THE SPORT OF ROWING Any word description fails to adequately prepare the modern eye for Eakins’ depictions of arms held straight until the backs have almost fully completed their swing. Oarsmen on the Schuylkill, 1874,484 depicting a coxless-four at the same point midway through the pullthrough, also portrays the same stroke technique: bodies laying back with arms still straight. Refer back to Frame 5 of Yale University Art Gallery The Schreiber Brothers (detail) painter either the beginning or the end of the stroke offer the most possibilities.”481 A short while later, Eakins entirely abandoned rowers as subjects for his paintings, but before that, he reliably documented that during the early 1870s, the Biglins and others were rowing a technique with the same back-then-arms sequentiality seen in the Thames Waterman’s Stroke (and English Orthodoxy) of the period. In Fred Plaisted’s words, Let the armes be well extended. Just as stiff as pokers, too, And until the strok is endid Pull it hard all the way through.482 Mendenhall described the 19th Century American professional technique as follows: “catching the water with a good lift of back and legs, heavily emphasizing the first half of the stroke, and letting the arms pull the blade through to a clean feather and an easy recovery.”483 481 Mendenhall, The Rowing Art of Thomas Eakins, Rowing U.S.A., April/May 1983, p. 14 482 Plaisted, op. cit. 483 Mendenhall, Harvard-Yale, p. 49 the photo sequence showing contemporary rowing in Chapter 6, and you will see the very same positioning of the oarsmen at near full layback with their arms still straight. The technique in use in Philadelphia during the 1870s traced directly back to the artisan waterman’s stroke that had been in use for centuries. The question remains whether they completed the pullthrough in the manner of Walker’s Manly Exercises,485 where the stroke actually ended with the arms still straight, or whether they used the ferryman’s finish, as do lifeguard rowers today. Taken together, two specific Eakins paintings give us the answer. The Oarsmen, 1873, now in the Portland Art Museum, is an absolutely delightful “Impressionist” oil sketch of the Schreiber brothers,486 two 484 in a private collection and not illustrated in this book. 485 See Chapter 6. 486 The subjects of this sketch have been incorrectly identified by Cooper, p. 54, as the Biglins. This is impossible, as the painting is obviously an outdoor study sketched from life, and by the time this painting was done, 1873, the Biglins had long since left Philadelphia. The garb of the pair in The Oarsmen is virtually identical to that worn by the Schreiber brothers lifeguard 136
