Some of the most important American women artists of the 19th and 20th centuries were affiliated with PAFA. They include Sarah Miriam Peale (sister of PAFA founder Charles Wilson Peale) and Mary Cassatt.
Thomas Eakins, 1844-1916
Thomas Eakins, 1844-1916
Circle of Eakins at PAFA, a modelling class
Thomas Eakins, an ardent supporter of life classes for women, joined PAFA’s faculty in 1876. He was acutely aware of the professional needs of women artists, and during his first 6 years of tenure, the number of registered female students increased from 37 to an impressive 149. (He was asked to resign as director, however, after he removed the loincloth from a male model in a women’s life class.)
[source: Anna Havemann, “Expanded Horizon: Female Artists at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts during the Course of the Nineteenth Century,” in The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making their World, ed. Robert Cozzolino (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 2012) 31-42]