A Modern Olympia

The story goes that Cezanne painted this to win an argument. He was staying at Auvers-sur-Oise with Dr Paul Gachet, the same country doctor who would later care for Van Gogh, and Gachet was praising Manet's scandalous nude, Olympia. I could do that sort of thing, Cezanne snapped. Well, do it then, said Gachet. So he did, in a loose, almost frantic swirl of paint: a client slumped on a sofa watching a servant unveil the naked woman. Gachet bought it, the first picture Cezanne ever sold. When it went on show at the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874, critics treated it as the work of a madman.