Two years in the studio, a fortnight of shouting, and the whole argument was over.

1863

Manet held Olympia back for two years and sent it to the Salon of 1865. Guards were posted; the picture was rehung above a doorway in the last room. Everything that happened to the painted figure afterwards — Degas at the tub, Cézanne’s bathers built like masonry, Freud counting Sue Tilley’s weight in lead white — happened in the room that argument opened.

Oil on canvas 130.5 × 191

Salon 1865

Musée d’Orsay RF 644

Given to the state 1890

The one picture this site would hang at full size

Plate 01

Reclining nude woman on white sheets with a maid holding flowers and a black cat

1886

Eakins loses the Pennsylvania Academy

He removed a male model’s loincloth in front of a mixed class in Philadelphia and was asked to resign. A body of his students left with him and founded the Art Students’ League of Philadelphia.

1893

The Royal Academy opens the life class to women

Twenty years later Laura Knight painted Self Portrait with Nude, 1913, showing herself at the easel with her model Ella Naper. It is in the National Portrait Gallery.

1917

Modigliani’s only solo show, closed on the day

The nudes faced the street from Berthe Weill’s window on the rue Taitbout. The police required them taken down; Weill sold five, for between 30 and 300 francs.

Four more before the argument reaches your own century

Works · Refusals · Painters Now · Materials

Ornately framed paintings crowd a gallery wall, including an oval chariot scene and classical figures

Ingres Gave Her Three Extra Vertebrae and Was Unapologetic

Works

Academies

Art Students League

Founded 1875, on West 57th Street since 1892. Non-degree, studio-based, and the room through which Hopper, Bellows, O’Keeffe and Pollock all passed on their way to something else.