Mrs. Gilbert L. Parker

On the back of this canvas Eakins lettered a dedication, To his friend Mrs. Parker, Thomas Eakins, 1910. That year he painted the Parkers of Philadelphia one after another, the mother here, her husband Dr. Gilbert Lafayette Parker, and their two grown sons, Gilbert and Ernest. The portrait of the son Gilbert is inscribed to him as a friend in just the same way. Many of Eakins's late portraits began like this, with people from his own circle whom he asked to sit and then gave the finished canvas. This one is the size he used for most of those heads, about 60 by 50 centimetres. The year 1910 came near the end of his working life. His health was failing, and he painted little after it. The portrait stayed in the family, passing from Mrs. Parker to her son Gilbert and then to his brother Ernest, and the Museum of Fine Arts bought it in 1932.