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Who was Dr. David Agnew in Thomas Eakins’s painting The Agnew Clinic?
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Thomas Eakins
Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross (The Gross Clinic), oil on canvas by Thomas Eakins, 1875; part of the collections of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Art Museum. 2 × 2.5 m.
Dr. David Agnew was a prominent 19th-century surgeon and anatomist who taught at the University of Pennsylvania. In Thomas Eakins’s 1889 painting, The Agnew Clinic, he is depicted mid-operation in a medical amphitheater, an image commissioned by his students to honor his retirement from teaching.1
Eakins portrayed Dr. Agnew as a modern American hero defined by his practical achievement and professional skill rather than social status. While Agnew was widely recognized for his expertise in treating gunshot wounds, the painting captures him performing a partial mastectomy, surrounded by his assistants and students.1