Visual Analysis Of The Gross Clinic By Thomas Eakins

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The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins was made in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1875. It is an oil on canvas painting that measured eight by six-feet six-inches (Philadelphia Museum of Art). One of the Greatest American paintings ever made (Chilvers); The Gross Clinic was painted by Thomas Eakins for Philadelphia’s 1876 Centennial Exhibition (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Chilvers, Foster). The painting never got displayed as a main exhibit at the Centennial celebration. It instead was shown in a model US army field hospital exhibit (Philadelphia Museum of Art, Foster). The painting was located in Gallery 111, on the first floor in the American Art section. There were several pieces of furniture in this room including a cabinet, a center table, and …show more content…

The other objects in the room gave me a sense that this is what a wealthier individual’s life was like back then. From the wine glasses, to the Breaking Home Ties painting, to the Gross Clinic which was at a University, to the ornate pieces of furniture. The Gross Clinic’s subject, Dr. Samuel Gross, who was a university professor of trauma surgery at Jefferson medical college during the 1870s, is leading a medical procedure with a team of five doctors that is taking place on the left thigh of a patient (Yeo). During this operation Dr. Gross has a lecture hall full of undergraduates in the gallery witnessing a new technique to treat a bone disease, that Dr. Gross developed himself (Philadelphia Museum of Art). Dr. Gross was a medical doctor prominent in the understanding and exploration in the surgical techniques of his day (Yeo). This procedure is revolutionary because he is removing a sequestrum (the disease was osteomyelitis) as opposed to an amputation of the leg, which was the customary operating treatment at the time (Yeo, Hendricks 57). Dr. Gross takes center stage in the painting with a long black jacket and a scalpel in his hand with blood on his …show more content…

It was retouched and redated in 1880 (Philadelphia Museum of Art). It’s an oil on canvas painting that measures twenty-eight by fourty-two inches. A Coming Storm was first owned by well-known Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, brother of Abraham Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth (Philadelphia Museum of Art). The piece was painted during the middle of the Civil War. A poem was written about it by Herman Melville after he saw it an exhibition in New York City just after Lincoln's death in April 1865. Sanford found this spot interesting because of the dramatic effects of weather and light. The painting was located in Gallery 116 on the first floor in the American Art section. Also in the room were a few other landscapes I liked including Pichincha, Twilight on the Campagna, winter Coast, and Dana Beach, Manchester. The other paintings in the room gave an older feel to the painting I chose. A Coming Storm shows Lake George right before the onset of a rainstorm. The vantage point makes it seem like the viewer is standing on the mirror-like lake, looking at the mountain ranges. The focal point is the two boulders on the left which lend themselves to one another. The area is illuminated by light and gives great color to the surrounding trees. By contrast the mountain ranges on the right are black with foreboding clouds above. This gives piece to the viewer, or at least

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