Thomas Eakins is recognized today as the strongest purely realistic artist of late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century America. But in his lifetime he was the most neglected and misunderstood major painter of the period. Many of his chief works were rejected by the art establishment. He sold few paintings and received few commissions. He was a great innovating teacher, but was forced to resign as head of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts by the academy's prudish directors. He had only a singe one-man exhibition in his whole life. Aside from a few friendly critics in early years, reviewers attacked or ignored him until his old age. Not one article on him as a painter was published in his lifetime. Yet so strong was his character that he continued to create uncompromisingly realistic works throughout the forty years of his professional career. -- Preface.