Which American artist painted 'The Gross Clinic' in 1875?

Thomas Eakins painted The Gross Clinic in 1875. The large American Realist canvas portrays Philadelphia surgeon Dr. Samuel D. Gross directing an operation before an audience of medical students.

Eakins based the scene on a surgical procedure involving the removal of diseased bone from a patient’s thigh. Gross stands prominently in a dark frock coat, explaining or supervising the operation, while assistants work around the anesthetized patient. Eakins also included himself at the right edge, making the painting partly an artistic self-portrait as well as a medical scene.

The work was striking because it treated modern surgery with the scale and seriousness traditionally associated with history painting. Its uncompromising realism records a nineteenth-century operating theater, before antiseptic practice had become standard in American surgery. The dark clothing, exposed tissue, and crowded composition made it challenging for contemporary viewers.

The painting is sometimes called The Clinic of Dr. Gross. That title does not indicate a separate work. It should also not be confused with Eakins’s later The Agnew Clinic, which depicts another Philadelphia medical setting.