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Thomas Eakins (1844–1916), portrait of Dr Samuel D. Gross, “The Gross Clinic,” 1875, oil on canvas, 96 by 78 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; gift of the Alumni Association to Jefferson Medical College in 1878 and purchased by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2007 with the support of some 3,600 donors.

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Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1848–1907),  “The Angel of Purity (Maria Mitchell Memorial),” marble, 96 by 48 by 12 inches. Philadelphia Museum of Art; purchased with the Annenberg Fund for Major Acquisitions and with the gifts of Mr and Mrs Wharton Sinkler and Mrs T. Charleton Henry (by exchange); and with funds contributed by the Margaret Dorrance Strawbridge Foundation of Pennsylvania II, Inc.

 

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‘PHILADELPHIA TREASURES’ OPENS AUG. 2 AT PHILADELPHIA MUSEUM w/2cuts

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PHILADELPHIA, PENN. — In 2005, the Philadelphia Museum of Art acquired Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s “Angel of Purity (Maria Mitchell Memorial),” which had been commissioned for a church in Philadelphia where the stately marble was installed for more than 100 years. A year and a half later, the museum together with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts acquired Thomas Eakins’s 1875 masterpiece, “The Gross Clinic.”

In each case, a major work of art that might easily have been sold outside the city was identified as an important icon to keep for Philadelphia. In a triumph for the community, institutions and dedicated individuals successfully secured both treasures. These two masterworks will be placed on view together for the first time in “Philadelphia Treasures: Eakins’s ‘Gross Clinic’ and Saint-Gaudens’s ‘Angel of Purity,’” on view August 2–February.

Eakins and Saint-Gaudens were close contemporaries and friends. They trained in Paris and traveled in Europe before returning to the United States about 1870 to begin distinguished careers. Sharing a belief in the expressive power of the human body as a subject for modern painting and sculpture, they developed different styles.

Eakins, committed to the depiction of contemporary life, celebrated the heroes of his own day — as in “The Gross Clinic” — in a grand and unsparing realism evoking the Dutch and Spanish masters of the Seventeenth Century.

Saint-Gaudens, trained in the same tradition of naturalism and life study, fused the real with ideal — as in “The Angel of Purity” — following the poetic spirit of neoclassicism. At the peak of their accomplishment in these two works, both masters demonstrate the power of great public art to stir profound and complex emotions grounded in themes of human life and death. Installed in public spaces in Philadelphia for more than a century, these two works of art will continue to inspire audiences here, thanks to the support of many donors rallied by the museum’s dedicated director, Anne d’Harnoncourt (1943–2008), who worked tirelessly to secure both treasures for the city.

The “Angel of Purity” was commissioned for St Stephens Episcopal Church by Dr S. Weir Mitchell and his wife Mary Cadwalader Mitchell after their daughter Maria Gouverneur Mitchell died in 1898 from diphtheria at age 22. The sculpture faced the Cadwalader family pew until it was removed early in 2004 to be sold by the church.

“The Gross Clinic,” which has been acclaimed as the greatest American painting of the Nineteenth Century, has been an icon of Philadelphia since it was painted 1875. The masterpiece of the young Eakins, an artist born and educated in Philadelphia, this painting spared both controversy and praise at its first showing here in Philadelphia at the Centennial Exhibition in 1876, demonstrating the drama and force of character that set the tone for Eakins’s entire career.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway at 26th Street. For information, 215-763-8100 or www.philamuseum.org.