PHILADELPHIA —  Thomas Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" will remain in Philadelphia after a fundraising drive yielded nearly $30 million and the promise of bank loans that will keep it from being sold and moved.

Thursday's announcement by officials marked a victory for arts supporters who have been trying to raise $68 million by a Tuesday deadline imposed by Thomas Jefferson University, which announced last month that it was selling the canvas to a partnership of Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton and the National Gallery of Art in Washington.

At a news conference, Mayor John F. Street thanked the hundreds of donors who came forward, saying: "They thought it was important that this great work of art stay right here in our city."

The iconic canvas will be purchased jointly by the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Philadelphia Museum of Art and exhibited by both.

Street, along with officials from both art institutions and other philanthropic groups, said the group had raised nearly $30 million and now has until Jan. 31 to pay the university.

The amount of loans that will be needed hasn't been finalized because money is still being raised, according to officials involved in the effort. Donations included $10 million from the Annenberg Foundation and three $3 million contributions.

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Deborah Ziska, a spokeswoman for the National Gallery, said there would be no challenge to the sale agreement.

"We are disappointed that Eakins' `Gross Clinic' will not be coming to the nation's capital or America's heartland," the National Gallery and the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art said in a joint statement. "However, we are pleased for the city of Philadelphia."

"The Gross Clinic," a graphic 1875 canvas that depicts surgeon Samuel Gross teaching Jefferson students the finer points of 19th century surgery, was designed to illustrate Philadelphia's groundbreaking scientific and artistic achievements.

Eakins was born in Philadelphia in 1844 and the university has owned the painting since 1878.

Under the sale arranged by Jefferson, the National Gallery of Art would have shared the work with Alice Walton, daughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton.

In recent years, Walton has been paying top dollar for fine art to be displayed at the planned Crystal Bridges Museum, which is scheduled to open in 2009 in Bentonville, Ark., a city of 20,000 and the home of Wal-Mart's headquarters.

Last year, she purchased Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand's noted 1849 work "Kindred Spirits" from the New York Public Library for $35 million. Her sealed bid beat out a combined offer by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery.

Street and Anne d'Harnoncourt, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, said they hold no grudges against Jefferson for trying to sell the painting.

"If Jefferson had not offered Philadelphia institutions the opportunity to match the offer, we would not be here today," d'Harnoncourt said.

The medical and health sciences school, which bought the painting for $200 in 1878, plans to put the proceeds toward a new education building and the expansion of other complexes.

The university said in a statement Thursday that it was pleased the painting would remain in Philadelphia and be made accessible to millions of people. "In addition to fulfilling our fiduciary responsibility, we gave the local cultural institutions the opportunity to keep the painting," it said. "Through the unique provision to match, we accomplished that."

The city's fight to keep Eakins' painting was comparable to a similar _ and successful _ effort in 1998 to keep the "Dream Garden." The glass mosaic designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and another Philadelphia native, Maxfield Parrish, was sold in 1998 to casino owner Steve Wynn, who planned to move it to Las Vegas.

But local historians, artists and the public rose in opposition to moving the 50-foot-wide mural from the lobby of the Curtis Center, the downtown building where it stood since 1916.

The Wynn deal fell through after the city declared the artwork a historic site, and the Pew Charitable Trusts agreed to provide $3.5 million to the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to purchase the mosaic and prevent it from ever being sold or moved.

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