Le Sommeil
1866 · Petit Palais, Paris
Two women asleep and entwined, painted on private commission and therefore out of reach of the Salon and its proprieties.
★ 5.4
The Art canon
Sourced and hung.
Every work chosen by hand and annotated for why it matters.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Browse all 704 works or filter by movement, subject, place, and artist.
Woman with a Parrot
1866 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Courbet took the nude to the Salon with her hair loose, her body relaxed, and a parrot on her hand instead of a myth.
★ 5.7
La Belle Rafaela
1927 · Location unknown
The odalisque rebuilt in the machine age, all gleaming curves against deep red, sensual and cold at exactly the same time.
★ 6.1
Nude in a Black Armchair
1932 · Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Georgia
The dark chair throws the body forward, all lilac and rose curves, a plant arching over the sleeper from behind.
★ 6.1
Mademoiselle O'Murphy
1751 · Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, Cologne
Louise O'Murphy was a teenage favorite of Louis XV, and Boucher painted her face-down across the cushions for private consumption.
★ 6.1
Reclining Nude
1917 · Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
African masks, Cycladic figures and Renaissance Venuses, folded into one long golden diagonal. Among the most expensive paintings ever sold.
★ 6.3
Nude with Calla Lilies
1944 · Location unknown
An armful of calla lilies is nearly bigger than the woman kneeling behind it. Rivera came back to the flower and its sellers constantly.
★ 6.6
Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening
1944 · Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
A bee circles a pomegranate, and in the second before waking it has become two tigers and a bayonet coming at Gala's arm.
★ 6.7
The Models
1888 · The Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Philadelphia
Seurat painted this to prove the dots could handle a nude, and hung his own Grande Jatte on the studio wall behind them.
★ 6.8
Red Nude
1917 · Private collection
The police shut down Modigliani's only solo show for indecency, and this was among the nudes that did it.
★ 6.8
Nude, Green Leaves and Bust
1932 · Tate Modern, London
Marie-Thérèse asleep beside a sculpture of her own head and a philodendron, from the year Picasso could seemingly do nothing wrong.
★ 6.9
L'Origine du Monde
1866 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Too explicit to exhibit for over a century, it stayed in private hands behind curtains and screens. No myth, no excuse, just the body.
★ 6.9
Spirit of the Dead Watching
1892 · Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo
A girl lies face down and frightened while a hooded figure sits behind her. Gauguin said his Tahitian companion was afraid of the dark.
★ 7.1
Blue Nude II
1952 · Centre Pompidou, Paris
Matisse was too ill to stand at an easel, so he cut the figure out of painted paper and called it drawing with scissors.
★ 7.1
The Valpincon Bather
1808 · Louvre, Paris
A bare back seen from behind under even light, with a striped turban wound round the head. Ingres returned to this view all his life.
★ 7.2
The Nude Maja
1800 · El Prado, Madrid
Not a goddess but a real woman looking straight back, which is why the Inquisition took an interest. Goya painted a clothed version too.
★ 7.6
La Grande Odalisque
1814 · Louvre, Paris
Ingres stretched her spine past anything anatomy allows, and critics joked she had three vertebrae too many. He was chasing line, not truth.
★ 8.0
Olympia
1863 · Musee d'Orsay, Paris
Manet took the pose from Titian's Venus of Urbino and gave it to a prostitute who looks straight back. The 1865 Salon was scandalized.
★ 8.9
The Girls of Avignon
1907 · Museum of Modern Art, New York City
Five nude women stare out with their faces turned into masks, and Picasso kept the canvas rolled up in his studio for years.
★ 9.2