William Sergeant Kendall was one of few American artists of his time to fuse the realism of his teacher, Thomas Eakins, with a classical approach to the figure. Kendall gained fame for evocative scenes of domestic life using members of his family as subjects. Here, his little daughter seems to be expressing a mind of her own. Mischief is the very first work accessioned by the fledgling Baltimore Museum of Art in 1914. The donor, Alfred R. L. Dohme (1867 – 1952), was a chemist who founded the pharmaceutical company Sharpe & Dohme, later Merck, Sharpe & Dohme. Dohme’s daughter, too, had a mind of her own. Adelyn Dohme Breeskin became the first woman to direct a major American art museum when she took over the leadership of the Baltimore Museum of Art in 1947.