St. Olaf College

Thomas Pollock Anshutz

Contemporary painter
United States
1851 - 1912

View objects by this artist.

Thomas Pollock Anshutz was born in Newport, Kentucky, in 1851. Anshutz began his artistic studies at the National Academy of Design in NEw York, where he studied under Lemuel Wilmarth. By 1875, he chose to move to Philadelphia and took a course under Thomas Eakins via the Philadelphia Sketch Club. He entered the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins taught, the following year. Anshutz excelled in the study of human anatomy under Eakins and by 1880 was following in Eakins’s practice habits. Like Eakins, he began using his own photographs as preparatory studies -- whether figural, landscape or simply to remind him of certain details -- for his paintings.

In 1881, Anshutz took a teaching position at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. He later became successor to Eakins when the artist advanced in his career and inevitably left. He was known as a great portrait artist and well-respected teacher. He passed away in Fort Washington, Pennsylvania, in 1912.


Madison Duran ‘20
February 2020

Sources:
“Thomas Anshutz.” Smithsonian American Art Museum,
https://americanart.si.edu/artist/thomas-anshutz-109.
“Thomas Pollock Anshutz.” The Worlds Artist,
https://theworldsartist.com/artist/thomas-pollock-anshutz.