https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/12/17/thomas-eakins-reckoning-philadelphia
“The girl who entered 1729 Mount Vernon Street was not the same one who departed. Rumors about the other girls surfaced: they were white, they were the daughters of the elite, so there was public outrage and the painter disgraced. They had been spared this: the odalisque, the pose of the whore and the slave. They had not been required to look directly at the camera and acknowledge his gaze and pretend to invite it. The other girls might have mentioned her if she hadn’t been black and poor.”
Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments – Chapter: A Minor Figure pg.26
