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The Biglin Brothers Racing, by Thomas Eakins, 1872.
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Oil on canvas painting depicting two boatmen, the Biglin brothers, racing their craft against another boat, along the bank of the Schuylkill River.   Only the edge of the competing boat is visible. The upper and distant half of the painting contains a four-man rowing crew, crowds on the shore, and spectators following in flagdecked steamboats.

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.

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