Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00000233The Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake
About the Artwork
Eakins's painting celebrates athletic teamwork while commemorating an actual event, a famous rowing race that took place on the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia during May 1872. Throngs of spectators line the riverbank and watch as Barney and John Biglin negotiate the tricky turn around a stake marking the halfway point in the contest. Their competitors, seen in the middle distance at the right, lag behind. The Biglin brothers won the race, cementing their status as the most celebrated oarsmen of the era. Trained in the United States and France, Eakins spent almost his entire artistic career in his hometown of Philadelphia. He is renowned for the unsentimental realism in his paintings, whose compositions he developed through painstakingly prepared figure and perspective drawings.
Inscriptions
signed lower left: EAKINS 73.
Provenance
1916-1927: Susan MacDowell Eakins [1851-1938], Philadelphia, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art 1927-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 26-October 4, 1936). Exhibition of American Painting from 1860 Until Today. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-October 4, 1937). The Silver Jubilee Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 23-September 28, 1941). 35th Anniversary Exhibition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 20-September 30, 1951). Thomas Eakins: Retrospective Exhibition. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (organizer) (September 21-November 21, 1970). Heritage and Horizon: American Painting 1776 - 1976. Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY (organizer) (March 7-April 11, 1976); The Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI (May 2-June 13, 1976); The Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo, OH (July 4-August 15, 1976); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 8-October 10, 1976). Thomas Eakins: The Rowing Pictures. National Gallery of Art (June 23-September 29, 1996); Yale University Art Gallery (organizer) (October 11, 1996-January 14, 1997); The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 19-May 15, 1997). Thomas Eakins, American Realist. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA (organizer) (September 30, 2001-January 6, 2002); Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France (February 3-May 12, 2002); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (June 10-September 15, 2002). Cleveland Collects American Art of the Gilded Age. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 23-May 18, 2003). Time Stands Still: Muybridge and the Instantaneous Photography Movement. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (February 15-May 16, 2004). CMA Highlights. The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer) (June 21-September 11, 2005). Manly Pursuits: The Sporting Images of Thomas Eakins. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA (organizer) (July 25-October 23, 2010).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 7, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916)
- Date
- 1873
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 117 x 167 x 6.5 cm (46 1/16 x 65 3/4 x 2 9/16 in.); Unframed: 101.3 x 151.4 cm (39 7/8 x 59 5/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- American Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Hinman B. Hurlbut Collection
- Accession no.
- 1927.1984
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Open-access museum record · AT-00000233
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