The Gross Clinic: Difference between revisions

{{shortShort description|Painting by Thomas Eakins}}

The painting depicts Dr. [[Samuel D. Gross]], a seventy-year-old professor dressed in a black frock coat, lecturing a group of [[Jefferson Medical College]] students. Included among the group is a self-portrait of Eakins, who is seen at the leftright-hand side of the painting, next to the tunnel railing, with a white cuffed sleeve sketching or writing.<ref name=Smarth>{{cite web|last=Floryan|first=Meg|title=Eakins's The Gross Clinic|url=httphttps://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/eakins-the-gross-clinic.html/|work=[[Smarthistory]]|publisher=[[Khan Academy]]|accessdate=FebruaryMarch 114, 20132024}}</ref> Seen over Dr. Gross's right shoulder is the clinic clerk, Dr. Franklin West, taking notes on the operation.

Admired for its uncompromising [[Realism (visual arts)|realism]], ''The Gross Clinic'' has an important place documenting the history of medicine—both because it honors the emergence of [[surgery]] as a healing profession (previously,in [[History of surgery|previous years]] surgery was associated primarily with [[amputation]], which oftencaused resultedsevere inmedical infectioncomplications, and sometimes deathkilling the person), and because it shows what thea [[operating theater|surgical theater]] looked like in the nineteenth century.

Here, surgeons crowd around the anesthetized patient in their [[frock coats—thiscoat]]s—this is just prior to the adoption of a hygienic surgical environment (see [[asepsis]]). ''The Gross Clinic'' is thus often contrasted with Eakins's later painting ''[[The Agnew Clinic]]'' (1889), which depicts a cleaner, brighter, surgical theater, with the participants in "[[white coat]]s".<ref>Hardy,{{cite Susanjournal and| Corones,doi=10.1080/1362704X.2015.1077653 Anthony,| "title=Dressed to Heal: The Changing Semiotics of Surgical Dress", ''| year=2016 | last1=Hardy | first1=Susan | last2=Corones | first2=Anthony | journal=Fashion Theory'', (2015),| pp.1-23.volume=20 [https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2015.1077653| doipages=10.1080/1362704X.2015.1077653]27–49 | s2cid=193121532 }}</ref> In comparing the two, the advance in understanding of the prevention of infection is seen. Another noteworthy difference in the later painting is the presence of a professional nurse, Mary Clymer, in the operating theater.

The proposed sale was seen as a secretive act.<ref name="Salisbury">Salisbury, Stephan (November 14, 2006), A divisive deal, ''[[The Philadelphia Inquirer]]'' http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/16005417.htm</ref><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2007/01/the_gross_clinic_deaccession_d.html|title=The "Gross Clinic" Deaccession Debacle|author=Rosenbaum, Lee|date=January 31, 2007|access-date=December 4, 2021|publisher=ArtsJournal}}</ref> In late November 2006, efforts began to keep the painting in Philadelphia, including a fund with a December 26 deadline to raise money to purchase it and a plan to invoke a clause regarding "historic objects" in the city's historic preservation code. In a matter of weeks the fund raised $30 million, and on December 21, 2006, [[Wachovia]] Bank agreed to lend the difference until the rest of the money hashad been raised, keeping the painting in town at the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] and the [[Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts]].

Pledges alone were not enough to cover the US$68 million purchase price. The [[Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts]] was forced to deaccession Eakins's ''The Cello Player'' to an unidentified private buyer; and the [[Philadelphia Museum of Art]] deaccessioned Eakins's ''Cowboy Singing'', along with two oil sketches for ''Cowboys in the Badlands'', to the [[Anschutz collection]] and the [[Denver Art Museum]]. The Denver-based [[Anschutz collection]] purchased ''Cowboys in the Badlands'' at a 22 May 22, 2003 auction at [[Christie's|Christie's New York]] for $5,383,500, which was the previous record for an Eakins painting.<ref>Antiques and the Arts Online (May 27, 2003). [http://antiquesandthearts.com/AW0-05-27-2003-12-00-08 New Record for Eakins Painting in New York] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100117001331/http://antiquesandthearts.com/AW0-05-27-2003-12-00-08 |date=2010-01-17 }}</ref>

A reproduction of ''The Gross Clinic'' sits in the place of the original at Thomas Jefferson University. Every year at the graduation ceremony, graduating fellows of Vascular Neurology & Neurocritical Care Departments under the Department of Neurology at [[Thomas Jefferson University]] receive a reproduction print of the painting as a parting gift.

The painting has [[art restoration|been restored]] three times. The first restoration between 1917 and 1925 substantially damaged the painting, rendering secondary figures in the composition inconsistently bright or reddish in color.<ref name="K1">Kennedy, Randy [https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/19/arts/design/19eakins.html "Shedding Darkness on an Eakins Painting", ''The New York Times'', July 18, 2010]</ref> In 1929, [[Susan Macdowell Eakins]], the artist's widow, wrote a letter of complaint regarding the "fancy red light" that had falsified the painting's intended tones.<ref name=Smarth/><ref name="K1"/><ref name=PMARestore1961>{{cite web|title=The Conservation Project|url=http://www.philamuseum.org/conservation/14.html?page=2|work=Philadelphia Museum of Art (website)|publisher=Philadelphia Museum of Art|accessdate=2011-06-04}}</ref>

The painting's backing was reinforced with plywood by H. Stevenson in 1915. This was replaced in 1940 by [[Hannah Mee Horner]], who glued the painting to a plywood backing. Within two decades, this backing began to warp and threatened to tear the painting in half.<ref name=PMARestoreProject>{{cite web|title=The 1961 Conservation Treatment of ''The Gross Clinic''|url=http://www.philamuseum.org/conservation/14.html?page=3|work=Philadelphia Museum of Art (website)|publisher=Philadelphia Museum of Art|accessdate=2011-06-04}}</ref>

In 1961, at the request of [[Jefferson Medical College]], the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) undertook another restoration, under conservator Theodor Siegl.<ref>Theodor Siegl. The Thomas Eakins Collection. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1978. {{ISBN|0-8122-1162-6}}. Page 9</ref> Mark Tucker, a later PMA conservator, described the work as "a rescue mission... They were saving the painting from tearing itself in half. These were the nail heads that were starting to work forward into the canvas and show as bumps on the front... Yeah. It was just hair-raising."<ref name=Seattle>[http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/thearts/2011860177_grossclinicpainting15.html?syndication=rss 'Gross Clinic' painting undergoes its own public surgery]. Stephan Salisbury. The ''Seattle Times'', May 14, 2010.</ref> Siegl used a [[plane (tool)|power plane]] to remove the plywood down to the last, thin ply. The rest of the wood and the tenacious glue were painstakingly removed by hand. Siegl and his colleagues also restored, to some extent, the faces in the upper right of the canvas.<ref name=PMARestore1961/><ref name="Seattle"/>

* {{cite news |author= |coauthors= |title=Taking Lessons From a Bloody Masterpiece |url=https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/05/28/arts/design/thomas-eakins-gross-clinic.html?action=click&algo=als_engaged1_desk_filter&block=editors_picks_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=894095128&impression_id=983367004&index=0&pgtype=Article&region=ccolumn&action=click&module=editorContent&pgtype=Article&region=CompanionColumn&contentCollection=Trending |quote=American painting: a bloody masterpiece of pain and healing, made in Philadelphia nearly a century and a half ago. Thomas Eakins (1844-1916) was still a young artist when he completed “The Gross Clinic,” an in-action, up-to-the-minute depiction of the vanguard of American medicine that feels particularly relevant right now.|newspaper=[[New York Times]] |date=May 28, 2020 |accessdate=2020-06-04}}

{{Thomas Eakins}}

[[Category:Paintings ofin the Philadelphia Museum of Art]]