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Yet at the same time it is a very "European" picture, full of the eye-grabbing devices that the 31-year-old Eakins, still fresh from Europe, knew would make it stand out in a crowded salon: blood and darkness, baroque composition, and the melodrama of the horrified wife on the left, shielding her eyes. One cannot imagine it being painted by someone ignorant of the art milieu in Paris. Such interactions are the real stuff of this show, and no one interested in American painting should miss it.
—By Robert Hughes