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                        JeffNEWS, August 16, 1994
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Susan Eakins's Painting Comes to Jefferson
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Russell W. Schaedler, MD, the Plimpton-Pugh Professor of Microbiology 
and Immunology and chairman of the University Art Committee, has arranged 
with the French Benevolent Society of Philadelphia for a long-term loan of 
an oil painting by Susan Macdowell Eakins (1851 - 1938). You can see the 
picture, Portrait of a Soldier, in the anteroom of the Eakins Gallery in 
Jefferson Alumni Hall.

"Susan Eakins is best known today as the wife of this country's 
preeminent portraitist, Thomas Eakins, whose celebrated painting, The Gross 
Clinic, hangs in Jefferson Alumni Hall's Eakins Gallery," said University 
art historian, Julie S. Berkowitz. "While Susan Eakins's first concern was, 
indeed, furthering her husband's career, she was an accomplished artist in 
her own right."

Mrs. Eakins, who kept her own studio in the couple's home at 1729 Mt. 
Vernon Street in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia, continued to paint, 
although intermittently, during her marriage. Accomplished in both 
watercolor and oil painting, she was also one of the earliest local artists 
to experiment with photography, according to Ms. Berkowitz.

Susan Eakins was inspired to paint Portrait of a Soldier in 1917 after 
seeing a photograph and article about Julien Lemordant in a French 
magazine. He was a famous French artist and pacifist who, inspired by 
patriotism, became a heroic World War I soldier and later, unfortunately, a 
casualty. In battle, he suffered the worst affliction possible for an 
artist - blindness.

The touching Eakins painting shows the wounded soldier with his head and 
right eye bandaged, his arms embracing a setter dog. These features are 
taken almost exactly from the magazine photograph.

"Even without knowing the details of Julien Lemordant's war experience," 
Ms. Berkowitz said, "the viewer can sense the figure's vulnerability from 
his gentle communication with the dog, from his morose facial expression 
and slouching posture, from the murky setting and the dramatic contrast of 
the highlights on the stark white bandages with the deep shadows of his 
youthful face."


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