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 weeks, the removal of this varnish allowed conservators to view what was left of Eakins original paint and what had been retouched by earlier treatments. A new, synthetic resin varnish, MS2A, was applied to the surface which both evenly saturated the colors of the painting while isolating the original paint from the retouching, should it need to be removed in the future. An 1875-1876 india ink and watercolor reproduction created by Eakins, the 1917 photograph, and 1925 reproduction were used as a guide for conservators to retouch the painting. The conservators used paints made of lightfast pigments ground in a