Shop art print and framed art Attaque par le comte de Tourville et Jean Bart de la flotte anglaise de Smyrne by Théodore Gudin

The Chess Players is an 1876 genre painting by Thomas Eakins, Goodrich catalogue #96. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York. It is a small oil on wood panel depicting Eakins' father Benjamin observing a chess match. The two players are Bertrand Gardel (at left), an elderly French teacher, and the somewhat younger George Holmes, a painter. The men are in a dark, wood-panelled Victorian parlour with a quality of light suggesting late afternoon. The game is well in progress, as many pieces have been removed from the board. Holmes, the younger player, seems to be winning the match, as he has taken the queen of his opponent (the top of which pokes out of the table's drawer), and his own black queen is well-positioned in the centre of the board. Eakins painted The Chess Players for his father, and signed the painting in Latin, "BENJAMINI. EAKINS. FILIUS. PINXIT. '76"—"the son of Benjamin Eakins painted this"—in small letters on the drawer of the table. Michael Clapper of Franklin & Marshall College has noted, "Eakins’s choice of [chess] and his knowledgeable treatment of it suggest that he was familiar with and interested in the game, though there is little direct evidence of it apart from the painting." Art historian Akela Reason proposes that the painting is a tribute to a number of the artist's father-figures: Holmes probably was Eakins's first art teacher; Gardel was his French teacher; Benjamin Eakins was his literal father; and Jean-Léon [...]

 

This artwork is a painting from the classical period. It belongs to the romanticism style.

 

« Attaque par le comte de Tourville et Jean Bart de la flotte anglaise de Smyrne » is kept at Musée et Domaine National de Versailles et de Trianon, Versailles, France.

 

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