Thomas Eakins that was often as tender as it was vigorous, and to have preserved for us the essence of an American life which, indeed, he did not idealize—because it seemed to him beautiful beyond the necessity of idealization. Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some 40 years later, Eakins worked exactingly
Conservation-restoration of Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic the exhibition "An Eakins Masterpiece Restored: Seeing "The Gross Clinic" Anew", which ran from July 3, 2010 to January 9, 2011. The theme of the exhibition was "Then and Now", an homage to the famed and nearly two hour long lecture by Dr. Samuel D. Gross, "Then and Now: Advances in Medical Science in the Past Forty Years: a Discourse Introductory to the Forty-third Course of Lectures in the Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia". The first gallery was in the style of a salon, with "The Gross Clinic" presented in the middle, flanked by "The Agnew Clinic" and "Professor Benjamin