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 painting. At some point between 1917 and 1925 a treatment of the painting took place that dramatically altered the composition of the painting. It is not known who worked on the painting or when. A comparison of a photograph of the painting taken in October 1917 for the "Loan Exhibition of the Works of Thomas Eakins" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and a reproduction of the painting that appeared as the frontispiece of Jefferson Medical College's 1925 yearbook show major differences in the relative tones of the painting, indicating a major restoration in which paint was removed. The