A preliminary plan for the sale of artworks in the collection of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary should be announced by the end of March, seminary officials say.

The seminary is home to about 200 paintings, including six portraits of clerics by Thomas Eakins and others by Alice Neel and Philip Pearlstein. The Inquirer reported Monday that the seminary was considering sales from its collection to help defray the costs of consolidation and renovation of its Wynnewood campus on City Avenue.

"Sometime by the end of March we'll have a better idea of how we will proceed," said Bishop Timothy Senior, rector of the seminary. "We need to do more work to determine what will be sold."

The seminary has said it is formulating a plan that could include sale of its Eakins paintings, plus the Neel portrait of Archbishop Jean Jadot, commissioned by the diocese in 1976. The fate of the Pearlstein portrait of Cardinal John Krol, paid for by Krol himself, is also in play. But it is the Eakins paintings that have captured the attention of scholars and critics.

The earliest portrait, of Archbishop James Frederick Wood, who oversaw completion of the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul and the seminary campus, and who became Philadelphia's first archbishop, dates from 1877.

Eakins, despite his agnosticism, was fascinated by Wood's intellect and achievements, asked him to pose, and gave him the finished work. Unfortunately, a botched 1930 restoration ruined much of the painting, which hangs in the seminary's Eakins Room.

By the turn of the century, Eakins and his studio mate, sculptor Samuel Murray, were biking through Fairmount Park on Sundays to the seminary, where Eakins loved chatting with seminarians, discussing complex theological and philosophical problems, and listening to the chants of vespers.

He developed several friendships at St. Charles and asked each friend to pose. When the painting was done, he would give it to the sitter.

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Eakins sale plan due by month's end