Singing and Painting the Body: Walt Whitman and Thomas Eakins' Approach to Corporeality

In his famous collection of poems Leaves of Grass (1855), Walt Whitman (1819-1892) celebrates the connection between Man and Nature and explores themes of the body. Sensuality and eroticism are also prominently discussed to the degree that his publishers attempted to persuade the poet to remove some sections. Whitman's focus on the body inevitably caused Leaves of Grass to be characterized as reckless and indecent. Whitman's close friend, painter Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) also shared the poet's fascination for the body and was even more vilified by critics for his detailed rendering of the flesh, his unrestrained study of human physiology and his insistence on seeing the human figure as the most beautiful object in nature. His uncompromising realism along with his supposedly indecent teaching caused his dismissal from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. His masterpiece The Gross Clinic (1875) equally caused scandal and was described as repulsive and a degradation of art. The critical reactions to the vision of the body Whitman and Eakins shared show the impact of Victorian-age morality. This aesthetic prudery seemed particularly old-fashioned in the age of medical and technological progress and did not fit the strong link to Nature central to American culture from the early 19(th) century. This study focuses on the similarities in Whitman and Eakins' treatment of the flesh and their mutual efforts to promote a new understanding of corporeality. Although previous research has looked into the connection between the two American artists, this article aims at being a comprehensive study of the social resonance of corporeal matters in Eakins and Whitman's art.