Singing a Pathetic Song

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”.

1882

Death of his sister Margaret

Eakins's sister Margaret, who had acted as his secretary and personal servant, died of typhoid; it has been suggested that his marriage two years later was meant to replace her.

1883

Brings Eadweard Muybridge to lecture at the Academy

In the late 1870s Eakins had discovered Eadweard Muybridge's photographic motion studies, especially those of horses; in 1883 he and the University of Pennsylvania trustee Fairman Rogers arranged for Muybridge to lecture at the Academy.