Thomas Pollock Anshutz (October 5, 1851 – June 16, 1912) was
an American painter and teacher. Co-founder of The Darby School and leader at
the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Anshutz was known for his award winning
portraiture work and working friendship with Thomas Eakins.
Thomas Anshutz was
born in Newport, Kentucky in 1851. He grew up in Newport and Wheeling, West
Virginia. His early art instruction took place at the National Academy of
Design in the early 1870s, where he studied under Lemuel Wilmarth.
In 1875 he moved to Philadelphia and took a class taught by
Thomas Eakins at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, a class which would solidify a
close relationship and influence between Eakins and Anshutz.
In 1892 Anshutz
married Effie Shriver Russell. The two spent their honeymoon in Paris, where
Anshutz attended classes at Académie Julian. In 1893 they returned to
Philadelphia. Later in his life he
proclaimed himself a socialist. He retired from teaching in the fall of 1911
due to poor health and died on June 16, 1912.
In 1876 Anshutz and
Thomas Eakins joined the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Eakins became
Chief Demonstrator of Anatomy while Anshutz continued as his student, and the
student of Christian Schussele. In 1878 Anshutz became Eakins assistant,
eventually replacing Eakins as Chief Demonstrator when Eakins became Professor
of Drawing and Painting. In 1880 he completed his first major work,
Ironworker's Noontime, while still a student.
Ironworker's
Noontime, Anshutz's most well known
painting, depicts several workers on their break in the yard of a foundry.
Painted near Wheeling, West Virginia, it is conceived in a naturalistic style
similar to that of Eakins, although Eakins never painted industrial subjects. The piece was exhibited at the Philadelphia
Sketch Club in 1881 and compared to Eakin's work by art critics. Art historian
Randall C. Griffin has written of it: "One of the first American paintings
to depict the bleakness of factory life, The Ironworkers' Noontime appears to
be a clear indictment of industrialization. Its brutal candor startled critics,
who saw it as unexpectedly confrontational—a chilling industrial snapshot not
the least picturesque or sublime." It is now in the collection of the Fine
Arts Museums of San Francisco.
Around 1880 Eakins became involved in photography,
incorporating it into his classes and artwork. Anshutz and other artists at the
Academy started to make use of the camera, posing models and students to take
photos and making prints for study. Anshutz participated in Eakins The Naked
Series, creating photographs featuring nude models in seven pre-defined
standing poses. He also participated by modeling as well, along with other
colleagues like Eakins, John Laurie Wallace and Covington Few Seiss, who would
pose outdoors nude, often wrestling, swimming and boxing. Eadweard Muybridge
eventually made his way to Philadelphia and Anshutz and Eakins helped build
Muybridge's zoopraxiscope.
Eakins was dismissed
from his position in 1886 and Anshutz took over as art instruction leader at
the Academy. Anshutz would briefly travel to Europe, focusing primarily on his
teaching in Philadelphia. Numerous artists studied under Anshutz, including
George Luks, Charles Demuth, John Sloan, Charles Sheeler, Everett Shinn, John
Marin, William Glackens, and Robert Henri.
As a teacher,
Anshutz, according to art historian Sanford Schwartz, "was known as much
for his approachability as his sarcasm, which apparently wasn't of the
withering variety."
The Anshutz family
regularly vacationed in Holly Beach, New Jersey which served as a creative
place for the painter. There he experimented with watercolors, bright color
palette, and simple compositions. He also photographed the natural environment,
utilizing the images as studies for paintings, specifically Holly Beach and
trips down the Delaware and Maurice rivers. Although Anshutz experimented
persistently with landscape painting, he was more well known for his
portraiture, which won him numerous awards in the 1890s and 1900s.
In 1898 he and Hugh Breckenridge co-founded the Darby
School, a summer school outside of Philadelphia which emphasized plein air
painting. At Darby Anshutz created his most abstract works, a series of bright
oil landscape paintings that were never exhibited. He continued to participate
at Darby until 1910. He served as a member of the National Academy of Design
and president of the Philadelphia Sketch Club.
In 1971 Robert and
Joy McCarty, who lived in the home formerly owned by the Anshutz family in Fort
Washington, Pennsylvania, donated a portion of letters, glass negatives, and
photographs to the Archives of American Art. A second donation from the Anshutz
family took place in 1971 and 1972, which were microfilmed and returned to the family.
