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63-486: The painting depicts Dr. Samuel D. Gross , a seventy-year-old professor dressed in a black frock coat, lecturing a group of Jefferson Medical College students. Included among the group is a self-portrait of Eakins, who is seen at the right-hand side of the painting, next to the tunnel railing, with a white cuffed sleeve sketching or writing. Seen over Dr. Gross's right shoulder is the clinic clerk, Dr. Franklin West, taking notes on

126-681: A cholera epidemic struck Easton, he was sent to New York by the town council in order to learn about approved treatments for the disease. Gross wanted to become a teacher of anatomy, and in 1833 he contacted John Eberle, his former professor at Jefferson and then professor of Materia Medica at the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati . Eberle was able to obtain Gross a position as demonstrator of anatomy there, and soon afterwards Gross moved to Cincinnati with his wife and two children. However, jealousy from

189-562: A urinary stone from a young James K. Polk , and distinguished himself as one of the most capable surgeons in America and the originator of abdominal surgery, as well as being the first ovariotomist. Michael Fried Michael Martin Fried (born April 12, 1939 in New York City ) is a modernist art critic and art historian . He studied at Princeton University and Harvard University and

252-597: A fair amount of clinical experience with Swift's patients. After a year of training under Swift, he took a six-week vacation due to ill health. Swift advised him to attend the University of Pennsylvania for further training, but Gross opted for the newly founded Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia , as he greatly admired the founder of the school, Professor of Surgery Dr. George McClellan , and his colleague, Dr. John Eberle, Professor of Medicine. Gross entered Jefferson in

315-426: A farm near Easton, Pennsylvania , Gross developed an interest in plants, trees, and flowers. He grew up speaking Pennsylvania Dutch , a dialect of German, and supposedly resolved to be a doctor when he was only five years old. At the age of 17 he was apprenticed to a local physician, then another, but both of these experiences soon proved unsatisfactory. He then started to work under the tutelage of Dr. Joseph K. Swift,

378-774: A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania . Swift realized quickly that Gross' rudimentary education was insufficient training for work as a doctor. Gross then returned to preparatory school, first attending Wilkes-Barre Academy . He went on to another school in the Bowery in New York (where he received a background in classical studies) and Lawrenceville School in New Jersey . At 19, Gross returned to Swift's office, where he learned mineralogy , anatomy , surgery, Materia Medica, therapeutics, physiology , obstetrics , and French. He also received

441-426: A letter of complaint regarding the "fancy red light" that had falsified the painting's intended tones. The painting's backing was reinforced with plywood by H. Stevenson in 1915. This was replaced in 1940 by Hannah Mee Horner , who glued the painting to a plywood backing. Within two decades, this backing began to warp and threatened to tear the painting in half. In 1961, at the request of Jefferson Medical College ,

504-794: A memorial oration in honor of the famous surgeon Ephraim McDowell in Danville . Gross was presented with the original door knocker from McDowell's home; for a time the gift resided in the collection of the Museum of the College of Physicians in Philadelphia, but has since been returned to the McDowell house in Danville, where it is kept under glass. Also in 1875, Gross was depicted by artist Thomas Eakins in his celebrated painting The Gross Clinic , which Eakins showed at

567-486: A movement based in a conflicting mode of phenomenological experience than the one offered by Fried. In "Art and Objecthood" Fried criticized the "theatricality" of Minimalist art. He introduced the opposing term "absorption" in his 1980 book, Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot . Drawing on Diderot 's criticism, Fried argues that whenever a self-consciousness of viewing exists, absorption

630-499: A reading of works by prominent art photographers of the last 20 years ( Bernd and Hilla Becher , Jeff Wall , Andreas Gursky , Thomas Demand among others) Fried asserted that concerns of anti-theatricality and absorption are central to the turn by contemporary photographers towards large-scale works "for the wall." In more recent years, Fried has written several long and complex histories of modern art, most famously on Édouard Manet , Gustave Courbet , Adolph Menzel , and painting in

693-766: A year spent on the faculty of the University of the City of New York. With Drake and his colleagues, Gross helped make the Louisville Medical Institute the most important medical center in the western United States. During Gross's time there, the institution attained a reputation equal to similar ones east of the Appalachian Mountains , and at the time of Gross's hiring, his fellow professors at Louisville had all attained national if not international fame in their respective fields. Gross's tenure in Louisville, however,

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756-495: Is compromised, and theatricality results. As well as applying the distinction to 18th-century painting, Fried employs related categories in his art criticism of post-1945 American painting and sculpture. Fried rejects the effort by some critics to conflate his art-critical and art-historical writing. Fried revisited some of these concerns in Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before (London and New Haven 2008). In

819-408: Is impossible. Another critic, writing in 1885, said: It is characterized by so many excellent artistic qualities, that one regrets that the work as a whole fails to satisfy. Admirable draughtsman as this painter is, one is surprised that in the arrangement of the figures the perspective should have been so ineffective that the mother is altogether too small for the rest of the group, and the figure of

882-404: Is just prior to the adoption of a hygienic surgical environment (see asepsis ). The Gross Clinic is thus often contrasted with Eakins's later painting The Agnew Clinic (1889), which depicts a cleaner, brighter, surgical theater, with the participants in " white coats ". In comparing the two, the advance in understanding of the prevention of infection is seen. Another noteworthy difference in

945-652: Is now on loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art , which also shares ownership of The Gross Clinic with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts . Thomas Jefferson University sold the latter painting in late 2006. Gross died on May 6, 1884, at age 78, in Philadelphia. He was cremated at Le Moyne Crematory and his ashes were buried in The Woodlands Cemetery . Gross' estate, aside from a few bequests,

1008-891: The American Surgical Association and the Philadelphia Pathological Association . Earlier in Kentucky he had founded, with T.G. Richardson, the Louisville Medical Review and the North American Chirurgical Review . In 1875 Gross returned to Louisville for a meeting of the AMA, where he was re-elected president and entertained lavishly, even being presented by the physicians of Kentucky with two thoroughbred horses. He made his final visit to Kentucky two years later, in 1877, when he gave

1071-454: The Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts . Pledges alone were not enough to cover the US$ 68 million purchase price. The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts was forced to deaccession Eakins's The Cello Player to an unidentified private buyer; and the Philadelphia Museum of Art deaccessioned Eakins's Cowboy Singing , along with two oil sketches for Cowboys in

1134-767: The Smithsonian Park of the U.S. Capitol on a pedestal appropriated by the U.S. Congress . In 1970 it was relocated to the campus of Thomas Jefferson University in Center City Philadelphia . In Louisville a portrait of him hangs in the Fred Rankin Amphitheater, and since 1941, the Phi Delta Epsilon Medical Fraternity has sponsored an annual Samuel D. Gross lectureship. After Gross moved to Cincinnati, he ceased his translation work and began to publish original contributions to

1197-424: The germ theory to explain infections. All participants and onlookers of the depicted surgery in the painting wear normal clothing, not sterilized surgical gowns; there is no sign of gloves or surgical masks; and the presumption is that none of the instruments or hands were sterilized before surgery. Dr. Gross is quoted as saying: "Little if any faith is placed by any enlightened or experienced surgeon on this side of

1260-399: The 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. However, the graphic nature of the painting led the judges in the artistic section to banish it to the section on medical displays. The painting lionizes Gross at the peak of his career, skillfully performing the removal of a malignancy in the thigh of a young patient while explaining the surgical techniques to a captivated audience of students in

1323-529: The Atlantic in the so-called carbolic acid treatment of Professor Lister". In contrast, we see in Eakins' later painting, The Agnew Clinic , a move towards sterility in the surgical theater. Fourteen years later, Eakins produced a similar painting, The Agnew Clinic (1889), depicting Gross's counterpart, David Hayes Agnew , performing surgery in the amphitheater at the University of Pennsylvania. The Agnew Clinic

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1386-654: The Badlands , to the Anschutz collection and the Denver Art Museum . The Denver-based Anschutz collection purchased Cowboys in the Badlands at a May 22, 2003 auction at Christie's New York for $ 5,383,500, which was the previous record for an Eakins painting. A reproduction of The Gross Clinic sits in the place of the original at Thomas Jefferson University. Every year at the graduation ceremony, graduating fellows of Vascular Neurology & Neurocritical Care Departments under

1449-691: The Crittendens, Breckenridges, Wooleys, Prestons, Wickliffes, Pirtles, Ballards, Rowans, Guthries, and Prentices. Gross had even been a guest of Henry Clay at his estate, " Ashland ," in Lexington . He was a member of the Unitarian Church and the St. George Lodge of Masons. In 1854, he also became a member of the American Philosophical Society . In August 1855, Gross, a close friend of John Barbee ,

1512-457: The Department of Neurology at Thomas Jefferson University receive a reproduction print of the painting as a parting gift. The painting has been restored three times. The first restoration between 1917 and 1925 substantially damaged the painting, rendering secondary figures in the composition inconsistently bright or reddish in color. In 1929, Susan Macdowell Eakins , the artist's widow, wrote

1575-572: The Mayor of Louisville, helped save the Catholic Cathedral on Fifth Street from an anti-foreign Know-Nothing Party mob that intended to burn it down in what was known as the Bloody Monday riot. In 1856, Gross's alma mater, Jefferson Medical College, offered him a position as professor of surgery, and he accepted it despite having turned down a similar position from the University of Pennsylvania

1638-483: The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA) undertook another restoration, under conservator Theodor Siegl. Mark Tucker, a later PMA conservator, described the work as "a rescue mission... They were saving the painting from tearing itself in half. These were the nail heads that were starting to work forward into the canvas and show as bumps on the front... Yeah. It was just hair-raising." Siegl used a power plane to remove

1701-731: The Thomas Jefferson University Board voted to sell the painting for US$ 68 million to the National Gallery of Art in Washington and the new Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art , then under construction in Bentonville, Arkansas . The sale would represent a record price for an artwork made in the United States prior to World War II. The proposed sale was seen as a secretive act. In late November 2006, efforts began to keep

1764-418: The U.S, where he combined studying for a Ph.D in art history at Harvard with writing art criticism, initially for Art International . In 1965 he curated the exhibition "Three American painters: Kenneth Noland , Jules Olitski , Frank Stella " at Harvard's Fogg Art Museum . In his essay, "Art and Objecthood," published in 1967, Fried argued that Minimalism 's focus on the viewer's experience, rather than

1827-651: The college in Cincinnati folded. Drake had previously accepted the chair of pathological anatomy and clinical medicine at the Louisville Medical Institute , founded in 1833, and his influence caused Gross to accept a job at this school, refusing professorships from the University of Virginia and the University of Louisiana . Gross and his family took up residence at the Louisville Hotel in 1840, and shortly thereafter he established an office and residence on

1890-523: The continent." $ 30,000 had been spent on the structure and $ 20,000 for the purchase of books, chemical apparatus and anatomical preparations in Europe by Dr. Joshua Flint , Gross' predecessor as Professor of Surgery. Lectures at the college began the first Monday in November and lasted until March. Dissecting rooms were opened the first of October to purchasers of advance tickets. Students were also freely admitted to

1953-404: The cost of living was lower and there were greater opportunities for young physicians. He purchased a home there and built a small laboratory in the rear where he spent several hours a day on human and animal dissection . He also became interested in research on blood coagulation , gastric and renal excretion, animal inoculation of smallpox , and pulmonary pathology following strangulation . When

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2016-511: The early 1960s, he was also close to philosopher Stanley Cavell . Fried was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985 and the American Philosophical Society in 2003. Fried describes his early career in the introduction to Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (1998), an anthology of his art criticism in the 60s and 70s. Although he majored in English at Princeton it

2079-414: The east side of Fifth Street between Green (now Liberty) and Walnut Streets. The 1847 city directory listed his office and house on the north side of Walnut Street between Third and Fourth. Soon after his arrival, in 1841 Gross set up a dog laboratory in the basement of the college building, which was then only two years old and described "as for beauty and convenience not surpassed by any similar edifice on

2142-401: The emergence of surgery as a respected profession. In 2002, Michael Kimmelman of The New York Times called it "hands down, the finest 19th-century American painting." In 2006, in response to the impending sale of this painting, The New York Times published a "close reading" which sketches some of the different critical perspectives on this work of art. After its purchase for US$ 200 at

2205-410: The fall of 1826 and graduated in 1828 in a class of 27 students. Gross began practice in an office at the corner of Fifth and Library Streets in Philadelphia. His patients were few, and he spent much of the time translating French and German medical texts into English, but this did not augment his income sufficiently. He married a twenty-year-old widow with one child, and soon moved back to Easton, where

2268-590: The head of the Anatomy Department meant that he was unable to lecture in the regular amphitheater but instead was relocated to an attic space. A short time later Gross accepted a position as chief of pathological anatomy in the Medical Department of the Cincinnati College. There he met Dr. Daniel Drake , with whom he formed a close personal friendship that lasted until Drake's death in 1852. In 1839,

2331-462: The impression that such concentration was the sole purpose of the painting. In similar paintings by Ribera , Regnault , and other artists of the horrible, as vivid a result is obtained without sacrificing the light and color in the other parts of the picture; and the effect, while no less intense, is, therefore, less startling and loud. These assessments were not universal. The critic for Philadelphia's The Evening Telegraph , who may have been aware of

2394-457: The later painting is the presence of a professional nurse, Mary Clymer, in the operating theater. It is assumed that the patient depicted in The Gross Clinic was a teenage boy, although the exposed body is not entirely discernible as male or female; the painting is shocking for both the odd presentation of this figure and the matter-of-fact goriness of the procedure. Adding to the drama is

2457-420: The lone woman in the painting seen in the middle ground, possibly the patient's mother, cringing in distress. Her dramatic figure functions as a strong contrast to the calm, professional demeanor of the men who surround the patient. This bloody and very blunt depiction of surgery was shocking at the time it was first exhibited. The painting was submitted for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia , but

2520-411: The medical amphitheater at Jefferson Medical College. Thus Eakins depicted Gross as a titan in his dual capacities as both physician and teacher. The painting is now considered one of the greatest works of nineteenth century American art. The painting clearly shows that Dr. Gross was not convinced of the efficacy of antisepsis , despite the recent work of Joseph Lister and Louis Pasteur demonstrating

2583-423: The members of the committee sick, but, judging from the quality of the work exhibited by them we fear that it was not the blood alone that made them sick. Artists have before now been known to sicken at the sight of pictures by younger men which they in their souls were compelled to acknowledge were beyond their emulation. Controversy about the painting has centered on its violence, and on the melodramatic presence of

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2646-410: The operation. Eakins's signature is painted on the front of the surgical table. Admired for its uncompromising realism , The Gross Clinic has an important place documenting the history of medicine—both because it honors the emergence of surgery as a healing profession (in previous years surgery was associated primarily with amputation, which caused severe medical complications, sometimes killing

2709-405: The painting in Philadelphia, including a fund with a December 26 deadline to raise money to purchase it and a plan to invoke a clause regarding "historic objects" in the city's historic preservation code. In a matter of weeks the fund raised $ 30 million, and on December 21, 2006, Wachovia Bank agreed to lend the difference until the rest of the money had been raised, keeping the painting in town at

2772-685: The painting was not publicly visible. The restoration sought to revert changes that had been made by the Jefferson Medical College during the 1917 restoration. Definition of parts, including Eakins' self-portrayal, was restored, using as reference an ink wash copy of the painting made by the artist, as well as a photograph taken by the Metropolitan Museum of Art previous to the Medical College's changes in 1917. Samuel D. Gross Samuel David Gross (July 8, 1805 – May 6, 1884)

2835-407: The patient so indistinct that it is difficult to tell exactly the part of the body upon which the surgeon is performing the operation. The monochromatic tone of the composition is, perhaps, intentional, in order to concentrate the effect on the bloody thigh and the crimson finger of the operating professor. But as it is, the attention is at once and so entirely directed on that reeking hand as to convey

2898-422: The person), and because it shows what a surgical theater looked like in the nineteenth century. The painting is based on a surgery witnessed by Eakins, in which Gross treated a young man for osteomyelitis of the femur . Gross is pictured here performing a conservative operation, as opposed to the amputation normally carried out. Here, surgeons crowd around the anesthetized patient in their frock coats —this

2961-688: The personal politics involved in the advisory group of artists who rejected it, wrote: There is nothing so fine in the American section of the Art Department of the Exhibition, and it is a great pity that the squeamishness of the Selecting Committee compelled the artist to find a place for it in the United States Hospital building. It is rumored that the blood on Dr. Gross' fingers made some of

3024-481: The plywood down to the last, thin ply. The rest of the wood and the tenacious glue were painstakingly removed by hand. Siegl and his colleagues also restored, to some extent, the faces in the upper right of the canvas. In 2009, in response to long term concerns regarding inconsistencies in the painting's disposition of darkness and light, conservators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art undertook restoration of The Gross Clinic from July 2009 to July 2010, during which time

3087-474: The post of London correspondent for the journal Arts . In the fall of 1961, Fried began his friendship with the sculptor Anthony Caro , who invited him to write the introduction to his Whitechapel Art Gallery exhibition in 1963. In 1962 Fried had a short collection of eight poems ("In Other Hands") published by Fantasy Press in Oxford, the first of others to come. In the late summer of that year, he returned to

3150-587: The previous year. Before he left for Philadelphia, however, the citizens of Louisville honored him with a grand ball at the Galt House. During the Civil War , Gross served as a surgical consultant for the U.S. Surgeon General , and prepared a small handbook on military medicine. In Philadelphia Gross became one of the most prominent members of several medical organizations as physicians in the United States increasingly sought to professionalize their vocation. He served as

3213-423: The relational properties of the work of art exemplified by modernism, made the work of art indistinguishable from one's general experience of the world. Minimalism (or "literalism" as Fried called it) offered an experience of "theatricality" or "presence" rather than "presentness" (a condition that required continual renewal). The essay inadvertently opened the door to establishing a theoretical basis for Minimalism as

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3276-432: The scientific field. In 1839, Gross published Elements of Pathological Anatomy , the first systematic treatise on the subject in the United States; its two volumes were lavishly illustrated with woodcuts and colored engravings. The second edition received praise form the eminent German scientist Rudolf Virchow . Gross's 1859 two-volume System of Surgery is perhaps his best known work. His other publications include: Gross

3339-536: The time of the Centennial Exhibition, the painting was housed in the College Building of Jefferson Medical College , Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia until it was moved in the mid-1980s to Jefferson Alumni Hall. Although undocumented, in the late-1970s there was a rumor of a substantial offer by a collector who wished to donate the painting to the National Gallery of Art . On November 11, 2006,

3402-735: The twentieth president of the American Medical Association (AMA), and delivered the presidential address at the 1868 session, where the first item on the agenda was to more efficiently publish and create a more scholarly and scientific focus for the Transactions of the American Medical Association , the forerunner of the Journal of the American Medical Association . During his time in Philadelphia Gross also helped found

3465-494: The wards of the Louisville Marine Hospital , in existence from 1823. Gross also entered into private practice, which he conducted at St. Joseph Hospital, opened 20 November 1836 as St. Vincent's Infirmary and housed in an eponymous orphanage on Jefferson Street. In 1853, it moved to a rented building on the west side of Fourth Street between Chestnut and Broadway. He remained in Louisville for sixteen years, except for

3528-406: The woman. Modern scholars have suggested that the painting may be read in terms of castration anxiety and fantasies of mastery over the body (e.g. Michael Fried ), and that it documents Eakins's ambivalence about representing sex difference (e.g. Jennifer Doyle ). The painting has also been understood to be drawing an analogy between painting and surgery and as identifying the work of the artist with

3591-553: Was a Rhodes Scholar at Merton College, Oxford . He is the J.R. Herbert Boone Professor Emeritus of Humanities and Art History at the Johns Hopkins University , Baltimore , Maryland , United States. Fried's contribution to art historical discourse involved the debate over the origins and development of modernism . Along with Fried, this debate's interlocutors include other theorists and critics such as Clement Greenberg , T. J. Clark , and Rosalind Krauss . From

3654-560: Was also interested in history, as he published several medical biographies and wrote on the history of Kentucky . In 1861 he edited The Lives of Eminent American Physicians and Surgeons of the Nineteenth Century , and once gave a talk to the Kentucky State Medical Association wherein he resurrected the career of the early Kentucky physician Dr. Ephraim McDowell . Early in the nineteenth century McDowell had removed

3717-541: Was an American academic trauma surgeon. Surgeon biographer Isaac Minis Hays called Gross "The Nestor of American Surgery." He is immortalized in Thomas Eakins ' The Gross Clinic (1875), a prominent American painting of the nineteenth century. A bronze statue of him was cast by Alexander Stirling Calder and erected on the National Mall , but moved in 1970 to Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia . Born on

3780-506: Was divided equally among his four children. His library, consisting of more than 5,000 volumes, was willed to the Philadelphia Academy of Surgery, along with his wet preparations, diagrams, and museum. To the same institution he left $ 5,000; interest on this sum is awarded every five years to the best essay on surgical pathology. Gross received many posthumous accolades. A bronze statue was dedicated by president William McKinley , in

3843-536: Was not without controversy. His predecessor, Joshua Flint, had become famous as a surgeon in New England before coming to Louisville, and in 1850 Flint accepted a position as chief of surgery in the newly organized Kentucky School of Medicine, a move which began a bitter rivalry between that institution and the Louisville Medical Institute until the two schools were merged in 1908. Gross became very popular in social circles, however. He and his family were close friends with

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3906-624: Was rejected by the Committee of Selection. When it was eventually displayed in Ward One of the U.S. Army Post Hospital, a critic for the New York Tribune wrote that it was: ...one of the most powerful, horrible, yet fascinating pictures that has been painted anywhere in this century...but the more one praises it, the more one must condemn its admission to a gallery where men and women of weak nerves must be compelled to look at it, for not to look at it

3969-583: Was there that he became interested in writing art criticism. While at Princeton he met the artist Frank Stella and through him Walter Darby Bannard . In 1958, he wrote a letter to Clement Greenberg expressing his admiration for his writing and first met him in the Spring of that year. In September 1958, he moved to Oxford , Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art , and then to London, England , in 1961–62, where he studied philosophy part-time at University College London (UCL), under Stuart Hampshire and Richard Wollheim . In 1961 Hilton Kramer offered him

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