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The Eakins Gallery at Thomas Jefferson University
Art by Philadelphia’s greatest artist on display in the medical school which inspired them
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The Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins, 1875
Image courtesy of Jefferson Medical College, Thomas Jefferson University
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Other Information
Individuals request access at security desk in Jefferson Alumni Hall.
Open Mon - Sun
Insider Tip
In the gallery’s anteroom there’s a fine painting by Susan Macdowell Eakins, the painter’s wife, depicting a haunting 1917 image of an injured soldier and a dog.
2007 UPDATE: Thomas Eakin's The Gross Clinic was recently sold to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. A replica now hangs in the Eakins Gallery.
The Gross Clinic is now on view at thePennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. Learn more.
The Experience
Three life-size portraits, by the late 19th century Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins are just part of the gallery in Thomas Jefferson University’s Alumni Hall. The gallery was inaugurated in 1982 to celebrate the portraits of three eminent university medical professors: Samuel Gross, Benjamin H. Rand and William S. Forbes.
Eakins, considered to be one the greatest American realist painters, reveals his boldness and fascination with the medical profession throughout his work. Two portraits hanging in the gallery offer sympathetic images of Jefferson professors whom Eakins knew — one, Dr. Rand, with his cat. The gallery also displays early stethoscopes, syringes and other medical instruments from the University’s collection.
History
Eakins actually studied anatomy at Jefferson, seeing it as a crucial part of an artist’s education. The compelling honesty of The Gross Clinic reflects Eakins’s uncompromising approach to art and life; he lost his position teaching at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in a dispute over the use of nudity in an art class, and not until late in life did he begin to receive the acclaim he deserved.
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