Talk:The Agnew Clinic

Unanswered questions

"The Agnew Clinic is one of Eakins's most hotly debated works." - Why? "Few records survive, and Agnew himself died shortly after it was completed, leading to much speculation." - About what? Johnbod (talk) 03:13, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

"The lack of such documention has led, in no small part, to numerous and diverging interpretations of the painting. Among scholars and students of gender studies, The Agnew Clinic is one of the mostly hotly debated of Eakins' works.

The most extreme interpreters of The Agnew Clinic suggest that Eakins was consciously or subconsciously expressing a hatred of women..." - Kirkpatrick, 390. Raul654 (talk) 16:31, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Ok, some of that needs adding, I think. Johnbod (talk) 17:56, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I added a quote from David M. Lubin, the art historian who has written extensively about sexual undercurrents in the painting. Does this warrant further discussion in the article? BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 17:18, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Oh, go on then. Johnbod (talk) 19:36, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Lubin noted that if you draw diagonals from the painting's top corners to the bottom corners, the lines cross over the crotch of one of the medical students. This was considered inconsequential and prurient when he published it in 1985, but now, like Henry Adams's observations about Eakins's compulsiveness in painting so many of his sitters posed in the same Victorian chair, other authors are less ready to dismiss it out of hand. Still, it's probably too "inside baseball" for the article. BoringHistoryGuy (talk) 14:28, 7 May 2010 (UTC)

Anyone with the ability to draw two straight lines will find that they cross well above the guy's crotch. Has none of these gender experts bothered to verify his claim? LickOfCommonSense (talk) 09:08, 20 September 2021 (UTC)

Clymer sections belong in another article

The newish Clymer sections are interesting, but most of the content does not help the reader interpret the painting in its own terms no as a representation of the medical and social situation. They deserve to be in Wikipedia rather than reverted away. But they don't belong in this article.

Give her an entry of her own including these sections, or shift much of the content from here to an article on the history of nursing of medicine; keep the parts that really do help "understand The Agnew Clinic" painting and link them to the full Clymer content

Of the "Mary V Clymer" section, the first and fourth paragraphs belong here. Of the "Clymer Diaries" section, the 2d paragraph belongs. Insofar as items in the long bulleted list are not identified (perhaps explicated) in the painting, they are irrelevant to Eakins's Agnew Clinic. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 45.3.75.31 (talk) 22:37, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I'm going to be busy for a few days but when I return I'm going to spin off this section into a new article. Clymer was certainly important enough for her own WP entry, but putting the content here is a distraction. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 13:41, 10 November 2023 (UTC)

New article created. I retained most of the content that used to be in this article, but I pared down the list of items from the diaries (it was excessive and awkwardly-cited). I kept much of the stuff about Clymer in the interpretation of the painting, because I think that is relevant in an article about her. Anyone with a knowledge of medical or nursing history is invited to edit the new article on Clymer; this isn't my field so I'm going to step away from it. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 04:09, 15 November 2023 (UTC)