Thomas Eakins Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some 40 years later, Eakins worked exactingly from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken "en masse", the
Eakins Oval 8 Philadelphia and the Budweiser Made in America Festival, the roadways are shut down to automobile traffic and the oval becomes center stage for the gathering. Eakins Oval was the site of the stage for the 2017 NFL Draft. The oval was part of urban planner Jacques Gréber's design for the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, which he proposed in 1917. The oval is named for Thomas Eakins, Philadelphian, world-famous realist painter, and fine arts educator. The southeastern part of the oval serves as a parking lot; it was originally part of the Parkway until traffic modifications isolated it in the 1960s.