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,
Thomas Eakins Spain for six months confirmed his admiration for the realism of artists such as Diego Velázquez and Jusepe de Ribera. In Seville in 1869 he painted "", a portrait of a seven-year-old gypsy dancer more freely and colorfully painted than his Paris studies. That same year he attempted his first large oil painting, "", wherein he first dealt with the complications of a scene observed outside the studio. Although he failed to matriculate in a formal degree program and had showed no works in the European salons, Eakins succeeded in absorbing the techniques and methods of French and Spanish masters,