Editing Thomas Eakins (section)

== Later Career and Legacy ==

Eakins' final decades brought limited commercial success despite continued artistic productivity. He concentrated on portraiture, creating psychologically penetrating images of friends, family, and prominent Philadelphians. These late portraits, including depictions of scientists, musicians, and clergy, display the technical mastery and emotional intensity that characterize his best work. His photography, which he used both as artistic medium and as studies for paintings, has gained recognition as significant in its own right.<ref name="goodrich"/>

Eakins died in Philadelphia on June 25, 1916. His reputation, though diminished during his later years, has risen substantially since. The Philadelphia Museum of Art holds the largest collection of his work, while "The Gross Clinic" returned to Philadelphia in 2007 after a joint acquisition by the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts prevented its sale to out-of-state buyers. Eakins is now recognized as among the greatest American artists, his uncompromising realism anticipating developments that would characterize twentieth-century art.<ref name="gallery"/>