A Drawing Manual by Thomas Eakins

by Thomas Eakins, Amy Werbel (Contributor), Kathleen A. Foster (Editor)

While a teacher at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the celebrated American artist Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) prepared a drawing manual for his students. The manuscript developed out of his famous lectures at the Academy on linear perspective, mechanical drawing, reflections, and sculptural relief and included illustrations by the artist. Following his forced resignation from the Academy in 1886, Eakins abandoned plans to publish the manual, and the parts were dispersed. Today, drafts of the manuscript reside at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and at the Academy, which also holds many of the illustrations.
A Drawing Manual brings together Eakins’s text, based on a concordance of the drafts, and his original drawings for the project. This remarkable publication reveals Eakins’s personality and teaching philosophy, demonstrating why the artist was renowned as a plainspoken, effective teacher. In her fascinating introduction, Kathleen A. Foster sketches the background of the manuscript in the artist’s life and the story of the publication project. Amy B. Werbel provides an illuminating essay on Eakins’s place in the tradition of perspective drawing.
This book is essential for any student, scholar, curator, or individual interested in American art and art education.

Genres: Art

128 pages, Hardcover

First published March 11, 2005

Reviews

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Manual is a compilation of Eakins' lectures given at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the 1880's. Are you serious about drawing? Then brush up on your algebra and geometry for this technical book on measuring perspective and spatial relationships. While many contemporary artists no longer use this method and judge by eye, for those of us who are hobbyists, this Manual answers the basic question of "How did he do that!" So that we might do it too.

[Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Credentials of Thomas Eakins as a Draughtsman

Just when you thought you knew all the ins and outs of the life of one of America's greatest artists, Thomas Eakins, even through attending one of the many fine museum exhibitions of his work that seem to be always in circulation, up pops this publication brought out some five years ago - a first publication of Eakins' 'textbook' on drawing, based on his lectures at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. In the well written introductory comments curator and editor Kathleen A. Foster -with tongue in cheek - shares the fact that Eakins rarely spent time with pencil in hand, preferring to guide his students to the brush as soon as possible.

In an essay by Amy B. Werbel we learn that Thomas Eakins was a devoted teacher and had planned to publish all of his lectures and notes and attendant scribbles at some point in his life, but when the scandalous dismissal of Eakins from the Academy occurred, the promised manuscripts were tucked away privately. But thanks to Yale University Press and the Pennsylvania Academy of Art we now have access to the artist's fine techniques of perspective drawing. The drawing manual offers student artists a unique opportunity to meet Eakins as instructor, to get a feel for his personality and teaching philosophy, and understand why he was renowned as an effective teacher. According to Amy Foster "The first five chapters are the most detailed and complete, and the most thoroughly illustrated, carrying the student through the principles and methods of three drawing systems: linear perspective, mechanical drawing and isometric drawing." This then is indeed a find for all art students and art lovers, especially those who appreciated representational art.

Grady Harp

[Marc · Rating 4 out of 5]

A highly-technical drawing manual covering linear perspective, mechanical drawing, isometric drawing, reflections in water, and relief drawings. Anecdotal and historical info about Eakins himself is included and you get a real sense of how seriously he took his role as an artist and a teacher. His is an approach that relies heavily on exactness, measurement, and rigor. This is a very slender book and each section has been distilled down to what Eakins considers the essentials.