WASHINGTON, DC.- The New York Times reported that The National Gallery plans to buy Thomas Eakins’"The Gross Clinic" for $68 million. This sales price would set a record for a pre-World War II work of art created in the United States.

The Washington Post reported that The National Gallery of Art would share the work with Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. Alice Walton founded the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, which is scheduled to open in 2009 in Bentonville, Ark.

The 8-by-7-foot painting portrays a doctor and his students performing surgery on a boy's leg, while his mother covers her face with her hands.

Marc Porter, president of Christie's Americas, said, "This is the most important sale of a 19th century American painting ever.”

Thomas Jefferson University, a medical and health sciences school in Philadelphia, purchased "The Gross Clinic" for $200 in 1878 by. The school plans to put the proceeds toward a building-expansion program.