The first comprehensive study of Cassatt’s life, work, and legacy through the prism of a transatlantic framework. This book re-envisions Mary Cassatt in the context of her transatlantic network, friendships, exhibitions, politics, and legacy. Rather than defining her as either an American artist or a French impressionist, author Ruth E. Iskin argues that we can best understand Cassatt through the complexity of her multiple identifications as an American patriot, a committed French impressionist, and a suffragist. Contextualizing Cassatt’s feminist outlook within the intense pro- and anti-suffrage debates in the United States, Iskin shows how these impacted her artistic representations of motherhood, fatherhood, and older women. Mary Cassatt between Paris and New York also argues for the historical importance of her work as an advisor to American collectors, and demonstrates the role of museums in shaping her legacy, highlighting the combined impact of gender, national, and transnational dynamics.

Theodate Pope Riddle was one of America's first successful female architects. She was the only child of a Cleveland millionaire whose hobby was collecting Impressionist paintings. Her first architectural project, a mansion she designed to house her father's magnificent collection, is now the Hill-Stead Museum, in Farmington, CT. Theodate was an educator, who founded the prestigious Avon Old Farms School. She created its spectacular medieval campus and developed its progressive curriculum. She was a Spiritualist, who held a major position in the Society for Psychical Research. An early feminist, Theodate did not care what others thought or said, and she rebelled against society's norms and restrictions. While an unmarried woman, she took in a two-year-old boy, and after his death from polio, she raised two more orphans. She fought the men who tried to take over her school. She spoke and did as she pleased. In May 1915, despite the danger of traveling to England, she sailed on the Lusitania, and when the ship was hit by a German torpedo, she refused to join the panicked crowd trying to get into lifeboats. Instead, she jumped into the icy Irish Sea and miraculously survived. Theo's husband, John Riddle, called her his "Dearest of Geniuses," because, despite failures, tragedies, and conflicts, Theo always forged ahead. She was an extraordinary, gifted woman, who fulfilled her ambition to make the world a more beautiful and better place.

An acclaimed travel writer examines the connection between surroundings and innovative ideas, profiling examples in such regions as early-twentieth-century Vienna, Renaissance Florence, ancient Athens, and Silicon Valley. --Publisher.