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Volume 357:1782 October 25, 2007 Number 17

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Thomas Eakins: Art, Medicine, and Sexuality in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia

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By Amy Werbel. 194 pp., illustrated. New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2007. $55. ISBN 978-0-300-11655-7.

Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) is one of the most important painters in the history of American art, though his work stirred controversy at its inception in the latter part of the 19th century and continues to do so today. In Thomas Eakins, Amy Werbel, a professor of fine arts at St. Michael's College in Vermont, has extended to us a personal invitation to experience early Philadelphia in the company of Eakins and such diverse figures as Benjamin Franklin, Oscar Wilde, and Drs. Samuel Gross and D. Hayes Agnew. This book is not simply a biography of a famous painter but also an exploration of important social issues in Victorian America such as sexism, homosexuality, and the propriety of nudity in art, which gives the book contemporary interest, relevance, and consequence.

A central theme of the book is Eakins's belief that an artist could accurately represent the human figure only by understanding anatomy, which led him to spend many hours at the dissecting table and in the operating rooms of Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia. In 1876, he offered what many believe to be his greatest masterpiece, The Gross Clinic, for exhibition at Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition. Unfortunately, it was not well received, since Eakins had presented anatomical accuracy and realism to an art world that was centered on color technique and the changing shades of political and social nuance. Eakins also entered the painting 3 years later at the Society of American Artists' exhibition, and a review that appeared in the New York Herald clearly demonstrates critics' ambivalence about Eakins's work. The reviewer described it as “decidedly unpleasant and sickeningly real in all its gory details, though a startlingly life-like and strong work.” The Gross Clinic ultimately ended up at Jefferson Medical College for a mere $200, but over the years it appreciated in value. In 2006, an offer of $68 million by the National Gallery of Art and others was matched by Philadelphia donors to keep the painting in that city. It is now the most valuable portrait by an American artist.

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In 1889, Eakins painted the second of his two great medical works, The Agnew Clinic, which shows D. Hayes Agnew, a longtime professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, performing a mastectomy in the university amphitheater. A detail of this painting, featuring an operating room nurse instead of Agnew, covers the dust jacket of Werbel's book, thus introducing a debate that is pursued in the book regarding the standing Eakins accorded to women both on and off his canvases. This attention soon led to his repudiation in the art world.

Fundamental to Werbel's portrayal of Eakins is his belief that the nude figure and its realistic representation should be viewed only in an asexual and scientific way. Eakins added more conflict within the traditional art community by pioneering the use of nudes in motion photography, intensifying a debate regarding the validity of this new art form. He flouted social conventions of the hierarchy of the sexes when he posed nude, and then he lost his position at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after fully disrobing a male model in his coeducational art class. He did eventually receive recognition for his work at the end of his life. By introducing contemporary personalities from the art and medical communities into the book, Werbel demonstrates the manner in which Eakins tested undefined sexual and social boundaries, capably illustrating how people come to be characterized as heroes or villains and how the tides of custom can make those judgments ebb and flow.

It takes some time for the reader to understand that this is not a biography of Thomas Eakins in the traditional sense but is more like a family album of early America with its many-textured layers — a tapestry of art, politics, medicine, and social history. It would have been helpful if information about Eakins's family background, which appears in the conclusion of the book, had appeared earlier in the book to provide the reader with insight into some of the forces that gave us this truly diverse and creative artist. However, this is a minor point, and after turning the final page, one can easily conclude that Werbel has written a rigorous academic review that is readable and enjoyable. Thomas Eakins will be of interest and relevance not only to the medical community but also to art and social historians.

Return to Text The Agnew Clinic by Thomas Eakins, 1889. © Geoffrey Clements/Corbis.