On long afternoon walks, Havemeyer and Cassatt discussed everything that was wrong in the world and how they would fix it. Women’s suffrage was essential. “If the world is to be saved, it will be the women who save it,” Cassatt agreed. I like to picture them hiking the hilly countryside in their big hats and long skirts. Cassatt thin and walking with a cane, Havemeyer energetic and sure-footed, both of them gray-haired and elegant, a living Impressionist picture. And like Impressionism, though offering a pretty picture, these dames were rebels cackling beneath their parasols.

In 1912 Havemeyer had thrown a successful double-billing, an El Greco/Goya show, to raise money for suffrage. She decided she’d do it again with a modern master: Degas. But she realized a suffrage exhibit without a woman artist was wrongheaded. (Yes.) She asked if Cassatt would join Degas. More than willing, Cassatt liked the idea of poking a feminist finger in Degas’s patriarchal eye.

Oh, there are always going to be people (usually men) (not all men) who have something rude to say whenever a woman makes a statement online. They’re easy to ignore though, especially since the response has been so overwhelmingly positive … I think what surprised me the most, just because I hadn’t really considered it, has been the number of older women (in their 70s and 80s) who have reached out and said they are so thankful for the book and wish they’d had something like it when they were younger. That’s very meaningful to me.