The Concert Singer is a painting by Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), depicting the singer Weda Cook (1867–1937). The work, commenced in 1890 and completed in 1892, was Eakins's first full-length portrait of a woman. It is now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The Concert Singer was one of a series of portraits Eakins painted of Philadelphia natives who were prominent in science and culture, with the intent of producing major showpieces for exhibition. The painting exemplifies Eakins's desire to truthfully record visual appearances with "historical value."
Eakins drew, painted, or sculpted at least twenty-two works that dealt with the visual aspects of music; at one point, this included "eleven straight portraits of musicians and musicologists", of which The Concert Singer has been called "the finest".
Read more about The Concert Singer: Composition, Compositional History, Provenance
Famous quotes containing the words concert and/or singer:
“Science is unflinchingly deterministic, and it has begun to force its determinism into morals. On some shining tomorrow a psychoanalyst may be put into the box to prove that perjury is simply a compulsion neurosis, like beating time with the foot at a concert or counting the lampposts along the highway.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“In the race for wealth, a neighbor tries to outdo his neighbor, but this strife is good for men. For the potter envies potter, and the carpenter the carpenter, and the beggar rivals the beggar, and the singer the singer.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)