Thomas Eakins was born in 1844, Philadelphia, PA. He studied for 5 years at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where he made drawings from casts. Since he did not have much experience at drawing from live models, he entered Jefferson Medical College and took the regular courses in anatomy, including dissecting cadavers and observing operations.

In 1866 Eakins went to Paris, where he studied academics for three years at the École des Beaux-Arts under Jean Léon Gérôme. While in Europe he also traveled to Italy, Germany and Spain. In Madrid's Prado Museum Eakins discovered the work of Diego Velázquez and Jusepe de Ribera, both of which would have a great influence on his painting. From the seventeenth century painters, he absorbed a precise and uncompromising sense for actuality which he would later apply to portraiture and genre pictures of the life of his native city.

In 1870, Eakins returned to Philadelphia where he would live for the rest of his life, never traveling abroad again.

Eakins painted the subjects of Philadelphia in the 1870s and with uncompromising realism he built his art. His first American paintings were scenes of outdoor life around Philadelphia such as rowing on the Schuylkill River, sailing on the Delaware River, hunting in the New Jersey marshes, and domestic scenes of his family and friends in their homes. His paintings reveal an honesty, a sure grasp of character, and a deep emotional attachment to his community and its people. His paintings had a strong construction, form and three-dimensional design, and clarity of vision that would, forever, mark his style.

Eakins was not only artistic but scientificly gifted as well. His majors interests were anatomy, the science of perspective and higher mathematics. All three played an integral part in his painting. In the 1880's, he began using photography as an aid to painting. He collaborated with the pioneer photographer, Eadweard Muybridge in photographing the motion of men and animals. Eakins ultimately improved on Muybridge's method by using a single camera.

Eakins accepted a teaching position at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in 1876 and in 1879 became acting head of the school. In his quest for realism, Eakin's felt there was a need to study anatomy and make full use of photographic researches. The scientific bent in his work became of less importance than his honesty and depth of characterization. He was attacked for these radical ideas, demanding anatomy and dissection courses be included in an art education and particularly his insistence on using nude live male models in lecture classes on anatomy. Scandalized by the academy trustees, in 1886, after allowing a mixed class of female and male students to draw from a completely nude male model he was forced to resign.

Thomas Eakins was a master of the portrait and realist to a fault. He is often compared to >Rembrandt because of the dramatic play of lighting and the sense of inner truth but during his time these qualities did not make for worldly success. Usually Eakins would ask sitters to pose, then gave them the paintings. Often times, his sitters did not even bother to take their portraits. After the 1880s he suffered increasing oppostition from the academic art world especially when the most famous of his paintings "The Gross Clinic" aroused undesirable controversy because of its unsparing depiction of surgery. This experience was continually repeated in his works. However, despite the public abuse, Eakins continued to paint with the financial support his father had provided.

After his death, Thomas Eakins became known by critics as an outstanding American painter and by many, the greatest the United States ever produced.