Correction: A previous version of this article referred to Eakins’s original title as “The Gross Clinic.” His first title for the painting was actually “Dr.

His friend and protege, Samual Murray, modeled a statuette of Eakins at work on the painting. The 6 Artists of Chicago’s Electrifying ’60s Art Group the Hairy Who, The Stories behind 10 of Art History’s Most Iconic Works, The Champion Single Sculls (Max Schmitt in a Single Scull). Dr. Samuel D. Gross, a seventy-year-old professor dressed in a black frock coat, lectures a group of Jefferson Medical College students. But everyone else is looking, learning, and working together to control the situation. , and because it shows what an surgical theater looked like in the nineteenth century. ", Steam inhalation via atomizer or direct inhalation of steaming water for respiratory support. Two years of study at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, the oldest art school in North America, introduced him to models of European painting and sculpture, after which he traveled to France for more advanced instruction in painting. As an icon of the interconnected strands of this tradition and an emblem of the “best of Philadelphia,” The Gross Clinic will remain to remind the city of its excellence—past, present, and future. Most experienced surgeon, clearest writer and teacher, most venerated and beloved man."[4][5]. 8.

Gross is a great work—we know of nothing greater that has ever been executed in America,” returned to his defense of the picture: “There is nothing so fine in the American section of the Art Department of the Exhibition and it is a great pity that the squeamishness of the Selection Committee compelled the artist to find a place in the United States Hospital Building. [11] At HUP, Clymer received training through clinical experience providing patient care and lectures presented by the hospital's physicians. 6. He graduated fluent in four modern languages and Latin, and a master of advanced mathematics, geometry, chemistry, history, and art.
As Dr. The work is a prime example of Eakins's scientific realism. Eakins himself published an original paper on equine anatomy, which he read to the members of the Academy, and he invented an improved lens for motion photography. [10][6] Clymer may not look down at the female figure in sympathy but with the cool attention of a trained operating room nurse, one who closely monitors her patient's status and anticipates the needs of the surgical team. Many art historians consider The Gross Clinic to be one of the best American paintings ever made. The Gross Clinic or The Clinic of Dr.

The painting was completed quickly, in three months, rather than the year it took Eakins to complete The Gross Clinic.

From this base, he ranged across the city, painting rowers on the Schuylkill, hunters in the New Jersey marshes, and a spectrum of friends, neighbors, and distinguished citizens. Clymer's diaries reveal daily nursing tasks, practical knowledge learned, and the occasional student's gripe—"Learned nothing new, and everything seemed to go wrong. The artist, Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), was born and died in Philadelphia. No other American city can point to an artist of such stature who has so indelibly represented its character. The painting was purchased for $200 by Jefferson alumni and given to the institution in 1878.

Until his death in this house in 1916, Eakins worked in the third floor studio (where The Gross Clinic was painted) or in the new fourth floor space added after 1900. Jennifer Doyle). According to Foster, Eakins captured a moment “so emblematic of the power of progress in American medicine.”, Eakins biographer Sidney Kirkpatrick goes so far as to, Unfortunately for Eakins, the Centennial committee rejected the painting for the main exhibition halls, perhaps because it was too bloody.
In the background, the operating room nurse, Mary Clymer, and University of Pennsylvania medical school students observe. The Gross Clinic, deemed too shocking and offensive for the general public, was displayed among the Army medical exhibits. M.V.C. The rendering is almost photographically precise – so much so that art historians have been able to identify everyone depicted in the painting, with the exception of the patient. It is characterized by so many excellent artistic qualities, that one regrets that the work as a whole fails to satisfy. Google Classroom Facebook Twitter. It has remained on view at Jefferson, where Eakins himself studied anatomy, since its donation, except for periodic loans to exhibitions in the United States and France. The young and little-known Eakins created it specifically for Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition, intending to showcase his talents as an artist and to honor the scientific achievements of his native Philadelphia. . The critic for Philadelphia's The Evening Telegraph, who may have been aware of the personal politics involved in the advisory group of artists who rejected it, wrote: There is nothing so fine in the American section of the Art Department of the Exhibition, and it is a great pity that the squeamishness of the Selecting Committee compelled the artist to find a place for it in the United States Hospital building. Admirable draughtsman as this painter is, one is surprised that in the arrangement of the figures the perspective should have been so ineffective that the mother is altogether too small for the rest of the group, and the figure of the patient so indistinct that it is difficult to tell exactly the part of the body upon which the surgeon is performing the operation. The Gross Clinic is recognized as one of the greatest American paintings ever made.

Commentators wondered at the placement: “It was one of the most powerful and life-like pictures to be seen at the Exhibition, and should have had a place at the Art Gallery, where it would have been seen but for an incomprehensible decision by the Selecting Committee.”, The critic William Clark—who had earlier written, “This portrait of Dr. Individual studies of all 33 figures were probably made, but none are known to survive. Painted in 1875, The Gross Clinic is widely considered Eakins' finest work. In the spring of 1875, a circular was sent out to the artists of Philadelphia, urging them to prepare for the upcoming great international Centennial Fair, where they could show their own skill and bring honor to the city. Within two decades this backing began to warp and threatened to tear the painting in half. He loved this city and made Philadelphia and its citizens the center of his art. When The Gross Clinic leaves its traditional home at Jefferson University, it will be seen to advantage in both of Philadelphia's great museums of American art.

It is oil on canvas and measures 8 feet (240 cm) by 6.5 feet (200 cm).

An icon at Thomas Jefferson University since 1878, Thomas Eakins's Gross Clinic has long been a pilgrimage painting to alumni and admiring visitors. The scene is lit from the skylight above, giving the necessary daylight that floods the operating table and strikes the forehead of Dr. Eakins later painted a black and white version, specifically to be photographed and reproduced as a photogravure. Michael Fried’s 1985 paper “Realism, Writing, and Disfiguration in Thomas Eakins’s Gross Clinic, with a Postscript on Stephen Crane’s Upturned Faces” proposes the canvas as a commentary on the act of painting itself, suggesting that in the work, blood and paint are “tokens of one another, natural equivalents whose special relationship is here foregrounded with unprecedented vividness.”.

He stands in the left foreground, holding a scalpel. Eakins carved a Latin inscription into the painting's frame. [7], Credited by the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP) as the first trained operating room nurse in Philadelphia, Mary V. Clymer was born in Mercer County, New Jersey, in 1861 to a prominent Civil War veteran. His painting, in the context of the Centennial, argues for Philadelphia's accomplishment as part of a larger story of American progress, seen as a model to the world. Gross's fingers made some of the committee members sick, but, judging from the quality of the works exhibited by them we fear that it was not the blood alone that made them sick. "[12], Clymer's notes reveal Eakins’ artistic license in the depiction of the mastectomy in The Agnew Clinic—Clymer wrote that, when preparing a patient for operation, one must cover the healthy breast and reveal the affected breast;[13] this is confirmed in Agnew's own writings. Included among the group is a self-portrait of Eakins, who is seen at the left-hand side of the painting, next to the tunnel railing, with a white cuffed sleeve sketching or writing. The scene depicts Gross overseeing a surgery and lecturing to a class of medical students—evoking Rembrandt’s art historical precedent The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp (1632). Eakins' special relationship with the city of Philadelphia is anchored in his childhood home at 1729 Mount Vernon Street, now a neighborhood art center and the offices of the city's celebrated Mural Arts Program. It is assumed that the patient depicted in The Gross Clinic was a teenage boy, although the exposed body is not entirely discernible as male or female; the painting is shocking for both the odd presentation of this figure and the matter-of-fact goriness of the procedure.[3]. The rest of the wood and the tenacious glue were painstakingly removed by hand. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Gross (1875) (now known as The Gross Clinic). Antiques and the Arts Online (May 27, 2003). [6] At the age of 28, Clymer enrolled in the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania Training School for Nurses. G-236. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978.

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The Denver-based Anschutz collection purchased Cowboys in the Badlands at a May 22, 2003 auction at Christie's New York for $5,383,500, which was the previous record for an Eakins painting.[10]. [3] It was commissioned for $750 (equivalent to $21,342 today) in 1889 by three undergraduate classes at the University of Pennsylvania, to honor Dr. Agnew on the occasion of his retirement.

Eakins made preparatory sketches for The Agnew Clinic – a drawing of Dr. David Hayes Agnew, an oil study of Agnew, and a compositional sketch for the entire work.

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