Susan Macdowell Eakins was born on September 21, 1851, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the fifth of eight children of William H. Macdowell, a liberal engraver, painter, and photographer. Her mother, Hannah Gardner Macdowell, passed away in Susan’s early childhood. Raised in a household brimming with cultural engagement, Susan grew up in an attic studio where her father and older siblings posed for her early portraits and photographic experiments. William Macdowell’s progressive ideals, encompassing freethought, art, and education, provided Susan Macdowell Eakins with freedom and encouragement to pursue her artistic calling from an early age.
Despite modest means, the Macdowells valued creativity and intellectual growth. Susan’s childhood was shaped by light, pigment, paper, and encouragement, setting the stage for her future as a professional artist.
In 1884, at age 32, Susan Macdowell Eakins married her former mentor, Thomas Eakins, after six years of study under him at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Although both remained childless, their marriage was deeply intertwined with art. Susan became her husband’s confidante, household manager, and social anchor: she entertained guests, managed correspondence and shipments, and oversaw a bustling house that at times included nieces, students, pets, even a monkey.
Although many accounts suggest that she gave up her art after marriage, later research refutes this. Susan Macdowell Eakins maintained her studio, painted through resistance and controversy, and resumed full practice after Thomas’s passing. Their relationship was one of mutual respect, despite his fame often overshadowing her work.
Susan Macdowell Eakins began formal art training at PAFA in 1876, at age 25. She studied under Christian Schussele, and soon became one of only a few women attending life-drawing classes with nude models, a reform she championed for female students. She spent six years at the Academy, during which she served as class secretary and played a pivotal role in advocating for equal access.
Susan Macdowell Eakins’ introduction to the controversial realism of Thomas Eakins occurred when she viewed The Gross Clinic at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts (now the Philadelphia Museum of Art) in 1876. Deeply impressed, she resolved to study with him. Under his guidance, she adopted a sober academic realism, polished draftsmanship, and a warm palette that would characterize much of her early work
Susan Macdowell Eakin earned the first Mary Smith Prize for best painting by a woman at PAFA in 1879 and followed with the Charles Toppan prize for draughtsmanship in 1882. Avery’s early portraits, family, friends, and classmates displayed exceptional anatomical accuracy, quiet psychological insight, and compositional balance.
After Susan Macdowell Eakins’ marriage in 1884, she focused on supporting Thomas’s embattled career, especially after his forced resignation from PAFA in 1886 for upholding co-educational life drawing.
Following her husband’s death in 1916, Susan Macdowell Eakins returned to painting with renewed vigor. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, she produced a body of work that reflected her grief, evolving styles, and renewed creative freedom. She continued painting until the age of 86, when a fall made studio work impossible.
Susan’s early portraits reflect Thomas Eakins’ influence: warm, earthy tones, solid realism, focus on face and hands, and life-like gestures. Her compositions often featured calm domestic interiors and natural lighting.
After 1916, her style blossomed. Her later paintings became looser, brighter, and more fluid, featuring vivid blues, reds, and yellows. While some critics found these works less structurally tight, they revealed a temperamental shift toward fluidity and emotional expression distinct from her earlier precision.
Susan Macdowell Eakins’ handling of her husband in portrait demonstrates a tenderness and insight unmatched in many male-penned equivalents: in her posthumous portrait of him, he appears vulnerable, reflective, and terrifically human
Susan’s life was marked by quiet sacrifice, steadfast loyalty, and agradual reclamation of her voice. She poured energy into supporting Thoma, especially during his controversies, often at her own creative expense. Reports that she “gave up painting” are misleading; she continued to paint through controversies and resumed a prolific output after becoming widowed.
Susan Macdowell Eakins endured the brutal aftermath of Thomas’s departure from PAFA, financial hardship, and societal criticism. Yet she remained intellectually inclined; it is noted that she was a frequent reader, pianist, and photographer. She served in the Philadelphia Salon of Photography, and possibly took some photographs attributed to her husband
Within the Eakins household, Susan maintained a distinct identity, preserving her own studio and producing independent work. She shared close ties with her sister Elizabeth MacDowell Kenton, who modelled in her early paintings, and with Addie Williams, a lifelong companion who lived with them for nearly 40 years after becoming part of the family circle.
Thomas Eakins himself reportedly praised Susan’s understanding of color and composition: “he knew more about color than he did,” he once admitted. While their careers often intertwined, Susan’s later revival as a solo artist found champions in curators and feminist art historians who gently reclaimed her example.
Susan Macdowell Eakins passed away at age 87 on December 27, 1938, from arteriosclerosis, in the home she shared with her husband and father-in-law. She was buried at The Woodlands Cemetery in Philadelphia, the city of her birth and the center of her life’s work.
Though gender bias played a role in Susan’s marginalization, other factors contributed:
Susan’s oeuvre has been steadily rediscovered since the 1970s. Her posthumous exhibitions and inclusion in feminist art histories have elevated her reputation. Critics, such as Lucy Lippard, described her work as “incisive and adventurous, full of both life and thought.”
Institutions now holding her work include:
Susan’s contradictions resonate through her life and art:
These layers gave her art its emotional depth and realism tempered by loyalty, tension, and eventual liberation.
Susan MacDowell Eakins deserves to stand independently as an artist whose brush recorded civilian stillness and intimate fidelity, both in domestic and artistic contexts. Her portraits and interiors capture a decisiveness of character and composure often unacknowledged in her time.
At N1 Gallery, we are committed to elevating artists like Susan, women whose remarkable stories and resilient paintings have shaped American culture even as they were marginalized. If her story moved you, please subscribe, share, and help us restore her and others to their rightful place in art history.
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