Image
The Biglin Brothers Racing, by Thomas Eakins, 1872.
Credit: Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, 1953.7.1
In the decade following the Civil War, rowing was one of America's most popular spectator sports, and Philadelphia the sport's American capital. When the Biglin brothers, champion oarsmen from New York, visited Philadelphia in the early 1870s, Thomas Eakins made a number of paintings and drawings of them, including this 1872 painting, which includes a crowd of spectators on the shore.