
Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), 1875
Thomas Eakins, American
Oil on canvas
8 feet x 6 feet 6 inches (243.8 x 198.1 cm)
Gift of the Alumni Association to Jefferson Medical College in 1878 and purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007 with the generous support of more than 3,500 donors, 2007
2007-1-1
Thomas Eakins, American
Oil on canvas
8 feet x 6 feet 6 inches (243.8 x 198.1 cm)
Gift of the Alumni Association to Jefferson Medical College in 1878 and purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007 with the generous support of more than 3,500 donors, 2007
2007-1-1
The Visual Record of Changes
The most direct way we can track changes in the appearance of The Gross Clinic over the years is through reproductions and photographs of it made at various points in its history. We have an unusually informative record, due in part to the early and continuing recognition of the painting’s importance. Shown below a recent photograph of The Gross Clinic, at left, are the three most important early images of the painting.
Eakins’s 1875-76 wash drawing after The Gross Clinic
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1923 (23.94)
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1923 (23.94)
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1917 Metropolitan Museum of Art photograph
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Mid-1920’s color reproduction made by Jefferson Medical College
Courtesy of the Archives & Special Collections, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.
Courtesy of the Archives & Special Collections, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia.
“The photograph [the color reproduction] presents an operation being done by Dr. Gross under a fancy red light which fills the Clinic Room. The oil painting presents an operation being done by Dr. Gross in daylight. I have been in the Clinic Room as it was in Dr. Gross’s time, also am quite certain at this present time, when artificial lights are the fashion, fancy lights would not be permitted on the serious performances of a Clinic.”The influence of a strong red element on the composition clearly struck her as new and inappropriate. This formerly dark, recessive, and muted secondary passage of the painting now projects a strong false note of ominous, infernal color that competes with the foreground forms and Eakins’s carefully placed touches of stronger color, notably the blood from the surgery. We can see now the marked degree to which the lightened, reddish tone of this area, which has looked this way since at least 1925, upsets the original organization of tones, the focus of the composition, and the recession of pictorial space. What happened to produce this distracting change? The explanation lies in Eakins’s way of visualizing and painting his subjects. Next: Discoveries