Special Exhibitions >     The Collection >

Donate to The Fund for Eakins Masterpiece:

www.pafa.org/donateForm.jsp 

The Gross Clinic, Thomas Eakins’ 1875 masterpiece, is widely considered one of the most important American paintings. After mounting an unprecedented collaborative fund raising campaign that, to date, has seen donations from over 3,400 individuals from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and even American soldiers serving in Iraq, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art now jointly own the painting. Your continued support to help both institutions is wholeheartedly appreciated. You can make a charitable donation online here www.pafa.org/donateForm.jsp or by mailing a check to Fund for Eakins Masterpiece, c/o Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 128 N. Broad Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102.

The Gross Clinic is currently on view in the Academy's Historic Landmark Building (gallery 9) along with other Eakins works from the collection and examples of the anatomical casts Eakins made while a member of the Academy’s faculty. It will remain on view until June 2008. The Gross Clinic will be shared and exhibited equally by both the Academy and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The painting will be hung at each institution for several years on a rotating basis.
   

The painting was purchased for $200 in 1878 by Thomas Jefferson University alumni and given to the institution in 1878. The painting remained on view at Jefferson’s Philadelphia campus when the medical college announced it would be sold to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the to-be-constructed Crystal Bridges Museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, for $68 million in November 2006. Local institutions were given 45 days to match the sale price and keep the painting in Philadelphia.
 

The Gross Clinic depicts legendary Philadelphia doctor Samuel D. Gross and the members of his clinic performing bone surgery on a young man, while a figure often thought to be the patient’s mother cringes nearby. Known in his day as “the emperor of American surgery,” the 70-year-old Gross is depicted turning from the patient to address his students in the surgical amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College. Eakins’ viewpoint thrusts the viewer into the role of one of Gross’ students, overseeing the operation.

Measuring 8 by 6 feet, The Gross Clinic was completed by Eakins at age 31. When he submitted it for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia it was rejected from the Fine Arts Gallery, now Memorial Hall, because its content was considered shocking.

At the time, an art critic for the New York Tribune called it “one of the most powerful, horrible yet fascinating pictures that has been painted anywhere in this century …” In 2002, when it was exhibited in the Philadelphia Museum of Art-organized Thomas Eakins: American Realist retrospective exhibition at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman called The Gross Clinic “hands down, the finest 19th century American painting …”

The effort by the Academy and the Philadelphia Museum of Art received major support from The Annenberg Foundation, Athena and Nicholas Karabots, Pew Charitable Trusts, H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, and the Joseph Neubauer.

Learn More: www.whyy.org/artsandculture/grossclinic.html

Curbside Art Appreciation

To view photos from Eakins Idol, visit:

http://go.philly.com/beingeakins

http://go.philly.com/auditions