From her roots in rural Wisconsin, painter Georgia O'Keeffe rose within an art world dominated by what she called "the men" to become the best-known female artist in the United States. A reflection of O'Keeffe's strong, independent spirit, the label of "female artist" was one that she herself disagreed with throughout her life; defiant of both social and artistic conventions, she preferred to think of herself as, simply, an "Artist," producing works that could hold their own in comparison with those of her male colleagues. While classified by critics as everything from "surreal" to "precisionist" or "romantic," O'Keeffe's paintings were done in a deliberately original and independent style intended, the artist later said, to "satisfy no one but myself." Despite her continuous battles with critics who insistently tried to pigeonhole her work into one or another school of painting, O'Keeffe thrilled both art critics and art lovers and...