Thomas Anshutz

Thomas Pollock Anshutz ( 1851-1912 )

Thomas Pollock Anshutz (October 5, 1851 – June 16, 1912) was an American painter and teacher. Co-founder of The Darby School and leader at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Anshutz was known for his award-winning portraiture work and working friendship with Thomas Eakins.

Thomas Anshutz was born in Newport, Kentucky in 1851. He grew up in Newport and Wheeling, West Virginia. His early art instruction took place at the National Academy of Design in the early 1870s, where he studied under Lemuel Wilmarth. In 1875, he moved to Philadelphia and took a class taught by Thomas Eakins at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, a class which would solidify a close relationship and influence between Eakins and Anshutz. In 1892 Anshutz married Effie Shriver Russell. The two spent their honeymoon in Paris, where Anshutz attended classes at Académie Julian. In 1893 they returned to Philadelphia. Later in his life he proclaimed himself a socialist. He retired from teaching in the fall of 1911 due to poor health and died on June 16, 1912. Pupils of Anshutz include Margaret Taylor Fox.

Eakins began teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1876, the same year that Anshutz enrolled as a student. In 1880, while still a student, Anshutz completed his first major work, The Ironworkers' Noontime. It is now in the collection of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.

Around 1880 Eakins became involved in photography, incorporating it into his classes and using it as a tool for his artwork. Anshutz and other students at the Academy started to make use of the camera, posing models and making prints for study. Anshutz participated in Eakins's The Naked Series, photographing nude models in seven pre-defined standing poses. Eakins was forced to resign from the Academy in an 1886 scandal that was sparked by his use of a fully nude male model in front of either an all-female or a mixed-male-and-female class. Anshutz was promoted to Eakins's position at the Academy.

Although Anshutz experimented persistently with landscape painting, he was more well known for his portraiture, which won him numerous awards in the 1890s and 1900s. In 1898 he and Hugh Breckenridge co-founded the Darby School, a summer school outside of Philadelphia which emphasized plein airpainting. At Darby Anshutz created his most abstract works, a series of bright oil landscape paintings that were never exhibited. He continued to participate in the Darby School until 1910. He was elected as an Associate member of the National Academy of Design in 1910. He served as president of the Philadelphia Sketch Club.

In 1971 Robert and Joy McCarty, who lived in the home formerly owned by the Anshutz family in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, donateda portion of letters, glass negatives, and photographs to the Archives of American Art. A second donation from the Anshutz family took place in 1971 and 1972, which were microfilmed and returned to the Family.