Crowell Children at Avondale (1885–1890): Art, History and Details

Crowell Children at Avondale (1885–1890) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Thomas Eakins's awareness of photography as a visual aid for painters preceded his own interest in making photographs, which began in the early 1880s. He fully expressed his pioneering, personal, and aesthetic style of photography in this rare image of two young boys in an outdoor setting. Here, Eakins positioned his nephews against a muscular tree trunk, which asymmetrically divides the composition. He made the short exposure in diffuse outdoor lighting, a condition he favored. Soft shadows allowed for a subtle rendering of the ordinary scene, marked by casual posture, dress, and setting. An early practitioner of the platinum process, Eakins was instinctively drawn to its slight gradations and gentle continuities of tone. Broad areas of light and shade allowed him to ignore specific details in order to render the universal qualities he discovered through close observation of his chosen subject matter.

Object facts

• Title: Crowell Children at Avondale
• Date: 1885–1890
• Creator attribution: Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
• Culture: America
• Type: Photograph
• Technique: platinum print
• Dimensions: Image: 9 x 11.2 cm (3 9/16 x 4 7/16 in.); Paper: 9.1 x 11.3 cm (3 9/16 x 4 7/16 in.); Matted: 35.6 x 45.7 cm (14 x 18 in.)
• Collection: PH - American 19th Century
• Department: Photography
• Accession number: 2002.49

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.