Ships and Sailboats on the Delaware: Study

This study for ships and sailboats on the Delaware River is part of Thomas Eakins's extended engagement with the waterfront life of Philadelphia in the 1870s. Like its companion study, it belongs to the preparatory work underlying his more finished marine and sailing paintings. Eakins used such studies to work through the compositional and observational problems specific to depicting water-borne craft in natural light on a moving river. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts holds a substantial group of these studies, which together reveal the systematic empirical approach that distinguished Eakins from his contemporaries.

The study is characterized by direct, economic brushwork: hulls and rigging are established with confident strokes that prioritize the overall light condition and spatial relationships. The water surface is suggested with horizontal marks conveying its reflective flatness.