Not long after, he called upon Mrs.
MacDowell and told her, to her astonishment, that he had shown the sketch to a certain very eminent painter--an instructor at the Ecole de Beaux Arts--and that the painter had been so much impressed by the talent which it evidenced that he begged to propose to Mrs.MacDowell that she submit her son to him for a three-years' course of free instruction under his personal supervision, offering also to be responsible for his support during that time.

The issue was a momentous one, and Mrs.MacDowell, in much perplexity of mind as to the wisest settlement of her son's future, laid the matter before Marmontel, who, fearful of losing one of his aptest pupils, urgently advised her against diverting her son from a musical career.

The decision was finally left to MacDowell, and it was agreed that he should continue his studies at the Conservatory.

Although it seems not unlikely that, with his natural facility as a painter and draughtsman and his uncommon faculties of vision and imagination, he would have achieved distinction as a painter, it may be questioned whether in that case music would not have lost appreciably more than art would have gained.
Conditions at the Conservatory were not to the taste of MacDowell, for he found his notions of right artistic procedure frequently opposed to those that prevailed among his teachers and fellow students.

His growing disaffection was brought to a head during the summer of 1878.