The Annotated Mona Lisa: Pages 86 - 88

Question 1

Eakins: The Anatomist

Answer 1

• Thomas Eakins (1844-1916)
• approached his profession logically and systematically, mastering the necessary technical skills in progressive stages
• one of his pupils, Henry O. Tanner (1859-1937) became the first important black painter and the most successful black American artist before Romare Bearden and Jacob Lawrence
• from the late 1870s he mostly painted portraits
• today he is considered America’s finest nineteenth-century painter

Question 2

Whistler: Art for Art’s Sake

Answer 2

• James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
• his first portraits, landscapes, and night pictures were less representations of a subject than experiments in decorative design
• most famous work “Arrangement in Gray and Black No.1”

Question 3

Sargent: Portraits of High Society

Answer 3

• John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
• painted with Monet at Giverny, and modeled himself after the Spanish painter Velazquez
• was a sensation by the age of 25