It moved from depicting the rural poor in the countryside, to scientists teaching, a major research meeting, technology in the workplace, and the rise of the clinic in hospital medicine.
Hinckley
From 1875 on, paintings of surgical procedures, heroes of medical and surgical advances, and the new clinical look of hospitals.
Rejected from the 1876 Centennial Exhibition as ‘unsightly’, The Gross Clinic was hidden in an Army hospital. In 2006, it was almost sold for $68 million.
From physicists to photographers developing their plates, Naturalist painters recorded the science and technology of their time.
For painters, hospital medicine was spectacle, and its doctors actors on a stage. As time progressed, artists and doctors looked more closely at the patient.
