The big artist keeps an eye on nature and steals her tools.

In addition Eakins produced a number of large paintings which brought the portrait out of the drawing room and into the offices streets parks rivers arenas and surgical amphitheaters of his city. These active outdoor venues allowed him to paint the subject which most inspired him: the nude or lightly clad figure in motion. Since his death he has been celebrated by American art historians as "the strongest most profound realist in nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century American art".