Frank Jay St. John

Frank Jay St. John was painted by Eakins around 1900 and is now in the M. H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco. Eakins's portraits of this period were rarely commissioned — the artist often painted subjects from his own circle or people who interested him personally, offering the results as gifts or keeping them in his studio. St. John was likely a friend or acquaintance from Eakins's Philadelphia world. The de Young's acquisition of this portrait reflects the geographic spread of Eakins's work into major American collections beyond the Philadelphia and Washington institutions where most of his significant works are concentrated.

Eakins's mature portraits achieve their effects through rigorous tonal discipline — the face modelled in a limited range of carefully mixed tones against a dark background, every value serving the larger goal of making the head appear convincingly solid and three-dimensional within the picture space.