Miss Alice Kurtz

Thomas Eakins painted during a period in American history when the roles of men and women were at once rigidly prescribed and actively questioned; he explored questions of gender throughout his career. In this portrait, Eakins disavowed period notions of the ideal female body to emphasize the sitter’s inner life. With her muscular neck and shoulders, dreamy, unfocused gaze, and melancholic air, Alice Kurtz is not merely an object for the male gaze, but a psychologically complex, self-possessed personality. The portrait was commissioned by the sitter’s father, William B. Kurtz, a prominent Philadelphia banker. He was displeased with the picture, complaining that Eakins had reduced his healthy and athletic daughter to “a bag of bones, an anatomical sketch.” He dispatched the portrait to the attic of the family’s Philadelphia home, where it remained until 1925.