Study of a Woman with arms on head done at Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia 1884

This is one of the many esquisses (small oil sketch studies) of nudes that Reid made while he was studying with Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) from 1882 to 1885. Masking the face was a common practice for female models, especially when they were also students. The size of this sketch, its lack of detail, and the fact that it was done on paper rather than canvas identify it as a quick study, most likely made during a classroom session.

Reid’s painterly blocking of the picture exemplifies a technique that he learned from Eakins and, earlier, Robert Harris (1849–1919). That technique—in which the artist uses a paintbrush to capture broad areas of form, tone, and light all at the same time, instead of working out individual details in preliminary drawings—was what Reid found particularly exciting about his studies in Toronto, and especially in Philadelphia.

As Eakins explained in an 1879 article, which Reid may have read before he moved to Philadelphia, “The least important, the most changeable, the most difficult thing to catch about a figure is the outline. The student drawing the outline of [a] model with a point [pencil] is confused and lost if the model moves a hair’s-breadth… and you notice how often he has had to rub out and correct…. Moreover, the outline is not the man; the grand construction is. Once that is got, the details follow naturally.“

The next step was to make more finished studies, such as one of a male head and torso that Reid created in 1889, probably during his time at the Académie Julian in Paris. For these works, he added transitional tones that smoothed out the brusquely defined relationships seen in esquisses such as Study of a Woman with arms on head done at Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, 1884, resulting in convincingly naturalistic depictions of the models.