Coup for heiress’ new art museum

Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia has sold a second Thomas Eakins painting, this time to the Wal-Mart heiress who earlier had expressed interest in acquiring another of the artist’s masterpieces.

Eakins’ 1874 “Portrait of Professor Benjamin H. Rand” will go to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Ark., for an undisclosed amount, the university said. The museum is being built by billionaire Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

The university ruffled feathers in Philadelphia’s art community in November when it announced plans to sell Eakins’ “The Gross Clinic” to a Walton project. The news spurred a fundraising drive to match the $68-million price tag and keep the painting in Philadelphia.

The university had owned the Rand portrait, the first in an Eakins series on physicians and scientists, since Rand donated it without restriction upon retiring from Jefferson Medical College in 1877. The tableau depicts the professor lost in concentration at his cluttered desk.