Painted by outlaw Impressionist/Realist Eduard Manet around 1863, Dejeuner sur l'herbe ("The Lunch on the Grass") was a very controversial piece back in the day. In it, a woman sits with two other guys (note- the one facing us is Manet's brother), enjoying what appears to be a nice picnic on a sunny afternoon. The problem? She's naked. Not only is she naked, but she's staring the viewer down- deliberately, boldly. As if to say- "Yeah, I'm naked with a couple of dudes, eating sandwiches, you have a fucking problem with that?"
It stirred a lot of shit up for various reasons. People weren't thrilled about the model. The nude woman, Victorine Meurant, was a guitarist in seedy clubs and had a suspicious background. Manet was drawn to her odd beauty and free spirit, though, and ended up using her for most of his works.
People were also bent out of shape because it was taken from the present- they were more comfortable with nudity if it was clearly from the past. Not having some historical separation from the scene made the audience extremely uneasy. The painting was, of course, received with total outrage, which did nothing to deter Manet. He followed it up with this ..
This is Olympia and people are pretty sure it's a painting of a naked hooker.
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