Maud Cook (Mrs. Robert C. Reid), 1895
Oil on canvas, 24 1/2 x 20 1/16 in. (62.2 x 51 cm)
Bequest of Stephen Carlton Clark, B.A. 1903
1961.18.18
In his later years, Eakins turned increasingly to portraiture, and most of his sitters were friends and people he admired. Commissions were rare. Unlike his portraits of men, in which he was sensitive to the sitter's public self (for example, see previous image John Biglin in a Single Scull, 1932.263), Eakins's depictions of women focus on their vulnerability and emotional tenderness. Maud Cook is one of Eakins’s most beautiful portraits. Shown in a private moment, the sitter, dressed in a glowing pink dress, tilts her head away from the viewer and toward the light, which casts strong shadows revealing the structure of her face. The same warm light bathes the exposed skin of her neck and upper chest, imparting to the portrait a subtle glow of youth, health, and decorous sensuality. Years later, Maud Cook described the portrait to the artist’s biographer: "As I was just a young girl my hair is done low in the neck and tied with a ribbon. Mr. Eakins never gave the painting a name but said to himself it was like 'a big rosebud.'"
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