Executed in oil on canvas, it depicts six men swimming naked in a lake, and is considered a masterpiece of American painting.

[1] According to art historian Doreen Bolger it is "perhaps Eakins' most accomplished rendition of the nude figure",[2] and has been called "the most finely designed of all his outdoor pictures".

In this work, Eakins took advantage of an exception to the generally prudish Victorian attitude to nudity: swimming naked was widely accepted,[5] and for males was seen as normal, even in public spaces.

[17] The composition is notable for both its adherence to academic tradition (the mastery of the figure as an end in itself), and its uniqueness in transposing the male nude to an outdoor setting.

Unlike his appearances in The Gross Clinic or Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, here the artist's presence is more ambiguous—he may be seen as companion, teacher, or voyeur.

[20] The positioning of the bodies and their musculature refers to classical ideals of physical beauty and masculine camaraderie evocative of Greek art.

[10] It is possible that Eakins was seeking to reconcile an ancient theme with a modern interpretation; the subject was contemporary, but the poses of some of the figures recall those of classical sculpture.

It is not unlikely that Eakins saw the painting at the Salon while studying in Paris, and would have been sympathetic to its depiction of male bathers in a modern setting.

These correspond to lectures he gave on Ancient Greek sculpture and were inspired by the Pennsylvania Academy's casts of Phidias' Pan-Athenaic procession from the Parthenon marbles.

[21] A series of photographs, relief sculptures, and oil sketches culminated in the 1883 Arcadia, a painting that also featured nude figures—posed for by a student, a nephew, and the artist's fiancée—in a pastoral landscape.

[29] A friend and student, Charles Bregler, described the process: ... For a picture ... like the Swimming Hole, a small sketch was made 8 x 10 inches [20 x 25 cm], then separate studies of the landscape and figures, to get the true tone and color, etc.

[30]The painting was commissioned in 1884 by Edward Hornor Coates, a Philadelphia businessman who chaired the Committee on Instruction at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins taught.

[14] In a November 27, 1885 letter to Eakins, Coates reasoned: as you will recall one of my chief ideas was to have from you a picture which might some day become part of the Academy collection.

The present canvas is to me admirable in many ways but I am inclined to believe that some of the pictures you have are even more representative, and it has been suggested would be perhaps more acceptable for the purpose which I have always had in view.

He was undoubtedly familiar with the site depicted in the painting too, as it was only a half a mile (800 m) from Haverford College, where Coates studied as an undergraduate.

On February 9, 1886, Eakins was forced to resign from the academy because of his removal of a loincloth from a male model in a class where female students were present.

In a letter to Coates on February 15 in which Eakins explained his reasons for resigning, he addressed the issue of nudity in his artwork: My figures at least are not a bunch of clothes with a head and hands sticking out but more nearly resemble the strong living bodies that most pictures show.

[38][39] Before its purchase by the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, The Swimming Hole appears to have undergone seven different conservatory treatments.

Several layers of discolored varnish and overpaint were removed, exposing a rich and varied surface with brushwork ranging from the controlled, almost miniaturistic strokes forming the figures to the freer treatment of the landscape elements.

[40] Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) believed the work was "Eakins' most masterful use of the nude", with the solidly conceived figures perfectly integrated into the landscape, an image of subtle tonal construction and one of the artist's "richest pieces of painting".

[42] Although there was an informal convention for multiple-figure compositions featuring female nudes, in America such paintings were exhibited in saloons rather than galleries; Eakins altered the gender and presented the subject as fine art.

[43] Viewed in a broader context, The Swimming Hole has been cited as one of the few 19th-century American paintings that "engages directly with a newly emerging European tradition"—that of the male bather.

[44] Eakins' picture, although not as stylistically progressive as the works of his French contemporaries, parallels the novel thematic direction taken by Bazille in Summer Scene, Georges Seurat (1859–91) (Bathers at Asnières, 1884) and Paul Cézanne (1839–1906) in his numerous explorations of the subject.

"[47] Eakins' widow's retitling of the picture after his death reinforced the popular association with the nostalgic sentiment of Riley's poem.

[20][50][51] "But for their marital status, however, virtually nothing concrete is known of the private realms or sexual propensities of any of the men depicted (in The Swimming Hole), with the exception of Eakins.

"[50] Although the painting has been viewed as a platonic vision of the male nude seen unselfconsciously in a natural setting,[52] by the 1970s some American writers were beginning to see Eakins' work, and specifically The Swimming Hole, as having homoerotic implications.

[53] Critics have paid particular attention to the compositional prominence of the standing figure's buttocks, which has been interpreted as suggestive of "homoerotic interests".

On the basis of the same visual evidence, that of the photographs, oil sketches, and the finished painting of swimmers, art historians have drawn markedly varying conclusions as to the artist's intent.