Eakins controversy continues with secret sale

By Lauren McGlone
Senior Staff Writer
February 14, 2007

A hot topic in the Philadelphia area for the past four months, Thomas Eakins’ The Gross Clinic is making headlines once again.

To finance the sale of this historic painting, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts is selling another piece of artwork by Eakins, The Cello Player. This piece was purchased in 1897 and has remained in this institution since.

The identity of the buyer and cost of the sale still remain a mystery. As reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, the undisclosed figure is between $15 million and $18 million, a price that will greatly alleviate the debt the Academy has incurred to pay for The Gross Clinic. The new unknown owner has agreed to lend The Cello Player to the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts for occasional exhibitions.

When university officials announced in November 2006 that The Gross Clinic would be moving from its longtime Philadelphia home at Thomas Jefferson University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art began a fund-raising campaign to keep the painting in the city. Since then, impressive efforts have been made to finance the sale. Millions of dollars have been donated to support the campaign to keep this historic painting in Philadelphia.

One effort made by the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts has been to sell The Cello Player by Eakins. A difficult decision, the choice to sell this work was made to save more paintings from being sold. The sale of this one painting will contribute significantly to paying for The Gross Clinic.

According to Dr. Siobhan Conaty, assistant professor of art history at La Salle, this process is not uncommon.

“Deaccessioning, or the selling of one work in order to purchase another, in itself is not unusual in the museum world, but it is a complicated process. There are all sorts of guidelines that must be followed and it often results in some controversy,” Conaty said.

News of the sale has indeed caused some controversy within the cultural community. Patrons claim that the Academy has done just what they were trying to prevent – moved a historic piece of artwork from its longtime home in Philadelphia.

“The sale of a major painting like Eakins’ The Cello Player to a private collection is indeed a loss for the city of Philadelphia, but in the end, The Gross Clinic has been saved,” Conaty said. “I do take some comfort in the fact that the new, still anonymous, owner has agreed to loan the painting back to the PAFA for public viewing.”

mcglonel1@lasalle.edu