Sketch for Portrait of Professor George F. Barker

George F. Barker was a professor of physics at the University of Pennsylvania, a colleague of Thomas Eakins who shared the painter's interest in the intersection of science and art. Eakins painted several portraits of Penn professors as part of his sustained documentation of Philadelphia's intellectual community. Barker was involved in the early study of electricity and was a witness to Thomas Edison's demonstrations of the incandescent bulb. This preliminary sketch is preparatory work for the formal portrait commission.

As a preparatory sketch, Eakins's handling is somewhat more fluid than in his finished portraits, with the tonal structure worked out rapidly rather than built up through careful layers. The professor's face is nonetheless rendered with the characteristic searching quality of Eakins's best observational work. The dark background and strong lighting are established even at this stage.