Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic)

1875

Oil on canvas, 243.8 × 199.4 cm. Philadelphia Museum of Art and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The surgeon Samuel Gross pauses, scalpel in his bloody hand, to lecture during an operation.

Made for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition; the fair's art jury turned it down, so it hung in a model army hospital.
Many viewers, the Philadelphia Museum of Art says, were repelled by its "ugly and inartistic realism."
In a 2009 lecture, Kathleen Foster related its dark ground and dramatic light to old masters such as Rembrandt and Velázquez.
A modern operation, painted from close knowledge of the clinic, with nothing softened.

Image: Wikimedia Commons · Public domain