[Female portrait]

Art Historical Context

In the late 1880s, American realist Thomas Eakins created intimate *Female Portrait*, a glass positive transparency capturing a woman's profile with striking clarity and precision. Housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Photographs Department (gift of Charles Bregler 1947), this exemplifies Eakins' use of photography as both an artistic medium and a tool for his paintings. Known for his unflinching realism and anatomical—evident in masterpieces like *The Gross Clinic*—Eakins to the camera to study light, form, and human anatomy, often producing detailed studies of friends, family, and mode...

About the Artist

Thomas Eakins · 1844–1916

Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was an American painter, photographer, and educator who carried 19th-century American Realism to its highest achievement. Based in Philadelphia throughout his life, he created uncompromising portraits and genre scenes that depicted American life with a scientific precision and psychological depth unprecedented in his time. Born into an educated Philadelphia family, Eakin...