Focus on this artwork and analyze the Painting.
At 30 by 25 inches (760 mm × 640 mm), the Academy canvas is larger than Eakins' customary format of 24 by 20 inches (610 mm × 510 mm) for a bust portrait. He is seen in formal attire, wearing a dark suit with buttoned waistcoat, white shirt and a dark tie. His hair is unkempt and his mustache unevenly trimmed; the contrast between clothing and grooming alludes to a rebellious nature restrained by cultural mores. Compared to the smaller portrait, there is a greater sense of space and less intense physical immediacy— for John Updike, the National Academy picture "tames down a more truculent and even satanic earlier version"— though in both paintings Eakins makes direct eye contact with the viewer, a motive he very rarely used except for subjects with whom he was most familiar. Rarer still is such emphasis on the eye's liquid reflection, which accents the emotional impact of the image. The pose of the upper body is the same as that which Eakins used in Portrait of Leslie W. Miller, painted in 1901.The painting is a fine example of Eakins' mature technique— "an unmatched demonstration of his absolute control of the medium"— and a powerful psychological study. Flesh and bone structure are painted with small strokes of fluid paint that offer a successful illusion of light-struck form, and at the same time the artist's self-depiction suggests emotional vulnerability. While presenting an expression that has been interpreted as one of "accusation and bitterness", art historian Darrel Sewell has noted that the painting's power resides in its emotional ambiguity, and that it bears closer relationship to the sympathetic intimacy of Eakins' portraits of women than to his more psychologically distant images of men.
Portrait of Leslie W. Miller John Updike