Focus on Archbishop William Henry Elder and explore the Analysis.
The resulting portrait, executed in oil on a 168.1 cm × 114.7 cm canvas, is "a stunning painting, but not because it flatters the Archbishop."Elder is depicted seated in a frontal pose, wearing a black cassock with a violet sash and biretta. The wood–paneled room behind him is left indistinct, and his vestments are depicted in little detail, putting the emphasis on Elder's gnarled hands and weathered features.
Here, as elsewhere in his work, Eakins "did not hesitate to show a sitter as frankly old." Themes of aging and mortality were "as characteristic of [Eakins's] portraiture as costumes and setting were of the portraiture of his contemporaries." Indeed, these themes were so central to Eakins's conception of portraiture as an art form that he once asked a sitter if he could portray him as older than he truly was, writing that he wished "to do a fine piece of work as a work of art and not a likeness."It is unsurprising then that these themes come to the forefront in his portrait of Elder, the oldest of Eakins's clerical subjects. While Eakins did not exaggerate his sitter's age in this case, he uses that heavy emphasis on an Elder's aged features as a way of exploring his psychology, rather than the objective reality of his appearance. "Archbishop Elder's seeming awareness of his own mortality is one of the painting's strongest notes," Schendler writes, "The meditative quality of the portrait is associated with the impression of physical frailty."Both in its composition and in its psychologically penetrating depiction of an aging but still imposing cleric, the portrait of Elder is comparable to Velázquez's Portrait of Innocent X. In sum, it is considered a "magnificent, emotionally captivating" portrayal of "an extraordinary man facing inexorable time."
oil Velázquez's cassock biretta portrait Portrait of Innocent X