Thomas Eakins 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 from life, choosing as his subject the people of his hometown of Philadelphia. He painted several hundred portraits, usually of friends, family members, or prominent people in the arts, sciences, medicine, and clergy. Taken "en masse", the
Conservation-restoration of Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic at the time of the paintings creation, the x-radiograph revealed that Eakins instead built on light areas with dark paint. The characters featured in the periphery of the painting were not significantly built up in this fashion and were instead painted thinly. Significant changes in the composition of the painting before the final image were revealed using x-radiography. The probe in the hands of Dr. James Barton was initially longer but shortened in the final composition. The clinic's clerk, Dr. Franklin West, was initially seen taking his notes at a lower position but was moved up for the final composition.