Photographs of a Standing Male Nude Model ("Joseph Smith")
Medium
albumen prints from glass negatives
Dimensions
image: 8.2 × 2.9 cm · matted: 35.6 × 45.7 cm
Classification
Photograph
Department
Photography
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
John L. Severance Fund
Accession Number
1997.131
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
Eakins’s earliest use of photography was as a visual aid to painting. In the early 1880s, he began photographic experiments that would allow him to create a more accurate and convincing rendering of anatomy and the human form in motion. Recognizing the assistance these visual reminders could provide the artist, Eakins and his circle began photographing a series of nude forms modeled by men, women, and children. These images, which he called the Naked Series, consist of seven contact-printed phot...