© Great Works of Western Art
1844 Born in Philadelphia, the son of a weaver.
1862 Attends the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. Also enrolls in anatomy and dissection classes at Jefferson Medical College.
1866 Studies in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts with Jean-Léon Gérôme.
1869 Spends six months in Spain where he makes an intensive study of Velázquez in the Prado.
1870 Returns to Philadelphia.
1881 Eakins purchases his first camera. Studies human movement using multiple exposures.
1882 Becomes director of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.
1884 Marries Susan Hannah Macdowell. Works with Eadweard Muybridge researching animal and human movement through photography.
1886 The Board of Directors of the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts forces Eakins to resign. Travels to Dakota. Meets Walt Whitman. After his dismissal he teaches at a number of other schools.
1902 Eakins becomes a member of the National Academy of Design.
1916 Dies in Philadelphia.
1917 A memorial retrospective of his work is mounted by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and in Philadelphia.
1871 Max Schmitt in a Single Scull, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
1875 The Gross Clinic, Philadelphia, Jefferson Medical College
1885 The Swimming Hole, Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum
1891 Miss Amelia Van Buren, Washington DC, Phillips Collection
1895 Portrait of Maud Cook, New Haven, Yale University Art Gallery
1899 Wrestlers, Los Angeles County Museum of Art
1900 The Thinker, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art
