Crystal Bridges buys an Eakins from Philly museum

“Less than four months after Philadelphians thwarted its bid to buy “The Gross Clinic,” an 1875 masterpiece by Thomas Eakins, an Arkansas museum founded by the Wal- Mart heiress Alice L. Walton has quietly purchased another much-loved Eakins painting from the Philadelphia medical school that sold the first.”

I laughed out loud when I read the above first paragraph of a New York Times article. Alice Walton has her Eakins. Crystal Bridges has purchased an 1874 Thomas Eakins canvas titled “Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand.” As detailed in these posts, the Philadelphia medical school’s sale of “The Gross Clinic” to Crystal Bridges was thwarted last year by the people who believed the painting belonged in the city of brotherly love. With the help of a thirty million dollar loan.

The money from these sales is going into the expansion of the university.

According to the Times, “At the time he was painting the Rand portrait, Eakins was teaching night classes at the Pennsylvania Academy. Among his students were the still-life painters William Michael Harnett and John Frederick Peto.” Further, local museums were made aware of the portrait’s availability right away, so as to avoid the fiasco surrounding the Gross Clinic.

The university is also entertaining the idea of selling an Eakins portrait of William S. Forbes, if the need arises.