The Museum · the collection

The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull)

Thomas Eakins, 1871. Philadelphia, United States.

Thirty works are on view at a time, ten to a room. Every day at midnight UTC, the ten that have hung longest go back into storage and ten others come out, so each work hangs for three days and then rests for three. A work always returns to the same place on the same wall.

A man in a narrow rowing scull pauses on a calm river in autumn, with trees, bridges and blue sky reflected in the still water. — Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0). Select it for the full size.

Max Schmitt, a champion rower and Eakins’s friend, pauses in his narrow boat on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia. He has stopped rowing and turned to look toward us. It is a clear, cool autumn afternoon. The water is so still that the trees, the bridges and the sky are reflected in it almost perfectly. Eakins included himself too: he is the rower in the middle distance, pulling away from us, with his name and the date written on his boat. He studied rowing carefully and painted the oars, the water and the light with real precision. It is a picture of two friends doing what they loved.

Look closely

Find Eakins himself, rowing in the middle of the river.
Look at the ripples left by the oars.
Count the arches of the bridges in the background.

While you sit

The rower has stopped for a moment between strokes. That moment can be as long as you like.

Your seat in the galleries: a slim cedar bench shaped like a rowing shell, its oarlocks in brass.

About the work

Title: The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull)
Artist: Thomas Eakins
Date: 1871
From: Philadelphia, United States
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 32 1/4 x 46 1/4 in. (81.9 x 117.5 cm)
Rights: Public domain
Image: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access (CC0)
Record: The museum's page for this work

The words on this page were written for the campus, not taken from the museum's label.

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