The Painting
Eakins returned to Philadelphia in July 1870, following four years of study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He was a witness to Schmitt's victory in October. The painting's composition echoes the event by reproducing the weather conditions and position of the sun at the date and time of Schmitt's triumph. Rather than in the midst of the competition, Schmitt is depicted nearly at rest – dragging his oars with the disappearing eddies of his course visible in the water. The location is just downstream of the Columbia Railroad Bridge, the site of the turn in the race.
Eakins, who was also a keen oarsman, painted himself as the rower in the middle distance. He signed the painting – "Eakins, 1871" – on the stern of his scull. This was the first of his almost thirty rowing works – sketches, oil paintings, watercolors, perspective drawings – created by the end of 1874.
The painting shows the influences of his tutors in France, Jean-Léon Gérôme and Léon Bonnat, and of Diego Velázquez, the Spanish artist.
Read more about this topic: Max Schmitt In A Single Scull
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“When I am finishing a picture I hold some God-made object up to it—a rock, a flower, the branch of a tree or my hand—as a kind of final test. If the painting stands up beside a thing man cannot make, the painting is authentic. If there’s a clash between the two, it is bad art.”
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