Items12The creator’s order
  1. 1Portrait of Madame XPortrait of Madame XJohn Singer Sargent, 1883–84. Paris Salon visitors in 1884 mocked a portrait whose sitter they recognized, even though it withheld her name. In the version they saw, Gautreau’s right dress strap slipped down her shoulder. Look for the neatly raised strap now. Sargent repainted the detail after the…0
  2. 2Woman with a HatWoman with a HatHenri Matisse, 1905. At the Salon d’Automne, the colorful canvases around this portrait prompted Louis Vauxcelles’s comparison with wild beasts. Look at the green running down Amélie’s face and how little the paint imitates skin. The new palette was conspicuous enough to help supply a name for…0
  3. 3The NightmareThe NightmareHenry Fuseli, 1781. Horace Walpole found this painting shocking at the Royal Academy in 1782. Look at the heavy figure perched on a sleeper’s chest and the horse’s head emerging through the curtains. The painting puts the physical pose of a sleeper and the sights of a nightmare in the same room.0
  4. 4Symphony in White, No. 1: The White GirlSymphony in White, No. 1: The White GirlJames McNeill Whistler, 1861–62. After the Royal Academy turned down the portrait, a Berners Street gallery showed it in 1862 and used the rejection in its catalog. It went on to the 1863 Salon des Refusés in Paris. Look at how many different whites Whistler finds in Joanna Hiffernan’s dress and…0
  5. 5Christ in the House of His ParentsChrist in the House of His ParentsJohn Everett Millais, 1849–50. When the Royal Academy showed the painting in 1850, Charles Dickens attacked its treatment of the Holy Family in Household Words. Look at the splintered wood and crowded tools. The family inhabits a carpenter’s shop whose plain physical details were the very things…0
  6. 6A Burial at OrnansA Burial at OrnansGustave Courbet, 1849–50. At the Paris Salon of 1850–51, critics railed at the life-size mourners and laughed at some of their faces. Scan the red-faced churchwardens and the long row of villagers. Courbet gave a provincial funeral the size usually reserved for biblical or mythological subjects.0
  7. 7The Awakening ConscienceThe Awakening ConscienceWilliam Holman Hunt, 1853. A woman rises from a man’s lap, looking past the furniture and out of the room. At the Royal Academy in 1854, the Art Journal called the work an example of bad taste. The ringless fourth finger and the lavish room provided many viewers with clues to the couple’s…0
  8. 8The Balcony (Manet)The Balcony (Manet)Édouard Manet, 1868–69. At the 1869 Paris Salon, the caricaturist Cham joked that the shutters should be closed and another critic likened Manet to a house painter. Start with the bright green railing and shutters. Their color seems to press forward as the people look in separate directions.0
  9. 9The Gross ClinicThe Gross ClinicThomas Eakins, 1875. Rejected by the art jury for the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, this operating-room portrait appeared in the exposition’s model army hospital. Look at the harsh light on Dr. Gross and the theater rising behind him. One Philadelphia critic defended the painting and rebuked the…0
  10. 10Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2Marcel Duchamp, 1912. Cubist colleagues objected to the painting before its planned showing at the Salon des Indépendants, and Duchamp withdrew it. It went on view in Barcelona that spring and drew ridicule at the 1913 Armory Show in New York. Follow the overlapping planes downward to find a…0