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Reflections on "The Gross Clinic"The Gross Clinic was painted in 1875, and originally entitled "Portrait of Dr. Gross". At the time, Dr. Gross was a world-famous surgeon practicing at Jefferson Hospital. The canvas depicts him performing a surgery in the University ampitheatre. He is removing a portion of a diseased bone from the thigh of a 14-year-old boy, whose mother looks on in horror. His son stands in the doorway, and Eakins himself is seated in the gallery on the right side of the painting. There are 28 portraits in the painting -- all depictions of actual individuals. The painting was considered shocking in its day, and indeed still inspires shock in the viewer who first sees it. Eakins was unable to sell the painting, and it was not prominently displayed at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition because of its subject matter. Eventually it was purchased by the students of Thomas Jeffersons University for $200 dollars (roughly the cost of the frame that Eakins had bought for it). For over 125 years, the painting remained in a collection of Jefferson University, and was rarely seen. It has been subject to a wide range of analysis and interpretation.In many ways, it is impossible to produce an exact replica of the original as it looks now, and perhaps not even desirable to do so. For example, the original painting has not been cleaned in 70 years, and has very likely darkened considerably since it was first painted. There are also areas where it has suffered damage, particularly on the upper right-hand corner, extending along the right side, to the portrait of Eakins. Fortunately, Eakins himself made an ink wash copy of the painting for the purposes of photo gravure reproduction. I consider this to be "the Rosetta stone" of the original, insofar as it is a contemporary record of what the painting originally looked like, and therefore extremely valuable in reconstructing the appearance of sections that may have undergone trasnformation. It is also inevitable that any copyist of a masterwork will produce a painting that is also reflective of his own style & abilities. |