The Gross Clinic

Dr. Samuel Gross pauses mid-operation, a bloodied scalpel in his hand, to address his students, while assistants bend over the patient's exposed flesh and, at the side, a woman flinches and covers her eyes. Thomas Eakins painted the great Philadelphia surgeon with unflinching realism, light striking the lecturer's high forehead as if illuminating science itself. Now in Philadelphia, the Gross Clinic shocked audiences with its frank blood and clinical detail, and is now regarded as one of the supreme achievements of American painting - a heroic, modern image of medicine and reason.