A lifelong enthusiast of wrestling, Thomas Eakins began attending matches in the 1870s, as the popular bourgeois sport offered ample opportunity to study male bodies in states of tremendous exertion, contortion, and duress. In preparation for this painting—his last great sporting picture—Eakins photographed wrestlers in his Philadelphia studio, carefully juxtaposing clothed and unclothed bodies, wrinkled and taut flesh. Although the work underscores his academic study of classical sculpture, his wrestlers are not particularly heroic, capturing instead an awkward entanglement of bodies.
