While the art attacks were controversial, it was just one of the ways that women during the Victorian era sought ... By ruining portraits and exhibitions, the women sent a powerful message about ...

People get upset when it’s not on view,” said Stephanie L. Herdrich, curator of American painting and drawing at the Met.

The portrait seems to play with the Victorian assumption that unconventional women were somehow “masculine ... They supported their only child’s interest in art, sending her to Paris ...