Susan Macdowell Eakins Susan Macdowell Eakins Susan Hannah Macdowell Eakins (September 21, 1851 – December 27, 1938) was an American painter and photographer. Her works were first shown at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, where she was a student. She won the Mary Smith Prize there in 1879 and Charles Toppan prize in 1882. One of her teachers was artist Thomas Eakins, who later became her husband. She made portrait and still life paintings. She was also known of her photography. After her husband died in 1916, Eakins became a prolific painter. Her works were exhibited in group exhibitions in her lifetime,
Conservation-restoration of Thomas Eakins' The Gross Clinic hall leading out of the amphitheater was considerably lighter; Dr. Samuel W. Gross and orderly Hughey O'Donnell originally appeared lighter than the background. The majority of the painting now had a considerably redder tone. Thomas Eakins' widow, Susan Macdowell Eakins, upon seeing the 1925 reproduction and thinking the changes had been made for the reproduction rather than to the painting itself, strongly objected to its release. A letter from Eakins to Jefferson Medical College Dean Ross V. Patterson details her frustrations: The next recorded treatment of the painting took place in 1940 was by Philadelphia restorer Hannah Mee Horner, at