Mary Macdowell

1870–1916 · Workplace

Philadelphia

1879

Death of his fiancée Kathrin Crowell

Kathrin Crowell, to whom Eakins had been engaged for five years, died of meningitis.

1880

Acquires a camera

From 1880 Eakins had his own camera: paintings such as “Mending the Net” (1881) and “Arcadia” (1883) derive in part from his photographs. He is credited with having “introduced the camera to the American art studio”; some eight hundred photographs are attributed to him and his circle.

1882

Becomes director of the Pennsylvania Academy

Eakins became the Academy's director. His methods were controversial — no drawing from antique casts and no prize competitions, a quick move from charcoal to paint, anatomy through dissection and photography — yet by the early 1880s the course was called the most “liberal and advanced in the world”.

1884

Marries Susan Macdowell

At 40, Eakins married his former pupil, the painter Susan Hannah Macdowell. In their childless marriage she painted only sporadically, supporting her husband's career, shared his passion for photography and stood by him in his difficult years, even when some of her family turned against him.

1886

Forced out of the Academy over a nude model

Eakins was forced to resign after removing the loincloth of a male model in a class where female students were present. It was a major setback: his family split, his in-laws sided against him in public, he fought rumours and suffered bouts of ill health, and the drawing manual he had written remained unfinished and unpublished in his lifetime.