''Wrestlers'' is a name shared by three closely related 1899 paintings by American artist

Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (; July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists. For the length ...

, ( Goodrich catalog #317, #318, #319). The

Los Angeles County Museum of Art The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is an art museum located on Wilshire Boulevard in the Miracle Mile, Los Angeles, California, Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles. LACMA is on Museum Row, adjacent to the La Brea Tar Pits (George C. Pa ...

(LACMA) owns the finished painting (G-317), and the

oil sketch An oil sketch or oil study is an artwork made primarily in oil paint in preparation for a larger, finished work. Originally these were created as preparatory studies or modelli, especially so as to gain approval for the design of a larger commissi ...

(G-318). The

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

(PMA) owns a slightly smaller unfinished version (G-319). All three works depict a pair of nearly naked men engaged in a

wrestling Wrestling is a series of combat sports involving grappling-type techniques such as clinch fighting, throws and takedowns, joint locks, pins and other grappling holds. Wrestling techniques have been incorporated into martial arts, combat ...

match. The setting for the finished painting is the

Quaker City Barge Club Fairmount Rowing Association is an amateur rowing club, founded in 1877. The facility, located at #2 Boathouse Row in the historic Boathouse Row of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, is on the National Register of Historic Places. Fairmount originally ...

(defunct), which once stood on Philadelphia's

Boathouse Row Boathouse Row is a historic site located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on the east bank of the Schuylkill River just north of the Fairmount Water Works and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It consists of a row of 15 boathouses housing social and ro ...

History

Eakins painted a series of works depicting scullers on the

Schuylkill River The Schuylkill River ( , ) is a river running northwest to southeast in eastern Pennsylvania. The river was improved by navigations into the Schuylkill Canal, and several of its tributaries drain major parts of Pennsylvania's Coal Region. It fl ...

in the 1870s. In the late 1890s, he painted three major works depicting boxers—'' Taking the Count'' (1898),

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

; '' Salutat'' (1898),

Addison Gallery of American Art The Addison Gallery of American Art is an academic museum dedicated to collecting American art, organized as a department of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. History Directors of the gallery include Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr. (1940– ...

; '' Between Rounds'' (1899), Philadelphia Museum of Art. Study for Wrestlers

On May 22, 1899, Eakins had two wrestlers pose in his 4th-floor studio at 1729 Mount Vernon Street,

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

. Three days earlier, he had written to his friend, sportswriter Clarence Cranmer: "I am going to start the wrestling picture on Monday at half past two. I wish you could find it convenient to be at the studio and help us with advice as to positions and so forth." The artist's protégé Samuel Murray may have been present; he modeled a small sculpture of the wrestlers that is also dated 1899. Eakins painted the works from the live models and from a nearly identical photograph, that may have been taken that day. The photograph shows the wrestler on top holding the other in a

half nelson A nelson hold is a grappling hold which is executed by one person from behind the opponent, generally when both are on the mat face down with the opponent under the aggressor. One or both arms are used to encircle the opponent's arm under the armpi ...

and crotch hold. PMA's unfinished version (G-319) was painted before the finished painting (G-317), and is thought to be an abandoned composition rather than a

study Study or studies may refer to: General * Education **Higher education * Clinical trial * Experiment * Observational study * Research * Study skills, abilities and approaches applied to learning Other * Study (art), a drawing or series of drawi ...

.Theodor Siegl, ''The Thomas Eakins Collection: The Philadelphia Museum of Art'' (PMA, 1978), pp. 149–50. LACMA's finished painting (G-317) is larger, and features a well-defined setting with additional figures in the background. LACMA's oil sketch (G-318) varies from the other paintings in the position of the head and shoulders of the wrestler on top. Author Allen Guttmann has compared Eakins' ''Wrestlers'' to

George Luks George Benjamin Luks (August 13, 1867 – October 29, 1933) was an American artist, identified with the aggressively realistic Ashcan School of American painting. After travelling and studying in Europe, Luks worked as a newspaper illustrator a ...

' '' The Wrestlers'' (1905) and

Max Slevogt Max Slevogt (8 October 1868 – 20 September 1932) was a German Impressionist painter and illustrator, best known for his landscapes. He was, together with Lovis Corinth and Max Liebermann, one of the foremost representatives in Germany of t ...

's ''Wrestling School'' (1893), writing that all three paintings depict pairs of nude wrestling men lying on the ground in

grappling hold A grappling hold, commonly referred to simply as a hold that in Japanese is referred to as ''katame-waza'' ( "grappling technique"), is any specific grappling, wrestling, judo, or other martial art grip that is applied to an opponent. Grapplin ...

Provenances

G-317

Eakins painted the work for the National Academy Museum in New York in 1902 as his so-called diploma painting when he was inducted into membership. 70 years later, the academy sold it to the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio. In 2005, Columbus sold it to Adelson Galleries in New York. In 2006 LACMA acquired it as the gift of Cecile C. Bartman, at one time a museum docent, and the Cecile and Fred Bartman Foundation.

G-319

Eakins died in 1916, and a collection of his unsold paintings was exhibited at the 1926

Sesquicentennial Exposition The Sesqui-Centennial International Exposition of 1926 was a world's fair in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its purpose was to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the United States Declaration of Independence, and the 50th anniversary o ...

in Philadelphia. PMA Director

Fiske Kimball Sidney Fiske Kimball (1888 – 1955) was an American architect, architectural historian and museum director. A pioneer in the field of historic preservation, architectural preservation in the United States, he played a leading part in the re ...

saw the abandoned version of ''Wrestlers'' at the world's fair, and inquired about buying it. According to Kimball, Cranmer (who was acting as the dealer for Eakins's widow) said the abandoned version had been valued low, and had not been included in the Eakins memorial exhibitions of a decade earlier. "He ranmersaid he would find out the price. It was $400. I bought it and by Christmas 1926 it was hanging in the library at

Lemon Hill Lemon Hill is a Federal-style mansion in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia, built from 1799 to 1800 by Philadelphia merchant Henry Pratt. The house is named after the citrus fruits that Pratt cultivated on the property in the early 19th century. ...

." Letters from Cranmer to Kimball in the PMA Archives identify the wrestler on top as Joseph McCann, but do not identify the man on the bottom. Kimball died in 1955, and made the abandoned version a bequest to his museum.

G-318

William Preston Harrison bought the oil sketch for ''Wrestlers'' in 1927, from a touring exhibition of Eakins works. Harrison died in 1940, and made the early sketch a bequest to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Eileen Fort, "Whither the Wrestlers." ''American Quarterly'', vol. 62 no. 2, 2010, pp. 395-402.

References

External links

''Wrestlers'' (G-317) at LACMAStudy for ''Wrestlers'' (G-318), LACMA
{{DEFAULTSORT:Wrestlers Paintings by Thomas Eakins 1899 paintings Paintings in the Philadelphia Museum of Art Paintings in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Sports paintings Wrestling culture