Thomas Eakins
(1841–1916 )
 

Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important American artists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Eakins

The Chess Players
1876
Oil on panel
29.8 x 42.6 cm
The MET
https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/10813

 

In this painting, the artist’s father watches a chess game between two friends in a Renaissance Revival parlor of a Philadelphia home. Eakins honored his father with a Latin inscription on the drawer of the chess table, which translates as “Benjamin Eakins’s son painted this in ’76.” A reproduction of a painting by Eakins’s principal French teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme, hangs over the mantel. Eakins adhered to Gérôme’s academic lessons in his careful spatial construction and meticulous detail. In 1881 The Chess Players became the first work to be accepted by the Metropolitan Museum as a gift from a living artist.