The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [44]
A thin smile darted across his face. “Perhaps you would be interested in one of my current projects.”
He directed me to a giant canvas in the center of the room—taller than I and almost twelve feet wide—held in place by block and tackle strung from the ceiling and supported by framing set about two feet off the floor. A number of smaller drawings were placed in front, as was a ladder to allow Eakins to reach the top. The painting was of Hayes Agnew in an operating theater, the portrait that had been commissioned by his students. The drawings were all preliminary sketches.
“It is not quite finished,” said Eakins, “but I think you may find it instructive.”
“Instructive” was hardly adequate—the painting was astonishing. If it was not finished, I could not tell where more work was needed. The detail was so remarkable that I felt as if I were present at the surgery. The composition depicted Agnew, a surgical knife held with thumb and first fingers of his left hand, supervising a mastectomy. Agnew himself had stepped back from the operating table and was lecturing to a packed gallery of students whilst an assistant did the actual cutting. Another assistant had just lifted an ether cone off the face of the patient, an attractive young woman with dark hair whose healthy right breast was entirely exposed. Although the realism was remarkable, perhaps even more so than in “The Portrait of Professor Gross,” the visible breast, full and shapely, gave the work an undeniable prurience.
“They asked for a standard portrait,” said Eakins, “but I thought for seven hundred fifty dollars, they deserved something more elaborate. I only received two hundred dollars for the Gross painting, you know. Each of the students who commissioned this work is recognizable in the gallery.”
“We hung it just recently,” Susan Eakins said. “Because the canvas is so large, Thomas painted most of it on the floor, either sitting in a chair or cross-legged. I was astounded that he could attain proper proportion at such an angle to the work but, as you see …”
“Susie flatters me,” said Eakins, clearly pleased to be so flattered.
“More than once, I found him here in the morning, asleep at the foot of the canvas,” she informed us.
“It is a remarkable work,” I said.
“Thank you,” he replied. “It is real. That is what is most important. A photograph would provide no more accurate a rendering. Tell me, Dr. Carroll, can you detect any significance more to your area of endeavor?”
“A comparison with your previous medical painting, you mean … of Gross?”
“Precisely correct, Doctor,” he said. “So then, what do you see?”
“In the Gross painting,” I offered, “both the surgeon and his fellows are wearing street clothes, while here Agnew and his assistants are wearing gowns.” It was a lucky thing he hadn’t painted Burleigh.
“That is the easy one,” said Eakins. “Go on.”
“There are only medical personnel near the operating table, which is set off from the gallery by a barrier.”
“Yes.”
“A nurse is assisting.”
“Yes, yes,” agreed Eakins with impatience, “but you are missing the most significant difference.”
I didn’t particularly enjoy being quizzed like a student, but with Abigail standing attentively, waiting to hear my response, I forced myself to think on the point. Then I had it.
“The aseptic instrument tray,” I said.
“Indeed,” he said. Eakins’ intensity was so great that it was fatiguing simply to be in his presence. “Since I painted Gross, immense advances have been achieved in surgical technique, and I wished to portray them. Lister’s teachings on asepsis have finally penetrated American medicine. But there is one recent development that I have not included because Agnew has not.”
“Surgical gloves,” I said, now fully up on the game.
“Exactly. Gloves were introduced earlier this year, but are still experimental. But they will be in common use shortly, I am certain. Halsted is a brilliant man.”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to paint him one day,” mused Eakins.
My notice turned to the hangings on the walls. Nudes in art were quite traditional, but I had been unaware that