How does this artwork elucidate its Composition?
Salutat, Between Rounds (a portion of which was executed separately as Billy Smith) and Taking the Count are a series of three large boxing paintings done by Eakins. The former two depict events surrounding a boxing match that took place on April 22, 1898. Featherweight Tim Callahan fought featherweight Billy Smith in a match that was close until the final round, when Callahan gained the advantage and won the fight. However, for Salutat, Eakins chose to depict Smith as the winner. In the work, Smith raises his hand to salute the audience, in the style of a gladiator. On the painting's original frame Eakins carved the words "DEXTRA VICTRICE CONCLAMANTES SALVTAT" (With the victorious right hand, he salutes those shouting [their approval]).As with a number of other Eakins works, the rendering of the figures is extremely precise, such that it has allowed art historians to identify individual members of the audience. While working on the boxing pictures, friends would visit the studio, and Eakins invited them to "stay a while and I'll put you in the picture." For Salutat, audience members include Eakins's friend Louis Kenton (wearing eyeglasses and a bow tie), sportswriter Clarence Cranmer (wearing a bowler hat), David Jordan (brother of Letitia Wilson Jordan, whom Eakins painted in Portrait of Letitia Wilson Jordan), photographer Louis Husson (next to Jordan), Eakins's student Samuel Murray, and Eakins's father Benjamin Eakins.Smith is bathed in soft white light, which illuminates his muscles. Amid a general tonality of warm grays and browns that contains no strong chromatic notes, the skin tones of the three main figures are pale. All three men have the quality of relief sculpture, and with Smith's figure separate from those of his seconds, they appear to move across the canvas in an arrangement reminiscent of a frieze.
boxing right frieze gladiator Portrait of Letitia Wilson Jordan Featherweight Taking the Count Billy Smith Between Rounds Samuel Murray