William Rush and His Model

These works depict the American wood sculptor William Rush in 1808, carving his statue Water Nymph and Bittern for a fountain at Philadelphia's first waterworks.

His pine statue was painted white to imitate marble, and its water jet gushed from the mouth of the bittern held atop the nymph's shoulder.

Art historian Elizabeth Milroy notes that the nymph's pose recalls the Venus de' Medici, a copy of which was owned by a Philadelphia painter.

[2] Following more than 60 years of exposure to water and the elements, Nymph and Bittern was stripped of its white paint in 1872, and a bronze copy was cast.

Eakins was a strong believer in teaching human anatomy, and insisted that his students study from nude models.

This is sometimes called a study, but it is almost the same size as the finished version, contains the same figures (although the chaperone faces a different direction), and was never displayed during Eakins's lifetime.

Although the painting is historically inaccurate—Rush carved Water Nymph and Bittern in 1808, and the other statues years later—Eakins's intent seems to have been to present a survey of the sculptor's whole career.

[4] It immediately sparked controversy with one New York reviewer writing, "What ruins the picture is much less the want of beauty in the model ... than the presence in the foreground of the clothes of that young woman, cast carelessly over a chair.