The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
America's oldest academy, remade in one decade by Eakins: casts dismissed as imitations of imitations, a dissection room with a lion on the table, and a life class scheduled to the minute.
The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in 1805, spent its first seventy years as a training ground more than a school: students copied gallery pictures and drew the cast collection (acquired from Paris beginning 1805), with a Life Academy room from 1810 and real structure only from 1856, admission to life requiring age twenty-one and a committee-approved cast drawing. Then Thomas Eakins returned, teaching from 1876, professor 1878, director 1882, and rebuilt American art education on scientific study of the figure: casts dismissed ("an imitation of imitations"), students sent to the live model as early as possible, a dissection room with human and animal cadavers, horses, dogs, a lion, whose dissected parts were cast in plaster and hung in the studios, sculpture modeled from life, photography as an anatomical tool, and the life class run on a printed monthly structure: two weeks of one long pose, a week of daily poses, a week of timed sketches at five, ten, and twenty-five minutes. His insistence on the fully nude model for both sexes ended it: removing a male model's loincloth in the women's life class forced his 1886 resignation. His student Anshutz carried the anatomy-grounded curriculum on, and by the century's end Chase and Cecilia Beaux layered European brushwork over the Eakins spine.
How the system worked
Open enrollment into the antique galleries for most of the century, with the life class gated: before the Eakins reforms, a student had to be over twenty-one and submit a cast drawing for approval by a committee of artists. Eakins's printed curriculum (from 1876-78, with board member Fairman Rogers) replaced patience with sequence: elementary and advanced courses in a catalog.
Three eras in one institution. To 1876: self-directed copying and cast drawing, artist-professors "routinely accessible," the first paid Professor of Drawing and Painting (Christian Schussele) only from 1868. 1876-1886: the Eakins school, sequential, scientific, figure-centered. After 1886: the Anshutz synthesis, then Chase (1896-1909) and Cecilia Beaux (from 1895) adding the European painterly layer.
The academic ladder, then its inversion: casts of heads, casts of figures, then life, each promotion by the professor's satisfaction with a drawing. Eakins compressed the front of the ladder, pushing students to the live model "as soon as practical" and to paint early, on the argument that nature, not the antique, was the Greeks' own teacher.
Promotion by satisfying the Professor of Drawing and Painting at each stage (the 1885-86 Circular splits the antique into a heads class and a full-figure class); no degree, the American academy pattern: standing came from the annual exhibitions and the prize funds.
The 1885-86 Circular's week, verbatim in structure: men's life class Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings 7:30 to 9:30 and Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday mornings 9 to 12; women's life class Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings 9 to 12 and Tuesday, Thursday afternoons 1 to 4; the antique open daily; modeling for both sexes; anatomy and perspective lectures throughout.
Professorial, and in the Eakins decade, surgical: anatomy lectures with Dr. W. W. Keen, visiting surgeons at the lectern, the dissection room as the correction of the eye itself.
Tuition-charging through the century (the American model), with the antique galleries the cheap open door and the structured classes the paid core. The Circular priced the sequence; exact schedules varied by decade.
The curriculum, in training order
Cast drawing split by the 1885-86 Circular into a heads class and a full-figure class, promotion by a drawing done to the professor's satisfaction, the pre-Eakins gate to everything.
Pre-1876: age twenty-one plus a committee-approved cast drawing earned the life room.
The life class on a printed monthly rhythm: weeks one and two, a single long pose; week three, a new pose every day or night; week four, timed sketches.
Speed and structure trained in the same month as sustained study: the schedule is the pedagogy.
The Eakins signature: a working dissection room with human and animal cadavers (horses, dogs, cats, and famously a lion), anatomy lectures with Dr. Keen, and plaster casts made from the dissections and hung in the life studios as permanent reference.
The sculpture class Eakins introduced, modeling the body from the living figure, a first for American art schools, run for both men and women.
Against the drawing-for-years tradition: students put to paint "as soon as practical" to grasp form in true color, with photography admitted as a study tool for anatomy and motion.
Materials, models, and the room
- The cast collection, then its demotion. Paris-bought casts from 1805 built the school's first spine; Eakins's verdict on them, "an imitation of imitations," inverted their status without removing them.
- The dissection casts. Because cadavers perish, the Eakins classes cast their dissections in plaster, anatomy made permanent and hung where the models posed.
- The camera. Photography as sanctioned equipment for anatomy and motion study, the Muybridge collaboration era, decades before most academies allowed it in the room.
- The nude model, both classes. Eakins's non-negotiable: completely nude models for men's and women's life classes alike, the principle that ended his directorship in 1886.
The people
Who taught
Christian Schussele · first paid professor, 1868-1879
The school's first salaried Professor of Drawing and Painting: structure's beginning.
Thomas Eakins · taught 1876, professor 1878, director 1882-1886
The revolution: the figure studied as science, the life class as the center, and the resignation that proved the point's cost.
Thomas Anshutz · from 1886
Eakins's student and successor: the anatomy spine kept, the confrontation retired; taught Henri, Sloan, and the Ashcan generation.
William Merritt Chase · 1896-1909
The European painterly layer over the Eakins foundation.
Cecilia Beaux · from 1895
The academy's first full-time woman instructor: Julian-trained, and the proof the American academy could promote what the European ones barred.
Who trained here
Thomas Eakins · student 1860s, before Paris
PAFA to Gérôme and back: the school's greatest student became its re-founder.
Robert Henri · under Anshutz, 1886-1888
The Eakins line carried through Anshutz into The Art Spirit and the Ashcan school.
John Sloan · under Anshutz, 1890s
Ashcan realism's draftsman, Anshutz-trained.
Cecilia Beaux · student 1870s-80s
From the antique galleries to the faculty: the school's own ladder, walked by a woman first.
The primary record
- The Circular of the Committee on Instruction for 1885-1886: the Eakins curriculum in the school's own print, the monthly life structure, the weekly schedule, the two antique classes.
- Eakins, as quoted across the standard sources: "The Greeks did not study the antique... nature is just as varied and just as beautiful in our day as she was in the time of Phidias."
- The Philadelphia Museum of Art's Eakins anatomical casts (Front of Male Torso, 1880): the dissection pedagogy's surviving objects.
- The 1886 dismissal record: the loincloth incident in the women's life class and the forced resignation.
Open questions
- Anshutz's post-1886 renewed appreciation for cast drawing is asserted in the research but flagged unverified; stated softly here.
- "Drawing from the flat" as a mandatory PAFA first step is the era's standard rather than PAFA-documented.
- Fee schedules varied by decade and are not reconstructed here beyond the tuition-charging model.
Common questions
What is the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts?
America's oldest art school and museum, founded in Philadelphia in 1805. For its first seventy years it trained loosely, casts, copying, an accessible professor; from 1876 to 1886 Thomas Eakins rebuilt it into the most scientifically rigorous figure school in America, and its later faculty (Anshutz, Chase, Cecilia Beaux) carried that spine into the twentieth century.
What did Thomas Eakins change at PAFA?
Nearly everything: casts demoted ("an imitation of imitations"), students sent to the live model and to paint early, a working dissection room whose cadaver studies were cast in plaster and kept in the studios as reference, clay modeling from the living figure, the camera admitted for anatomy and motion, and a printed monthly life-class rhythm that closed each month with timed five, ten, and twenty-five minute poses.
Why was Eakins dismissed from PAFA?
His insistence on the completely nude model for all students collided with propriety: in 1886, after removing a male model's loincloth in the women's life class, he was forced to resign the directorship. The curriculum he built largely survived him, through his student and successor Thomas Anshutz.
How was the PAFA life class scheduled?
By the school's own 1885-86 Circular: men Monday, Wednesday, Friday evenings 7:30-9:30 plus Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday mornings 9-12; women Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings 9-12 plus Tuesday, Thursday afternoons 1-4; the antique open daily; and each month ran two weeks of one pose, a week of daily poses, and a week of timed sketches.
Who trained at PAFA?
Eakins himself (before Paris and Gérôme), then under Anshutz the Ashcan generation: Robert Henri, John Sloan, and their circle. Cecilia Beaux went from student to the academy's first full-time woman instructor in 1895, the American academy promoting what the European ones still barred.
From the stories
The Women Who Paid Double: The counterpoint: the academy that opened the life class in 1868 and promoted Cecilia Beaux in 1895.
Part of the Academies atlas, how painting was actually taught, system by system. The living version of this question: atelier vs online course, and the painters themselves in the Painter Atlas.