Woman in Laced-Bodice Dress

Thomas Eakins, one of America's foremost painters, is less recognized as an important photographer. For approximately twenty years, between 1880 and 1900, he explored the medium, producing portraits, studies for paintings, some quasi-scientific images, many nude studies, as well as costumed figure pieces. In the latter, Eakins posed models in carefully planned settings so that costumes, props, and lighting work together to create a specific mood. Studies of women in historical costumes, from classical garb with casts of ancient statues, to women posing in eighteenth and early nineteenth century dress, reflect the contemporary interests in historical recreations. Several of these photographs were made as preparatory studies for well-known paintings. "Woman in Laced-Bodice Dress," and its companion piece in which the unidentified model is seated, are probably both photographic studies for Eakins' oil "The Artist's Wife and His Setter Dog" (ca. 1884-89, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). As in may of these photographic studies of pensive women in period settings, Eakins concentrated on the figure while ignoring the cluttered and busy background of his studio paraphernalia. This lack of compositional finish marks Eakins as essentially an amateur photographer who nevertheless responded to contemporary trends in artistic photography. The Academy holds hundreds of Eakins's photographic prints and negatives, an invaluable resource for scholarship on the artist.