Salutat is an 1898 painting by Thomas Eakins (1844–1916). Based on a real-life boxing match that occurred in 1898, the work depicts a boxer waving to the crowd after the match. According to Eakins' biographer Lloyd Goodrich, Salutat is "one of Eakins' finest achievements in figure-painting."Goodrich, Volume II, pp. 151-2. The painting's title is Latin for "He greets" or "He salutes."
The studio became a place to spar; according to Eakins's protégé the sculptor Samuel Murray, (who in 1899 made a bronze statue of Billy Smith) Samuel Murray's 1899 statue of Turkey Point Billy Smith, retrieved March 30, 2009 one of the fighters, Ellwood McCloskey, would "round up fellow pugilists who had promised to pose but didn't show up":
"Hey, you son of a bitch, haven't you got a date to pose for Mr. Eakins? Come on now, or I'll punch your goddamn head off."Goodrich, Volume II, p. 145.
"Turkey Point" Billy Smith, a featherweight who competed in over 100 bouts over the course of ten years and fought two featherweight champions, was the protagonist for Salutat as well as for Between Rounds.
Eakins also completed an oil-on-canvas study, which he gave to art critic Sadakichi Hartmann after Hartmann praised Eakins in his 1901 book A History of American Art. (This was the first time Eakins had been recognized as being of historic importance.)Adams, 358 This study is now in the possession of the Carnegie Museum of Art. Study for "Salutat", (painting). Art Inventories Catalog, Smithsonian American Art Museum. Thomas Eakins: Study for Salutat. Carnegie Museum of Art.
As with a number of other Eakins works, the rendering of the figures is extremely precise, such that it has allowed art historians to identify individual members of the audience. While working on the boxing pictures, friends would visit the studio, and Eakins invited them to "stay a while and I'll put you in the picture."Goodrich, Volume II, p. 147. For Salutat, audience members include Eakins's friend Louis Kenton (wearing eyeglasses and a bow tie), sportswriter Clarence Cranmer (wearing a bowler hat), David Jordan (brother of Letitia Wilson Jordan, whom Eakins painted in Portrait of Letitia Wilson Jordan), photographer Louis Husson (next to Jordan), Eakins's student Samuel Murray, and Eakins's father Benjamin Eakins.Kirkpatrick, 444-445
Smith is bathed in soft white light, which illuminates his muscles.Messenger 350, footnote 8 Amid a general tonality of warm grays and browns that contains no strong chromatic notes, the skin tones of the three main figures are pale.Goodrich, Volume II, p. 153. All three men have the quality of relief sculpture, and with Smith's figure separate from those of his seconds, they appear to move across the canvas in an arrangement reminiscent of a frieze.Goodrich, Volume II, p. 152.
The painting remained unsold during Eakins's lifetime, and was bought from his widow by Thomas Cochran in 1929; he subsequently donated the picture to the Addison Gallery of American Art at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.Goodrich, Volume II, p. 280.
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