The Honorable John A. Thorton 1903

Thomas Eakins painted The Honorable John A. Thornton with oils, and what I see is a painting about seeing, about rendering a person and his place in the world. Eakins uses a muted palette, mostly browns and tans, creating a somber, almost melancholic atmosphere. Look at the way he builds up the form of Thornton's face with subtle gradations of tone. You can almost feel the weight of the man’s gaze. The brushstrokes are visible but not distracting, as though Eakins wanted to capture not just Thornton's likeness, but also something of his inner life. There is an interesting echo here with the work of Whistler, in that both artists are interested in the figure as a tonal study, and this feels like a radical move, an embrace of ambiguity, of the idea that a painting doesn't need to tell a story to be meaningful.