In the spring of 1886, your opinion of impressionism seemed determined by whether you lived in Paris or New York: “In New York, critics aligned impressionism with cubism by emphasizing their rationalist aspects, whereas in Paris their differences as perceptualist and structuralist modes took priority.” A 21-page pamphlet entitled “Science and Philosophy in Art” was circulated at an exhibition in New York and eventually made its way back the French impressionist painters, who took it up excitedly and distributed it amongst themselves. The writer turned out to be a 29-year-old American woman chemist, Helen Cecilia de Silver Abbott, whose particular defense of impressionism was before its time. – American Art