Elizabeth Macdowell Kenton

Elizabeth Macdowell Kenton (1858-1953) was an American performer known for her figure paintings and portraits. She was after that a photographer.

She was one of the eight kids of Hannah Gardner and William Hance Macdowell, a Philadelphia engraver, photographer, and a competent painter. He passed on his concentration in Thomas Paine and freethought to his three sons and five daughters.

Elizabeth and her sister Susan each displayed an early inclusion in art, which was encouraged by their father. They both studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts below Thomas Eakins, and Susan married Eakins in January 1884. Eakins painted portraits of several of the Macdowells, and used them as models in photographs.

Day Dreams: Portrait of Caroline Eakins, Elizabeth's portrait of Susan's sister-in-law, was exhibited at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It eventually found a home in the Taubman Museum of Art in Roanoke, Virginia, while many of her new works can be found in private collections.

Elizabeth Macdowell married Louis N. Kenton (1865–1947) on May 31, 1899.^{: 313, 318} Thomas Eakins painted a portrait of him, The Thinker (1900), now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Kentons' marriage was brief and not happy, with observations from Susan's diaries indicating that he was physically violent.^{: 313, 421 n.20}