Images(4)

William R. Hallowell (1832–1908)

Artist Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins American, 1844–1916

Date1904

MediumOil on canvas

Dimensionsheight and width: 24 1/8 × 20 1/ 4in. (61.3 × 51.4 cm)
frame: 33 1/4 × 29 5/8 × 2 3/8 in. (84.5 × 75.2 × 6 cm)

ClassificationsPaintings

Credit LineGift of Ann and Jim Goodnight

Object number2017.4

On View

On view

Label TextThomas Eakins never sought to flatter his subjects. He was too devoted to truth to “airbrush” a face. Eakins employed an uncompromising realism to penetrate a subject’s character. A disciplined student of anatomy, he spent long hours dissecting cadavers to understand the complexity of bone and muscle under the skin. And that understanding informs this portrait of a friend.

Descended from an old Philadelphia Quaker family, William Robinson Hallowell was a courtly gentleman and a hunting companion of Eakins’s father. Attracted to the older man’s quiet dignity, the artist invited Hallowell to sit for this portrait. When he finished, he gave Hallowell the portrait.
["The People's Collection, Reimagined," 2022]Provenance**Created United States, 1904; given by the artist to the sitter, William Robinson Hallowell (1832–1908), Germantown, PA, 1904 [1]; to son, William Satterthwaite Hallowell, Sr. (1859–1929), Penllyn, PA, 1908; to wife, Anna Jenkins Ferris Hallowell (1865–1941), 1929; Prof. Charles H. Morgan (1902–84), Amherst, MA, n.d.; [Hirschl & Adler Galleries, New York, NY, 1962]; Dr. and Mrs. Irving Levitt, Southfield, MI, 1962; [Alan Pensler, Washington, D.C.]; [Menconi & Schoelkopf, New York, NY, 2006]; Dr. and Mrs. James H. Goodnight, Cary, NC, 2006; given to NCMA, 2017.

[1] Per inscription.
Published ReferencesAlan Burroughs, “Catalogue of Works by Thomas Eakins (1869–1916),” The Arts, vol. 5 (June 1924), 332 (erroneously dated 1905).

Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins: His Life and Work (New York, NY: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933), 199, no. 401.

Selections from the Collection of Hirschl & Adler Galleries, vol. 4 (New York, NY: Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 1962), 12, illus. (color), collection of Mrs. William R. Hallowell.

Sylvan Schendler, Eakins (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1967), 270, no. 148, illus. (b-w), collection of Dr. Irving Levitt.

Milton Esterow, “Collectors: Dr. and Mrs. Irving Levitt,” Art in America, vol. 58 (May–June 1970), 72, 74, illus. (b-w), 77.

Gordon Hendricks, The Life and Work of Thomas Eakins (New York, NY: Grossman Publishers, 1974), 254, illus. (b-w), fig. 279.

Lloyd Goodrich, Thomas Eakins (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), vol. I, p. 89; vol. II, p. 168.

John W. Coffey and Laura Fravel, A Preliminary Catalogue of the Art Collection of Ann and Jim Goodnight (Raleigh: NCMA, 2014), no. 9 [private publication].
Exhibition HistoryRaleigh, NC, North Carolina Museum of Art, "The People's Collection, Reimagined," October 7, 2022–present. Object Rights Statement

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