#32 Madame X — Mug

Sargent first showed her with the right-hand strap of her gown slipped off the shoulder, and the Paris Salon of 1884 turned on him — her mother came to the exhibition and asked him to withdraw it. He refused, then quietly repainted the strap upright, and left France for London soon after. He kept the picture for over thirty years and, when he finally sold it, called it the best thing he had ever done. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.