The Agnew Clinic - Thomas Eakins, 1889
The Agnew Clinic by Eakins was commissioned by Dr. D. Hayes Agnew's students at the University of Pennsylvania to celebrate the seventy-year-old physician's retirement as Professor of Surgery in 1889. It was unveiled at commencement 1 May 1889. The size of the painting, the largest Eakins ever created, is 84 3/8 x 118 1/8 inches. The artist painted the work in ninety days and received a fee of $750. Its frame carries this inscription in Latin: The most experienced surgeon, the clearest writer and teacher, the most venerated and beloved man.
Dr. Agnew (1818-1892), a Pennsylvania native, was a well-respected surgeon and educator who had served in two army hospitals during the Civil War. He was best known for his competence in removing bullets, but Eakins has chosen to show him performing a lumpectomy or partial mastectomy.
The surgeon is shown standing in an enclosure, having stepped back from the operation. He is lecturing to students, faculty, and spectators seated in the operating theatre. Dr. Agnew holds a scalpel in his left hand. He is wearing a white surgical gown.
Eakins has placed the operating table with the female patient in front of Dr. Agnew. Her hair and face are visible, the ether cone just above her chin. Her right breast and arm are shown; the left breast is being operated on. A sheet covers her lower body. The sheet beneath the patient carries the inscription: University of Pennsylvania. Between Dr. Agnew and the bed we see a closed case holding the sterilized instruments. The anesthesiologist and the surgeons all wear white. Dr. Agnew's nurse, Mary Clymer, stands by the patient's waist. She is dressed in a high white cap, white apron and black dress. Eakins illuminates Dr. Agnew, the patient and her doctors, and the nurse. The spectators sit in semi-darkness, but they are individualized by face and posture. The painting contains about thirty small portraits of doctors. Most of the doctors and spectators have been identified by name, viz:
Dr. J. William White, Dr. Joseph Leidy, Jr., Dr. Elwood C. Kirby, Dr. Fred H. Millikin, Thomas Eakins (the artist, as painted by his wife), Miss Clymer (a nurse), J. Alison Scott, Charles N. Davis, John T. Carpenter, Jr., John Bacon, Benjamin Brooke, J. H owe Adams, William C. Posey, Henry Toulmin, John Rothermel, John S. Kulp, Alfred Stengel, Clarence A. Butler, Joseph S. Tunis, Frank R. Keefer, Nathan M. Baker, George Woodward, Arthur H. Cleveland, Herbert B. Carpenter, George D. Cross, William H. Furnes s, Jr., Walter R. Lincoln, Howard S. Anders, Oscar M. Richards, Minford Levis. One individual only (in the extreme upper left-hand corner) is unidentified.
Eakins is standing to the extreme right, listening to a doctor who whispers to him. Because of time constraints, Eakins's mini portrait was painted by his wife, the artist Susan Macdowell Eakins.
This painting is always compared to "The Gross Clinic" by Eakins. It was painted fourteen years after the former, and offers a completely different perspective on the medical profession. Dr. Agnew adheres to asepsis and wears white, in contrast to the black suit worn by Dr. Gross. Dr. Agnew's scalpel and clothes show little or no blood, at the surgeon's request. The fear and violence depicted in The Gross Clinic have given way to detachment and professionalism.
Though well received by Agnew and his students, the painting, when shown at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition in 1893, met with this review:”It is impossible to escape from Mr. Eakins’s ghastly symphonies in gore and bitumen. Delicate or sensitive women or children suddenly confronted by these clinical horrors might receive a shock from which they would never recover”.
The famous 1889 painting by Thomas Eakins used to hang in the John Morgan Building on Hamilton Walk.However, a steam leak in the building in 2000 damaged the painting and it was removed from display. After being restored, the painting went on tour to the Museé d’Orsay in Paris and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as part of a Thomas Eakins retrospective exhibition. Since its return, it has been on permanent loan to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
David Hayes Agnew was born in Nobleville (later Christiana), Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on November 24, 1818, the only child of physician Robert Agnew and his wife Agnes Noble. Because his parents were devout Presbyterians, young Agnew was enrolled in 1833 at Jefferson College (which later combined with Washington College to become Washington and Jefferson College), but the following year, Agnew left this Presbyterian college in western Pennsylvania to attend the newly founded Newark College in Delaware, where his cousin, Reverend John Holmes, was a professor of languages. His liberal arts education ended when Reverend Holmes left Newark College after just one year. Agnew then returned home to study medicine with his father.
In the fall of 1836, just before his eighteenth birthday, D. Hayes Agnew entered the University of Pennsylvania's medical school. After writing his graduating thesis on "Medical Science and the Responsibility of Medical Character," he earned his M.D. in 1838.
After graduation, D. Hayes Agnew returned to Lancaster County to practice medicine with his father, continuing the practice after his father retired to Maryland in 1840. The following Agnew married Margaret Creighton Irwin, the daughter of Samuel Irwin, who owned a large foundry business. Samuel Irwin died in 1842, prompting Agnew to put aside his medical practice to join the family business in 1843. After only three years, the business failed, leaving Agnew free to return to medicine.
He practiced briefly in Cochranville in Chester County before returning to Philadelphia in the spring of 1848. Determined to become a surgeon, Agnew's goal was to learn anatomy through dissection, often finding his cadavers on late-night forays for bodies in Potter's Field, especially during the cholera epidemic. By 1852, he had developed enough knowledge and skill to purchase the Philadelphia School of Anatomy, which provided Philadelphia doctors with private dissecting rooms for their office pupils. In 1854, Agnew went on to establish the Philadelphia School of Operative Surgery. His ten years of successful management of these two schools established Agnew's reputation as an anatomist and as a surgeon and earned him appointments as a surgeon at Blockley in 1854, as a lecturer for Professor Henry Hollinsworth Smith at the University of Pennsylvania in 1858, and as a demonstrator in anatomy for Joseph Leidy at the same University in 1863.
By the time of Smith's retirement in 1871, Agnew was one of the leading surgeons in America and the logical successor to Smith as Penn's professor of both clinical and demonstrative surgery. Later, in 1877, Agnew became the first to hold the newly founded John Rhea Barton Professorship of Surgery. During his Philadelphia career Agnew performed surgery not only at University Hospital, but also at Philadelphia Hospital, Wills Eye Hospital and the Orthopedic Hospital. During the Civil War Agnew served at two Army hospitals, as surgeon in charge of Hestonville Hospital and as consultant surgeon to Mower General Hospital. When Charles Guiteau shot President James Garfield in 1881, it was Agnew who was called to Washington to serve as the chief consultant; during the months of Garfield's illness before his death, Agnew not only gave medical advice, he also spent many hours at the President's bedside, offering comfort and conversation.
It was in honor of Agnew's 1889 resignation as Professor of Surgery, that Penn's current medical students, led by the graduating members of the Medical Class of 1889, commissioned Thomas Eakins to paint the "Agnew Clinic." Completed by Eakins in just three months, this impressive painting was unveiled at the commencement ceremonies that year. Agnew died less than three years later, in March of 1892.
