The History of the Penn Athletic Club Rowing Association

A saga of a Philadelphia rowing club

Part 7 - Appendices

by Joe Sweeney

THE SCHUYLKILL NAVY COMMODORES

THE ARTISTS

• Charles Wilson Peale, the patriarch of American painters of the Revolutionary period, used the falls of Schuylkill in the background in a portrait of John Dickinson.
• William Groombridge is credited with the first formal painting of the Schuylkill in 1793, and Jeremiah Paul, sketched the Fairmount area in 1794.
• Count de Colbert Maulevier did watercolors of the Schuylkill River upper ferry in 1798.
• William Birch painting of Fairmount and Schuylkill River in 1800 featured the Strawberry Mansion.
• George Parkyns, an English painter, published in 1800 aquatint scenic views of the upper falls of Schuylkill.
• William Rush carved "the Nymph of the Schuylkill" in wood.
• Thomas Eakins, a well known Victorian artist and a Philadelphia Barge club oarsman, immortalized the Biglin brothers in four rowing pictures, the Pair-Oared Shell, the Biglin Brothers Racing, and the Biglin Brothers Turning the Stake, and John Biglin in a Single Scull. Eakins also produced several other rowing masterpieces. The most famous is of Max Schmitt in "The Championship Single Scull", with Eakins rowing in the background. This painting memorializes a championship race in 1870, in which Schmitt won by 3 lengths over four highly regarded competitors. Eakins did not depict the race itself, but wanted to represent the sort of training that went into it, making the painting a tribute not just to SchmittĘs victory but to the discipline that created it. This gives a pensive quality to the work, suggesting that the pain is brief but Victory is forever.

AUTHORS

• The Thames rowing skiff was immortalized by Ratty and Mole in "The Wind in the Willows". the "Fox Wood Tales" proposed there is nothing more worthwhile than messing around in boats.
• Handle's Water Music was composed in honor of the Thames Watermen.
• Thomas Moore (1779-1852) a Irish Victorian poet, wrote a poem about the Schuylkill, the only good thing he said he saw on his American tour.
• Recent movies featured rowing themes, such as "The Boy in Blue" starring Nicholas Cage, and "Rowing Through", based on "the Amateurs", a book by David Halberstam.
• Meryl Streep rowing in "The River Wild" and background shots in "The Firm", "The Exorcist", and "The Dead poet's Society".
• The "Shell Game" detailed John Terwillinger's effort to row at Harvard and make the National team.

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