Rachel Cohen is the author of 'A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists' (Cape), 'Bernard Berenson' (Yale) and, most recently, ‘Austen Years’ (Farrar, Straus & Giroux).

Still Life with Apples and Peaches by Paul Cézanne
Installation view of Kara Walker’s ‘Presenting Negro Scenes Drawn Upon My Passage through the South and Reconfigured for the Benefit of Enlightened Audiences Wherever Such May Be Found, By Myself, Missus K.E.B. Walker, Colored’ (1997) and (above) Cauleen Smith’s ‘The Right Time, Before and After’ (2017) in ‘Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40’
Hanging scroll depicting the goddess Dakini (detail; 14th century), Japan. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Untitled (Village Street Scene)(1948), Beauford Delaney. Terra Foundation for American Art. © Estate of Beauford Delaney, by permission of Derek L. Spratley, Esquire, Court Appointed Administrator
Woman Reading (detail; c. 1880–81), Édouard Manet. Art Institute of Chicago
Young Girl with a Vase (detail; 1889), Berthe Morisot. Private collection.
Luncheon of the Boating Party, (1880–81), Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Dallas Museum of Art