Starting Out After Rail

Eakins once wrote that he knew of no prettier problem in perspective than to draw a yacht sailing, tilted over sideways by the force of the wind. The yacht here is a Delaware ducker, a small skiff that came into wide use in the 1870s, heeling hard under its big sail. The two men aboard are his friends Sam Helhower and Harry Young, setting out after rail, the small game birds that were plentiful in the marshes along the Delaware River. One keeps his hand on the rudder, the other leans easily against the side. Eakins worked the boat out first in a perspective drawing, tilting it so that someone standing on a wharf could see right down into it. Then he painted this oil in 1874, ahead of a watercolour of the same scene now in Wichita, and sent it to his old teacher Gérôme in Paris to show how far he had come. The watercolour was praised but did not sell, and Eakins is said to have traded it later for a boat.