Landscape (Sketch for Cowboys in the Bad Lands)

Thomas Eakins made several trips to the Dakota Territory in 1887 to paint cowboys, resulting in a small but significant group of Western subjects unusual in his predominantly Philadelphia-focused oeuvre. This landscape sketch at the Philadelphia Museum of Art was preparatory work for his Cowboys in the Bad Lands painting, exploring the spatial character of the landscape before resolving the final composition. Eakins's Western subjects are remarkable for their lack of romantic mythology: the cowboys are working men in a real landscape, not heroes in a theatrical setting.

The sketch handling is direct and exploratory, with Eakins working out the tonality and spatial structure of the Bad Lands terrain — its eroded formations and wide sky — without laboring finish. The paint is applied with his characteristic controlled certainty even in a preparatory work, with careful attention to the specific quality of Western light.