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A ‘truly bad’ painting by Thomas Eakins now hangs in the PMA, and offers a glimpse into his complicated legacy

The artist called the eight-foot-tall painting of Jesus on the cross one of his "very best." The New Yorker called it “his single truly bad painting.”

"The Crucifixion" (1880) by Thomas Eakins on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Salon Gallery. On the left: James McNeill Whistler, an American contemporary of Eakins. On the right: Thomas Couture, a French artist who Eakins admired.
"The Crucifixion" (1880) by Thomas Eakins on display in the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Salon Gallery. On the left: James McNeill Whistler, an American contemporary of Eakins. On the right: Thomas Couture, a French artist who Eakins admired.Read moreQuinn Russell Brown
    by Quinn Russell Brown, For The Inquirer
    Published