Harrison S. Morris

Never was a pairing of artist and sitter so intertwined with the history of the Pennsylvania Academy than in this portrait. The legacy of Eakins, a former Academy student, teacher, and director of the School, shaped the identity and reputation of this institution long after his bitter departure in 1886. Similarly, Harrison Morris, the Academy’s first professional staff member, was primarily responsible for the richness and character of the Museum’s late nineteenth-century collections. An energetic businessman with an artistic bent, Morris was appointed managing director of Museum and School operations in 1892. As a result of his connections to some of the finest contemporary American artists, the Academy developed a progressive collecting and exhibition practice and opened its doors to a more diverse public. Morris was also responsible for rekindling relations with Eakins. This mutual admiration of painter and model resulted in one of Eakins’s finest male portraits. While noting in his memoirs the difficulty of posing for such a methodical painter, Morris concluded: "the portrait won by such waiting is a precious return in full for all suffering. It will endure…long after its counterpart is forgotten.”