A late nineteenth-century collaboration

Magazine Antiques, Jan, 1995 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

THE FRIENDSHIP between the anthropologist and ethnologist Frank Hamilton Cushing and the eminent painter, art teacher, and photographer Thomas Eakins culminated in 1895 when Eakins asked Cushing to sit for a portrait. An exhibition devoted to the portrait and its enigmatic subject and painter, Centennial Celebration of Eakins' Portrait of Cushing, has been organized by the Gilcrease Museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where it will be on view from January 21 until April 16. The show includes some one hundred photographs, paintings, prints, pieces of jewelry, ceramics, textiles, books, and letters associated with Cushing, Eakins, and Cushing's abiding interest, the Zuni Indians.

Cushing was born in 1857 in North East, Pennsylvania. His premature birth and subsequent frailty caused him to prefer books and nature to strenuous activity. His lifelong interest in the American Indian began with an arrowhead, which he was given at the age of eight. He was only eighteen when he was engaged by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., to organize an exhibition about American Indians for the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876. Three years later he was appointed the ethnologist for an expedition to the Southwest with instructions to study a single pueblo in detail. This was a revolutionary assignment since earlier expeditions simply roamed the Indian territories gathering samplings of objects and specimens and recording passing observations about Indian cultures.

Cushing arrived at Zuni Pueblo in New Mexico in the fall of 1879 and spent the next four years immersing himself in their ceremonies, domestic life, religious beliefs, and artistic heritage. Cushing believed that to best understand the Zuni he had to become one of them. He wrote that he was taken in by the tribe and rose to the esteemed rank of bow priest--an assertion that the Zuni Indian and anthropologist Edmund J. Ladd believes to be an exaggeration. Unfortunately, few of Cushing's notebooks have survived. (The rest may have been destroyed by Cushing out of respect for secret Zuni rites, or so some scholars have speculated.) Moreover, Cushing never published a major study of his findings. Today some of his statements are questioned or thought to be inaccurate, perhaps because as an outsider Cushing may have been unable to digest and explain the complexities of Zuni society. Cushing is, however, credited with being the first in his field to study a culture as a participant as well as an observer. To understand Zuni craftsmanship he made it a point to learn their techniques, and in one period photograph he is shown coiling a pot in their fashion.

In July 1895 Eakins wrote to Cushing about the proposed portrait: "I hope sincerely you may be able on coming back to Philadelphia to prolong your stay beyond a few days. I think I could paint the whole picture in a couple of weeks if you would help me with the background and accessories, and in so helping me, I could teach you perspective." The collaboration produced a setting replete with the trappings of Cushing's stay with the Zuni. The interior, modeled after that of a Zuni pueblo, was constructed inside Eakins's studio. The scarf Cushing wears was the first gift he received from the Zuni, and his shirt was sewed for him by the wife of Pali-wah-ti-wa, the governor of Zuni Pueblo. His quiver is an emblem of the bow priest, as is the bandoleer hanging on the wall at the right. The bag may have been borrowed for the painting since Edmund Ladd believes that such an important object would never have been given to someone who would one day leave the pueblo. Cushing's earrings, necklace, and concha belt are all symbols of high station and power among the Zuni, as are the war club and the war plume of sacred prayer feathers he holds. His clothing, most of it made of deerskin, is almost identical to that worn by Pali-wah-ti-wa in a photograph of 1882. Unifying the composition is the brilliant red shield bearing the image of a Zuni war god that hangs on the wall at the left.

This was Eakins's first attempt at a full-length portrait of a man, and it is noteworthy in his oeuvre for its use of props associated with the sitter's profession. Since Cushing's ill health prevented him from posing for long periods, Eakins painted the portrait from photographs and from at least one surviving oil sketch (in the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C.). Both Cushing's deteriorating physical condition and his reverence for Zuni objects are evident in this masterful psychological portrait, which, however, remained largely unappreciated until relatively recently. Eakins submitted it to the 1895-1896 exhibition of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, but it was rejected. He then loaned it to the Museum of Science and Art at the University of Pennsylvania, also in Philadelphia, of which the eminent ethnologist Stewart Culin was the director. When Culin moved to the Brooklyn Museum in Brooklyn, New York, Eakins allowed him to take the painting with him. The museum bought the painting from Eakins's widow in 1928 along with the clothes Cushing wore in the picture, which had always accompanied the portrait. However, the clothes and the painting were separated when the museum deaccessioned the picture in 1947 to Thomas Gilcrease (1890-1962). The original frame of rustic wood lashed together at the corners with leather thongs was designed and at least partially built by Cushing. Sadly, it does not survive, but the Gilcrease Museum hopes to reproduce it from period photographs.