Salutat. Salutat is an 1898 painting by Thomas Eakins.
   Based on a real-life boxing match that occurred in 1898, the work depicts a boxer waving to the crowd after the match. According to Eakins' biographer Lloyd Goodrich, Salutat is one of Eakins' finest achievements in figure-painting.
   The painting's title is Latin for He greets or He salutes. Much as he had with his paintings of rowers in the 1870s, during the late 1890s Eakins turned his interest again to the male nude, this time depicting prizefighters.
   Eakins attended fights in 1898, and aided by sportswriters Clarence Cranmer and Henry Walter Schlichter, met with and hired fighters to pose for him. The studio became a place to spar; according to Eakins's protégé the sculptor Samuel Murray, one of the fighters, Ellwood McCloskey, would round up fellow pugilists who had promised to pose but didn't show up: Hey, you son of a bitch, haven't you got a date to pose for Mr. Eakins? Come on now, or I'll punch your goddamn head off.
   Turkey Point Billy Smith, a featherweight who competed in over 100 bouts over the course of ten years and fought two featherweight champions, was the protagonist for Salutat as well as for Between Rounds. Eakins made multiple studies of the subject. A pencil-on-paper study was purchased by Joseph Hirshhorn in 1965 and donated to his eponymous museum in 1966. Eakins also completed an oil-on-canvas study, which h
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