Body of Art: The Figure in American Painting

October 9th to November 3rd, 2025

The history of American figurative painting is as rich and varied as the history of American art itself. It ranges from formal portraiture to quick sketches, realistic to abstract figuration, traditional to modern nudes, beautiful depictions of people partaking in leisure hours to arresting images of labor and poverty. At the heart of all these forms of American figurative painting was a distinctly American voice that emerged as the nation’s artists came to define themselves and the artistic styles that were particular to their country.

Women’s life drawing class at the Art Students League, c. 1903. Archives of the Art Students League of New York.

Figure drawing was an essential part of any artist’s formal education. Drawing from life models or sculptural casts was de rigueur at American art academies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The faculty at such institutions as the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) and the National Academy of Design (NAD) required their students to master the technical aspects of figure drawing as a cornerstone of their education. Thomas Eakins during his tenure at PAFA revolutionized his students’ engagement with the figure through the importance he placed on the nude, anatomy, and science. The Academy’s long tradition of realism and figuration was born from Eakins’s pedagogy, which deeply impacted a generation of American artists.
Thomas Anshutz (1851-1912), Seated Woman, 1884

Robert Henri, who devoted a great deal of his art to figure painting, was one such artist whose style was deeply influenced by Eakins. Even though Henri never studied with Eakins directly, as Eakins had resigned under pressure from PAFA before Henri enrolled, he had a profound impact on the young artist. Henri wrote: "Personally, I consider him [Thomas Eakins] the greatest portrait painter America has produced." After Eakins's dismissal from PAFA, Thomas Anshutz upheld and promoted many of Eakins's ideas and built upon his teaching method. Anshutz played as important of a role to Henri's artistic development as Henri's close study of Eakins's work.
Robert Henri (1865-1929), Celestine, 1920

Henri and so many artists of his generation learned from both men that close observation and a firm grasp of anatomy were essential to the creation of great figure paintings. Following the call to realism, Henri set out to paint “life in the raw” without sentimentality or academic artifice. This portrait of Celestine Petitpas, the owner of the legendary Petitpas boarding house and restaurant in New York City where a variety of artists and writers regularly met, is an exceptional example of Henri’s ability to capture the spirit of his sitters in all their vitality without affect.
Charles Webster Hawthorne’s portraits are similar to Henri’s in their direct, unadorned nature. The quiet introspection of the subjects of The Lovers and In Venice speaks to Hawthorne’s desire to capture his sitters’ inner life in a plain but deeply beautiful way.
- Charles Webster Hawthorne, In Venice, 1907
- Charles Webster Hawthorne, The Lovers
Daniel Garber’s Portrait of Elsa is similar in its directness and simplicity. Conversely, the confidence and pluck of the female subject in Hawthorne’s The Red Sash demonstrates how adept the artist was at using posture and costume to communicate attitude and personality.
- Daniel Garber, Elsa, 1915
- Charles Webster Hawthorne, The Red Sash, c. 1898-1901 Sold
Francis Davis Millet (1846-1912), Portrait of Sadie P. Waters, 1888

In many ways, these figurative works were quite different from formal American portraiture, specifically the society portrait of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. David Francis Millet’s Portrait of Sadie P. Waters of 1888 is a gorgeous depiction of a young woman in the prime of her youth. American society portraits were similar to their European counterparts in both style and intention. The minute attention Millet pays to the details of Sadie’s dress, the serene expression of her face, the touch of gold in her hair, and the flower in her hand create and an air of refined opulence, not flashy or showy, but rather sophisticated and genteel.
It's no surprise that a great majority of the works in this exhibition feature beautiful women in various states of leisure and repose. One the defining characteristics of American Impressionism was the artists desire to capture the idyll hours of the leisure class, specifically women. Irving Ramsey Wiles, Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Phillip Leslie Hale and John White Alexander often took the female figure as their principal subject, as it afforded them with endless opportunities to demonstrate their expert command of the human form and the myriad ways they could use it to express the defining features of their individual artistic styles.
Irving Ramsey Wiles (1861-1948), Woman at a Table

In Woman Seated at a Table and Seated Nude, Wiles situates his female figure among a fine display of decorative details. Flowers, reflective surfaces of silver and glass, elegant furnishings all compliment the beauty of the women themselves. Dewing’s diaphanous pastel drawings of seated women are as delicate as spun sugar. His female figures were meant to embody the highest forms of culture and sophistication. Dewing conjures their forms with the simplest of lines, weightless shading, and a mere suggestion of color – all of which communicates the rarified style that marks his finest work.
- Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Seated Woman, c. 1915-20
- Thomas Wilmer Dewing, Seated Lady in a Yellow Dress, c. 1915–20
Lilian Westcott Hale (1881-1963), Book of Verses, 1924

Lilian Westcott Hale’s exquisite drawings of children and young women are as rare as they are beautiful. Delicately drawn in pencil and charcoal, Hale’s mastery of her medium was unrivaled. Her drawing technique was so singular at an early age that her teacher, William Merritt Chase was “afraid to interfere with what she was doing.” In her drawings Hale captures a sense of intimacy, quiet introspection, and wonder in the private moments of her sitters.
- Lilian Westcott Hale, Reading Tea Leaves, 1907
- Lilian Westcott Hale, Study of Ruth, c. 1925
Arthur B. Carles (1882-1952), Nude

As American artists advanced toward Modernism the figure remained an important subject, as it afforded artists opportunities to explore color, abstraction, and personal narrative in new and unexpected ways. Arthur B. Carles revisited the subject of the female figure numerous times throughout his career, often using it as a vehicle for his explorations and experimentations with form and color. Nude is an early work and much less abstract that his later figurative paintings. In it, Carles demonstrates his technical command of the human body. She is beautifully painted and set in a spare, abstract background, giving primacy to the body in space.
Joseph Stella (1877-1946), Portrait of Grace, 1944

Joseph Stella also used the human form to flesh out his ideas about composition and his deep abiding interest in art history. They were also the sole outlet within which he revealed aspects of his personal life. Most of his subjects were friends or lovers, often painted in profile to hark back to Early Italian Renaissance portraits. In Portrait of Grace, Stella sets his sitter against an abstract background of green foliage. By painting her in profile, almost like an icon, Grace becomes a symbol of time, femininity and humanity as a whole.

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