The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton
The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton is an oil painting of 1900 by the American artist Thomas Eakins. It is a depiction of the artist's brother-in-law, Louis N. Kenton (1865–1947), and it has been called "one of Eakins's most memorable portraits". The painting is one of a series of life size standing male portraits painted late in Eakins's career. Background Louis Kenton was the son of a flour and grain salesman from Philadelphia. Although little is known about his life, he was listed as a bookkeeper and clerk in that city's directories between 1889 and 1891. He is described in literature on the artist as Eakins's friend, and posed for a background figure in the 1898 painting Salutat. Kenton married Eakins's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Macdowell, on May 31, 1899. Eakins gave the painting to his sister-in-law by 1901, so it may well have been intended as a marriage portrait. The marriage was brief and not happy, with notes from Susan Macdowell Eakins's diaries indicating that Kenton was physically violent. Description Of Eakins's full-length portraits, the subject of The Thinker: Portrait of Louis N. Kenton is the least well-known: "Among Eakins's scholars and thinkers, he may be the lone representative of