Havemeyer, Louisine Waldron (1855–1929)

US suffragist and art collector. Following her husband's death, she devoted herself to social causes, and was a founder of the Congressional Union for Woman Suffrage (later the National Woman's party) in 1913. She lectured – and once exhibited her extensive painting collection – for the suffrage movement. Her most dramatic moment came in 1919 when she burned an effigy of President Woodrow Wilson on the White House lawn; she was jailed for three days, after which she set off on the ‘Prison Special’, a train that toured the country for a month to promote women's suffrage.

The daughter of a wealthy sugar refiner, she was born Louisine Waldron Elder in New York City. She studied in Paris (1873), where she met Mary Cassatt, and began to purchase works by the Impressionists. In 1883 she married Henry Havemeyer, himself a sugar magnate, and they lived a luxurious life in New York City. She and her husband became discerning collectors of art, travelling through Europe and personally buying what they liked; they especially collected the Impressionists but also such under-appreciated artists as El Greco. Most of her vast art collection went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art after her death.