The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake (1873): Art, History and Details

The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake (1873) 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:

Before beginning a large-scale painting such as The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake, Eakins began a series of specialized studies. He outlined the space of the composition with perspective drawings, such as this sketch in graphite. Eakins also used figure studies when rendering a work, as well as landscape and architectural drawings and his own photographs (examples of which are elsewhere in the exhibition). The practice of using perspective drawings to work out the space of a painting dates back to the Renaissance, revealing Eakins’s academic training.

Object facts

• Title: The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake
• Date: 1873
• Creator attribution: Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
• Culture: America
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: graphite and brush and brown wash
• Dimensions: Sheet: 35.5 x 43.1 cm (14 x 16 15/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - American 19th Century
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1942.1066

Collection credit

Mr. and Mrs. William H. Marlatt Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Gengler, Matthew. "You Ask, We Answer.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 58. no. (July/August 2018): 22.

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.