The Philadelphia Fine Arts Museum/ Thomas Eakins

On Thursday, the 15th, we had a cultural visit of different museums in Philly.

At first, we went to the Fine Arts Museum situated on Broad Street in Philadelphia next to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in downtown Philadelphia. This museum offers a vast collection of American Art.

All of us took part in a guided tour and saw many interesting works including Thomas Eakins’ ones, the Staircase Group by Charles Willson Peal and also some modern paintings such as Picasso’s ones.

Thomas Earkins is Philadelphia’s greatest painter of the 19th century. This man is connected with FCS because his father was a calligraphy teacher and his wife was a student of the school. He resolved to paint contempory American life.

He used to study anatomy in Paris in the Beaux Arts, and was interested in surgery. He realised two big epic paintings dedicated to American science.

This painting represents a surgical operation on a young man. The doctors operating on the patient are dressed with street clothes because of the bad hygiene ( they weren’t aware of bacterias and bad germs at that time ). The chief surgeon is Doctor Gross, who studied at the Philaldephia University.

This second painting also shows a surgical operation when doctors are taking off a woman’s breast. Doctor Agnew supervises the operation and explains some facts about surgery to his students. Thomas Earkins includes himself in his painting. The scene takes place in the center of Pennsylvania.

We can notice that surgeons are wearing surgical crubs, progress has been made during Thomas Eakins’s period.

Marie-Line Younes and Maya Rachail