
Riter Fitzgerald
Thomas Eakins · 1895
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Original size
- 193.7 × 163.2 cm (76 1/4 × 64 1/4 in.)
- Currently held
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Movement
- Impressionism
Thomas Eakins' portrait of Riter Fitzgerald is a quietly arresting study in psychological realism — the sitter rendered with an honesty that borders on uncomfortable, the kind of likeness that feels more like an encounter than a painting. Eakins spent much of his career battling against the decorative portraiture fashionable in late nineteenth-century America. Where his contemporaries flattered, he observed. His technique — built from years of studying anatomy at Jefferson Medical College and teaching life drawing at the Pennsylvania Academy — produced portraits of extraordinary three-dimensionality, with flesh and shadow that seem to have weight. Fitzgerald, a Philadelphia art critic and friend, sits here without artifice: no idealised pose, no gilded backdrop, just a man caught in thought. Eakins reportedly gave away many of his portraits because sitters found them too unflinching to hang — a telling sign of how seriously he took truth over vanity, and how little he compromised even when it cost him commissions. This hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on canvas using traditional pigments, preserving Eakins' characteristic tonal depth and the subtle warmth of his palette — qualities that digital prints simply cannot replicate.
Hand-painted oil reproduction
Painted in real oil on stretched canvas by master copyists. Delivered unframed — ready to frame at home.
Choose a size
In Eakins's style.
Send us a photograph of your family, pet, or home — we'll paint it as a custom oil on stretched canvas in any style you like. From £220.

← Real customer commission · see the full gallery
Code WELCOME20 at checkout for 20% off your first commission.
Commission yours →



