Claude Monet tried to beat this painting and lost the canvas doing it. In 1865 he began a version six metres wide, meaning to exhibit it at the Salon and outdo Manet at his own subject. He never finished it in time, left it with his landlord as security for unpaid rent, and got it…
For a century and a half the second woman in this painting had no name. Manet knew it — he wrote it in a notebook: Laure, a model who lived on the rue de Vintimille. He painted her three times. Yet catalogues described her for generations only as “the servant,” and her face was routinely…
Whistler pawned this painting. In 1878 he sued the critic John Ruskin for libel and won — and the court awarded him one farthing, the smallest coin in circulation, with no costs. The case ruined him. He declared bankruptcy the following year and put his mother’s portrait up as security against his debts. Quick Facts…