Thomas Eakins that was often as tender as it was vigorous, and to have preserved for us the essence of an American life which, indeed, he did not idealize—because it seemed to him beautiful beyond the necessity of idealization. Thomas Eakins Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins (July 25, 1844 – June 25, 1916) was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the most important artists in American art history. For the length of his professional career, from the early 1870s until his health began to fail some 40 years later, Eakins worked exactingly
Susan Macdowell Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Of her paintings, Thomas Eakins said of her that she was more adept with color than he and that she was "as good as a woman painter as he had ever seen." Susan Casteras, art historian, said of her "Portrait of a Lady", made in 1880, that it showed her "firm handling and solid anatomical construction blended with generally dark tonalities." After Thomas Eakin's death in 1916, she returned to painting, working nearly every day, adding considerably to her output. Her paintings were made in a style that became warmer, looser, and brighter