figures seem far away from us and distinct from one another. The sense of separation is increased by the abstractness of the beach, strewn with ambiguous suggestions of grass, drying nets, and bobblers, only understood clearly in the photos and oil sketch of this same spot.
Opinions of the Gloucester watercolors divided in a familiar pattern. Leslie W. Miller, who saw these same two pictures in Philadelphia later that spring, found them "depressingly commonplace." "These hard, photographic little figures will have to be accepted as 'conscientious,' I suppose, since all of the kindly critics will have it so, but in their labored feebleness of execution, as well as their singularly inartistic conception, one wonders what relation they can possibly bear to art." ("Water-Color Exhibition at Philadelphia," The American Architect and Building News, vol. 11, April 22, 1882, p. 185) The kindlier critic of the Art Journal indeed seems to have seen two different pictures, each "distinguished by the figure-drawing, and breadth which finds no sheet of paper too small to admit of the extent of horizon." ("Art Notes," Art Journal, 1882, p. 94) This disparity of taste was embraced by a single reviewer who "reckoned" that Eakins "was among the first of Philadelphia artists," and among the first to be criticized. "He is at the head of an important art school, but he is the slave of certain theories and his works are characterized by a dreary mannerism. We have had many of Mr. Eakins' pictures exhibited in New York, and they have been very generally and rather roughly criticised by connoisseurs. It is a pleasant variation to be able to speak pleasantly, even warmly of Mr. Eakins' work in the Water-color Exhibition." With evident relief, the reviewer admired Eakins' "vigorous and well-drawn" figures that "tell their story at a glance, and still leave something to be found out on further study. This artist is always a clever draughtsman and his failings as a colorist are less conspicuous in these water-color pictures than in any of his pictures we have seen." ("Fine Arts: The American Water-Color Society," The Independent, February 16, 1882, p. 8)
If this reviewer was somewhat back-handed in complimenting Eakins, Mariana van Rensselaer was consistently supportive. She had found the "commonplace citizens" in Eakins' shad fishing oils "genuine, fresh and clever," ("Picture Exhibitions in Philadelphia.--II," pp. 311-12) so it was no surprise that she described his watercolors as "two of the most capable things in the rooms, two small pictures of Delaware fishermen, complete in their bold yet accurate modeling on so small a scale, and in their strong local flavor." In her opinion, Eakins took "first honors" in the department of "valuable" landscapes dealing with "local material of a so-called prosaic sort. If our artists are to develop a truly national school it is with such materials that they will most often have to cope." To van Rensselaer, artistic treatment of such themes was much more valuable than equally competent work on faraway and conventional topics, and she linked Eakins to Weir, Twachtman, Bunker and Tryon, who all showed "locally characteristic work." ("Water-Colors in New York," The American Architect and Building News, vol. 11, April 8, 1882, pp. 160-61)
Such generally favorable remarks inspired Eakins to exhibit the watercolor Mending the Net in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, and Washington in 1882, and then in Boston in the fall of 1883. He continued to send other Gloucester oils and watercolors to various exhibitions through 1886, although he generally ceased producing and exhibiting watercolors after 1885. Only the oil version of Mending the Net, evidently one of his personal favorites, would be exhibited again (five times) in his lifetime.
When the watercolor version of Mending the Net emerged again in the Eakins memorial exhibition at the Pennsylvania Academy in 1917, it was still in the collection of its first owner, Dr. Horatio C. Wood. One of Eakins' first patrons, Wood bought The Courtship of circa 1878 (The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California) not long after it was painted, and he sent his son James to study with Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy. In the miserable spring of 1886, after Eakins was fired by the directors of the Academy, Wood paid Eakins $150 to paint his portrait--a small sum, especially for a fine, full-length image, but an important gesture of faith. In November of the same year, Wood purchased Mending the Net for $75.00--half Eakins' original asking price. Such moral and financial support was backed up by the concerned attention of a physician. A professor at the University of Pennsylvania specializing in nervous diseases, pharmacology and therapeutics, Wood may have advised Eakins during the stressful aftermath of his departure from the Academy. Part owner in the B-T Ranch in Dakota Territory, Wood made it possible for Eakins to enjoy a much-needed "camp cure" there in 1887. (on Eakins' trauma and recovery during this period, see K.A. Foster and C. Leibold, Writing About Eakins, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1989, pp. 69-95)
Another pioneer in the therapy of nervous diseases was Wood's colleague, Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, who likewise may have counseled Eakins in his moments of depression in 1886-87. Mitchell received a gift from Eakins much earlier, about 1877: Whistling for Plover of 1874 (Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York). Mitchell's gift was one of Eakins' first watercolors; Mending the Net, which was one of his last, made a remarkable pendant piece for his colleague, Wood. The two doctors may have recognized the similarities shared by their pictures: nearly identical in size, with the horizon at the same place in each image, both watercolors feature small figures set in midday sunlight in an alluvial landscape cut only by a sliver of water entering from the right. Wooden bobbers--or plover--scatter into the distance of each. Eakins' delicate touch grew slightly broader in Mending the Net, reinforcing a more important change in the treatment of the figures: both groups are equally absorbed, but the hunter in Whistling for Plover if pulled close and turned to face us, his activity and expression easily understood, the sound of his whistling easily read; he is outer-directed, an accessible but ultimately extroverted facade. By contrast, the Gloucester men are pushed back and turned away, their actions and identities masked, their interaction ambiguous. The tone is cooler and quieter, the ambience almost noiseless, matching the mood of introspection seen in much of Eakins' work after 1876. The bright, physical presence of the sportsmen has been replaced by dreamier, more introverted figures who--even from a distance--express the activity of the mind. Remarking on the detachment of the net menders in 1882, one critic identified the strength in this new work by describing Eakins as "our best master" at the art of portraying "mere thinking." (C. Cook, "The Art Gallery: The Water-Color Society's Exhibition," Art Amateur, vol. 6, March 1882, p. 74) Ultimately a picture about work, rest, peace, sanity, and existential isolation, Mending the Net made a good object of contemplation for doctor or patient.
Christie's is grateful to Kathleen A. Foster for contributing this catalogue essay.