The Clinic Sale is Gross

The Gross Clinic is not only a majestic allegory that celebrates the triumph of scientific rationalism, it is generally recognized as the greatest work by the city's most famous and talented artist. Any list of the top 10 American paintings must include Thomas Eakins' painting, notable both for its multiple levels of meaning and for its compositional power and technical brilliance.

Completed in 1876, the work is most obviously a magnetic portrait of a celebrated local surgeon, Samuel D. Gross - Eakins' best, most incisive character study. It depicts Gross performing surgery in an amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College, where the artist had studied anatomy.

Inquirer Art Critic Edward J. Sozanski, in Dissecting a masterpiece, discusses The Gross Clinic. The painting, "which Eakins saw as testimony to the city's educational and medical achievements," has been sold by Thomas Jefferson University:

Thomas Eakins' masterpiece The Gross Clinic - an iconic painting that is irrevocably identified with Philadelphia, where it was painted more than 125 years ago - is poised for sale by Thomas Jefferson University for a record $68 million to a partnership of the National Gallery of Art in Washington and a new museum planned by Wal-Mart heirs in Arkansas.

* * * *

Officials at Jefferson said that money from the sale - which was privately brokered by Christie's auction house and pursued quietly over the last three months - would help finance an ambitious expansion plan mapped out for the next decade. Jefferson envisions a radically altered campus on the fringes of Washington Square, replete with new buildings and green space.

City art icon about to be sold. As the NYTimes said, Eakins Masterwork Is to Be Sold to Museums:

In 1878 the alumni of Thomas Jefferson University, a medical school in Philadelphia, scraped together $200 so the institution could buy a painting depicting a revered professor, Dr. Samuel D. Gross, performing a gory operation on a man’s thigh. Today that work, “The Gross Clinic,” by Thomas Eakins, is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest canvases of American art.

Yesterday the university’s board voted to sell its prized 1875 painting for $68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, founded by the Wal-Mart heiress Alice L. Walton and under construction in Bentonville, Ark. That sum is a record for an artwork created in the United States before World War II.

Shock was the best way to describe the reaction in Philadelphia. Although previous offers to purchase the painting were rebuffed by Jefferson, not so this time. The Inquirer, in A divisive deal, notes:

The painting, a monumental portrayal of renowned Jefferson surgeon Samuel D. Gross demonstrating a bloody leg operation, is considered inextricably bound to the university and to Philadelphia, where it was created.

Old school ties were not enough in 2006, however. University trustees announced Friday that they had agreed to sell the painting for $68 million. The news, said David Paskin, senior associate dean at the university, hit Jefferson "like a nuclear blast."

Yesterday, students, faculty members and alumni were still reeling from the shock, which caught everyone off guard, angering not a few by its seeming stealth.

* * * *

[M]any . . . connected with Jefferson are puzzled by the way the university handled the sale. According to accounts pieced together from principals in the deal and others in Philadelphia, Jefferson trustees formed a committee and quietly brought in Christie's auction house a few months ago to explore selling the painting.

Physician blogger General Practice, expresses the sentiment best, in Is art important to medicine?:

Isn't that a little like selling your soul to the devil? Couldn't Jeff issue bonds in the usual fashion and go into debt like any respectable university?

Says Bob Barchi (University President), "We're not a museum. We're not in the business of art education" and in two sentences betrays his failing grade on his Two Cultures book report , a crushing ignorance of the centrality of art to the human experience, and spins Jefferson's expansion as an Eakins rejection redux.

Heroic myth writ large (Homer) or small (Rocky Balboa, Luke Skywalker) inspires great things in real life, just as Eakins painting of Gross has inspired countless artists, physicians and patients. It is arguably Philadelphia's David. But Philadelphia is not Florence, and the Jefferson Board no Medici.

Efforts to keep the Eakins painting in Philly are underway, reports the Inquirer in Stunned by sale, but not giving up:

To retain the painting here, local institutions and government agencies have been given 45 days to match the price tag of $68 million, a record for an Eakins and for a pre-World War II American painting.

The clock started ticking Friday, when the Jefferson board approved terms of the sale.

After Dec. 26, if no local match is made, the painting will be a part of Philadelphia's past, a memory haunting a depleted cultural landscape.

Echoing that view, in Absolutely Not, blogger Welcome to Phillyville, is hopeful that the city will rally to save Eakins:

This is our cultural heritage. We cannot let it be bought.

If we sell it, we are selling are Philadelphia's future. Would we allow the Liberty Bell to be bought? Would we allow some Wal-Mart heiress to ship the Liberty Bell to Bentonville, Arkansas? This is no different.

Philadelphia is the home of the first hospital, founded by no less than Ben Franklin and is now one of the pre-eminent centers of medicine in the U.S., if not the world. That rich medical tradition that is captured by this painting. We have a rich history of medicine that will be plundered by the sale of this art.

We buy this and we would be investing in our city's cultural capital.

See also, Keep Eakins' "Gross Clinic" in Philadelphia.

I would add only one thought. If efforts are successful to keep The Gross Clinic in Philly, Jefferson should not be its home. The empty wall where the painting once hung is the truest reflection of its mission.

Tags: Philadelphia, Philly, News, Gross Clinic, Eakins