"He believed that great artists relied not on their knowledge of other artists’ works but on personal experience." Thomas Eakins himself picked up rowing on the Schuylkill river. The sport of rowing was increasing greatly and basically anyone could join. Before he even started drawing in the nude he had a great fasination with atonomy so drawing people in movement only came naturaly. Him painting John Biglin was becasue he was a superstar in the sport of rowing. Thomas picked the moment when he was in mid race in the heat from the sun and about to put his oars back in the water after doing a backward stroke to capture as his painting.

                                          "The painstaking process seems to have paid off. Eakins sent a replica of ,

John Biglin to his Paris teacher, Jean-Léon Gérôme

to demonstrate the progress he’d made since returning to

Philadelphia. Gérôme praised Eakins’s watercolor as “entirely

good.” “I am very pleased,” he wrote, “to have in the New

World a pupil such as you who does me honor."