The Hyde Collection is offering visitors an opportunity to see a portrait of Walt Whitman (1887‱888) by Thomas Eakins (1844‱914).
The Whitman portrait is considered one of Eakins’s finest paintings, and only rarely leaves Philadelphia where it is a featured work in the collection of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). This evocative image of one of America’s most influential poets, by one of the nation’s greatest artists, will be in Glens Falls for six months (through December), as a second exchange for the yearlong loan of The Hyde Collection’s “Portrait of Henry Ossawa Tanner,” circa 1897, also by Eakins.
Tanner was one of Eakins’s students at the Pennsylvania Academy and the portrait has been lent to PAFA for its exhibition “Henry Ossawa Tanner: Modern Spirit.” This is a major retrospective celebrating Tanner’s position in American art as a pioneering African American, as well as establishing him as one of the nation’s most significant expatriate artists of the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries.
“Walt Whitman” is exhibited in Hyde House, where visitors can also see “In the Studio,” 1884, another work by Eakins in the museum’s collection.
Before returning to The Hyde, the Tanner portrait will have been exhibited in three national venues: PAFA, January 28⁁pril 15; Cincinnati Art Museum, May 26⁓eptember 9; and then traveling to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, October 21⁊anuary 13.
The Hyde Collection is at 161 Warren Street. For information, 518-792-1761 or www.hydecollection.org .
