Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic (1875; Jefferson…

Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic (1875; Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia) objectively records a realistic drama of contemporary life, full of feeling but free of sentimentality; the painting will be generally agreed to be his masterpiece.

Eakins, who has yet to become well known, has decided to paint a major picture for the Centennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia the following year.

He takes as his subject a scene that has become familiar to him: Samuel Gross of Jefferson Medical College operating in his clinic before his students.

Gross is a magnetic teacher and one of the country's greatest surgeons.

Eakins, who often selects moments that reveal multiple aspects of a scene, in this picture depicts Gross as both surgeon and teacher.

Gross, dressed in black street clothes, stands in the center of a somber amphitheater, starkly top-lighted by a flood of cool daylight cascading down from a skylight above.

He has opened an incision in the leg of the anesthetized male patient stretched out before him.

While his assistants probe the wound, the doctor turns, one hand holding a scalpel covered with blood, to tell his students what he has done and what he will do next.

At the left a seated woman, perhaps the patient's mother, flings an arm across her face, shielding her eyes from the scene, her fingers clawing the air in anguish.

The cool professionalism of Gross, whose calm features reflect assurance and determination as well as compassion, stands in striking contrast to the woman's emotion and the note of pain and suffering inherent in the subject.