Le Printemps

Cot showed this at the Paris Salon of 1873, and it made his name. A young couple share a swing in a dappled wood, wrapped up in each other, the girl in a thin white gown like something off a Greek vase. Audiences adored it, and copies soon spread everywhere, on engravings, fans, porcelain and tapestry. Its first owner, a New York hardware magnate named John Wolfe, hung it in pride of place in his Manhattan mansion. The taste it fed was exactly what a handful of younger painters would revolt against the very next year, when the first Impressionist show opened in Paris. Look at the swing's rope, twisted once around the branch above, holding the whole embrace up.